ELECTION 2010 / CALIFORNIA - Redistricting panel gets added duties - THE VOTERS SAY LET IT DRAW CONGRESSIONAL LINES AS WELL

Jim Sanders
The Sacramento Bee
November 4, 2010

Voters dealt the final blow Tuesday, but a joint campaign led largely by lawmakers fizzled weeks ago in its effort to kill the state's newly forming redistricting commission or to keep its duties from expanding.

Voters approved Proposition 20 to give the independent commission added authority to draw congressional district boundaries. They rejected Proposition 27, the measure that would have eliminated the panel before it begins meeting in January.

"This was about the voters telling their elected officials that they really don't trust them," said Jessica Levinson of the Center for Governmental Studies, in Los Angeles.

Victoria Hoang, coordinator for the losing campaign on both measures, said their effort simply could not match the opposition's $12.5 million in contributions from Charles T. Munger Jr., a physicist and GOP contributor, and from his wife, Charlotte Lowell.

"Ultimately, they had a strong presence on TV as well as on the radio, and it's just very hard to compete with that level of funding," said Hoang, whose campaign focused on slate mailers.

Both redistricting measures targeted a 14-member commission that stemmed from passage of Proposition 11 two years ago and was charged with the once-a-decade duty of drawing boundaries for legislative and Board of Equalization seats.

As a concession to congressional incumbents, and to avoid a bitter fight, the 2008 ballot measure excluded congressional boundaries. The Legislature, which had drawn all political districts in decades past, was left to draw only those of the state's delegation to Washington, D.C.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger helped lead the fight two years ago to alter redistricting, citing a pact by legislative leaders nine years ago to draw lines that protected incumbents of both parties.

Only one of 53 congressional seats, and none of 120 legislative seats, changed party hands in the 2004 and 2006 elections.

Fast-forward to this year, when numerous California legislative and congressional lawmakers initially contributed to fight Proposition 20 and to pass Proposition 27. The efforts sought to return all map-drawing power to the Legislature and to ensure that it continue to oversee congressional boundaries.

The campaign faltered in the early stages, however. Donations dried up by early October and key donations or loans were returned before Election Day -- including $2 million to Haim Saban, $125,000 to the Democratic State Central Committee, and varying sums to numerous Democratic lawmakers, records show.

Kathay Feng, executive director of California Common Cause and a leader in the pro-commission effort, said that internal polling consistently showed solid voter support for expanding the commission, and that Proposition 27, to kill the panel, never scored higher than the "mid-30s."

Political analyst Tony Quinn, co-editor of the California Target Book, which handicaps statewide political races, said it became increasingly obvious congressional incumbents had higher priorities in a volatile political year.

"They were not going to waste a lot of time and money on this," he said.