Perata's legal problems gave unexpected boost to Prop. 11

Politics Blog from the San Francisco Chronicle

Posted By: John Wildermuth

February 03 2009 at 01:09 PM

Don Perata's legal problems may have helped Proposition 11, the redistricting reform measure, squeak to a 198,000-vote victory last November, at least if you believe that money talks in politics.

Prop. 11 was designed to break the stranglehold Democrats have held on redistricting in California, where the Legislature's majority, i.e., the Democrats, draws the lines for every legislative and congressional district, protecting incumbents of both parties and keeping the Dems in control.

But when Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and a bunch of good government types like the League of Women Voters, AARP and Common Cause put together an initiative to take that redistricting power from the Legislature and give it to a citizens' commission, Perata, the Democrat's leader in the state Senate, called for an all-out, no-holds-barred effort to derail the initiative.

Problem is, Perata is the reputed target of an ongoing federal corruption investigation and has spent more than $2 million on lawyers to keep the FBI from his door, which is his absolute top priority.

So while Perata's Leadership California political action committee was raking in cash from Democratic donors to back his political efforts, not much of the money actually was going to fight the party's battles.

That means that while the Oakland politician was talking the good fight against Prop. 11, he wasn't writing many checks. Leadership California, solely controlled by Perata, did give about $160,000 to the campaign against Prop. 11. It also managed to pump $1.9 million into Perata's rapidly emptying legal defense fund.

Any of that money would have been welcome to the cash-strapped anti-Prop. 11 campaign, which was outspent $16.7 million to $1.6 million and still grabbed 49.2 percent of the vote in the tightest race on the ballot in what was an ultra-Democratic campaign year.

That $1.9 million of Democratic donor funds that went to pay Perata's legal bills would have bought a full week of TV advertising for the anti-11 campaign. Would that have been enough to flip the result? Impossible to say. Still, when Schwarzenegger, who put more than $3 million into the Prop. 11 campaign, watches the new citizens' commission redraw the political lines after the 2010 census, he might want to thank Don Perata.