Remap: Can Assembly do it again?

By Ed Mendel

Date: August 28, 2007

SACRAMENTO -The two party leaders in the Assembly, who negotiated the new state budget, are hoping lightening strikes twice as they try to work out an agreement on a new way to draw legislative and congressional districts.

The change would take the once-a-decade task of drawing new districts out of the hands of the Legislature and turn it over to a commission less likely to draw districts favoring incumbents or one party over the other.

The current districts, presumably drawn to reflect population shifts recorded by the 2000 federal census, are actually a rare bipartisan "gerrymander" intended to preserve the number of seats held by each party by packing districts with voters mainly from one party.

"So instead of voters choosing their elected officials, the politicians are actually choosing the voters," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Saturday in his weekly radio address.

"This system has created an astonishing lack of competition in our elections," the governor said. "In the past three election cycles only four out of 459 seats up for grabs in California changed party hands."

Some observers believe the uncompetitive districts have deepened partisan conflict in the Legislature and made compromise more difficult. Few seats can be won by moderate candidates with appeal to voters of both parties, leaving most battles to members of one party in primary elections.

Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles, said Tuesday that he is "still enthusiastic" about reaching agreement on a sweeping health care reform and redistricting before the scheduled end of the legislative session on Sept. 14.

"I am negotiating so far with the Assembly Republican leadership and also other outside groups," said the speaker. "We are working hard. I think we are getting closer and closer."

Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines of Clovis said, "I think there is an opportunity to get some resolution," but there is no agreement yet.

"Fabian and I have been working very close," said Villines, "and I have been talking to (Senate Minority Leader) Dick Ackerman (R-Tustin), and we are trying to broaden the circle."

Villines said the negotiators are trying to "protect what all of us hold important." For Republicans, he said, that is an independent commission, no legislative veto of the commission's work, and having the commission draw congressional as well as legislative districts.

"It's those three litmus tests that have to be met," said Villines.

The powerful speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, wants congressional redistricting left in the hands of the Legislature. In a closely divided Congress, a handful of seats in California could help determine which party controls the House.

Nunez said that because of Republican opposition he is "stepping away" from his earlier proposal to have new districts drawn by the watchdog Little Hoover Commission, whose members are appointed by the governor and the Legislature.

"Let's just say that we are looking at a compromise that gets us somewhere between where we have been and the Republican leadership has been, which is they want a totally independent commission," said Nunez.

"We want some connection to the Legislature," he said. "We are trying to figure out what is a good compromise between the two."

Schwarzenegger has said that he will support an initiative expected to be on the February ballot that would adjust legislative term limits, and allow Nunez and others to run for re-election, if the Legislature places redistricting reform on the ballot.

One of Schwarzenegger's "Year of Reform" initiatives rejected by voters two years ago, Proposition 77, would have authorized a panel of retired judges to draw new districts. Voters had previously rejected several similar proposals.

In the 1970s and again in the 1990s districts were drawn by a panel of special masters appointed by the state Supreme Court after Republican governors vetoed districts drawn by Democratic-controlled Legislatures.