In an op-ed this morning in the LA Times Dan Schnur writes:
Schwarzenegger may be the “post-partisan” that he proclaimed himself to be after his reelection in 2006, but he is clearly the loneliest post-partisan in Sacramento.
Over the years, California’s statewide electorate has tended to elect relatively moderate governors, such as Republican Pete Wilson and Democrat Gray Davis, neither of whom was ever fully trusted by the legislators of their own party and both of whom warred with their own party’s elected representatives.
And although redistricting reform would not create competitive elections in all or even most of the state’s districts, the hope of redistricting advocates (of whom I am one) is that even a dozen or so relatively balanced districts and more centrist legislators could create a common ground in Sacramento from which bipartisan progress and cooperation could emerge.
One of Schwarzenegger’s most significant accomplishments was his successful push last fall for the passage of a ballot initiative designed to implement precisely that type of redistricting reform. But the irony of Proposition 11’s victory is that he will never be able to govern under the new system. By the time the next census is conducted and the new district lines have been drawn for the 2012 campaign season, Schwarzenegger will have long since departed from his office.
In the meantime, Schwarzenegger and a beleaguered set of legislative leaders will spend the next several weeks weighing the consequences of unconscionable spending cuts against unthinkable tax increases. But before any painful solution can be achieved, they must first convince their ideological bases that an election day victory in May provides scant protection against the unpleasant budget realities that will emerge from a long, hot and nasty summer.
Okay, I’m game. I’m must a dumb outsider. What would a “common ground in Sacramento from which bipartisan progress and cooperation could emerge” look like? As I understand “the extremes” (the title of the op-ed is “Getting past the extremes in California’s budget battle”), one extreme is a group of Republicans in the legislature who reject any tax increases out of hand and the other is, well, nearly all of the Democrats in the legislature who want to continue increasing California’s spending faster than the rate of inflation, faster than the increase in the state’s population, faster than the state’s economy is growing, faster than real estate values are increasing (they’re decreasing), and faster than retail sales are increasing.
What would the middle ground look like?
It sounds like Schnur is actually saying “We’d like to make a couple seats competitive – hopefully some of which are in Republican-dominated districts – but not too competitive, lest some of the democratic state legislators lose their seats on mass in anything resembling a competitive election.” Basically, he wants to break up the Republican block on the Democratic Party’s hold on the state legislature.
Incidently, Proposition 11 is a huge victory for reform in California, and in terms of the state, was probably more important than Proposition 8. Proposition 11 has the possibility of completely changing the politically gerrymandered California state legislature.
For that matter, who thought it was a good idea to have legislatures decide their own electoral boundaries? That sounds like a recipe for self-guarantees on seats.
For that matter, who thought it was a good idea to have legislatures decide their own electoral boundaries? That sounds like a recipe for self-guarantees on seats.
Whoever decides the electoral boundaries will certainly set them for their own empowerment. That will be true of all such systems.
Definitely. Hell, it took a Supreme Court decision – Baker v. Carr – just to get them to do the redistricting they’ve done to this point, since before that a lot of state legislatures were dominated by overrepresented rural areas, dating back to districts that had been formed back when the states were largely agrarian. That played a major role in FDR’s political decisions, by the way; the need to get passed those types of state legislatures.