Redistricting 'Reform' Will Not Create a Party of Republican Moderates in California

By: Bill Cavala

Date: 09/17/2007

An enduring myth based on pseudo-analysis is that redistricting “reform” would transform the Republican Party into something with box office appeal – to misquote the Governor.

Most Legislative Districts, the argument goes, are “safe” for one party in November, General Elections. That throws the real contest back into the primary – where conservatives dominate on the GOP side.

All that is true. But it's been true at least since 1978 when a surge elected a wave of Republican Legislators to the Assembly – in seats drawn by the courts.

When Democrats drew the lines in 1981, the Republicans decried it as a “partisan gerrymander” with the media accepting that criticism. No one said that any increased competition resulting from that plan was good, let alone productive of GOP moderation.

Under the lines drawn by the Courts in 1991, the conservative revolution begun in 1978 resulted in the ouster of moderate Ken Maddy by the conservative Orange County wing of the Republican Party. No one blamed the Court's redistricting plan.

But the bipartisan redistricting of 2001 – which in most cases simply adjusted the lines drawn by the staff of the California Supreme Court for population is now accused of producing the revolution in the GOP which has been a reality for at least 39 years.

The fact is that the combination of legal requirements that seats be contiguous and composed of whole cities with the demographic reality that Republicans and Democrats live – by choice – in different parts of the State make the creation of districts with party registration figures competitive impossible. Only by dividing cities into pie slices that reach to the Republican suburbs are more competitive seats possible – illegal under state and federal law.

If it were possible, would it produce a rebirth of moderation in the G.O.P.? Guy Houston and Dean Gardner – two GOP candidates in competitive seats would seem to say no. Is Shirley Horton a desirable result? Did the state's closest election make Bonnie Garcia a more desirable moderate? (Or more honest?). More beholden to the prison guards union perhaps. Is Congressman Doolittle bending toward the center?

Conservative Republican state officeholders are unanimous in support of redistricting ‘reform'. To help the rebirth of a moderate G.O.P.??

The members of the media should face the truth: moderate Republicans in office will reappear when Republican voters begin to choose them over conservative Republicans. And that won't begin to happen until the Governor puts his money where his mouth is.