Major changes seen for political districts

Dan Walters
The Fresno Bee
March 13, 2011

When sports bettors talk about "the over/under," they're referring to a wager on whether the total score of the contest involved will exceed or fall short of the bookmaker's number. 

When politicians use that phrase, they're referring to the even more arcane process of redrawing legislative districts to account for population shifts. 

Between decennial censuses, some legislative districts wind up with less than the equal population required by law and some with more. The larger the district's deviation from the ideal, the more its boundaries must be expanded or contracted, creating more political uncertainty. 

Were redistricting still in the purview of the Legislature, politicians and their staffs could make those changes in ways that would protect or enhance the political standing of whomever they wished. 

However, for the first time in state history, redistricting will be in the hands of an independent commission that is supposed to ignore partisan or personal political impacts. 

When the Census Bureau released details of the 2010 census in California, therefore, political bean counters immediately massaged the data to calculate which Assembly, Senate and congressional districts must be changed dramatically to equalize their populations. 

The detailed over/under data on the 120 legislative and 53 congressional districts confirm what the gross census numbers implied -- that there must be a major shift of seats from Democrat-voting coastal areas, such as the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County, to the more conservative-leaning interior counties. 

A decade ago, for instance, 40 state Senate districts were equalized at about 850,000 constituents each. The 2011 census told us that they now should be about 931,000 because the state's population increased by 10%. In fact, however, those districts now range from 87,615 people under that number (Senate District 22, represented by Sen. Kevin DeLeon, D-Los Angeles) to 284,527 over (SD 37, held by Sen. Bill Emmerson, R-Hemet). 

DeLeon's and Emmerson's numbers reflect the startlingly small growth recorded for Los Angeles County, just 3.1% in 10 years, and the explosive, 30% growth in adjacent Riverside and San Bernardino counties. And it may indicate that, as many demographers suspect, the census missed many Los Angeles residents, especially illegal immigrants. 

But the census, accurate or not, is official and the huge urban-suburban disparity -- also evident in Assembly and congressional district numbers -- means that the redistricting commission, if it does its job well, will be making immense changes in the state's political maps. 

It will shift districts from slow-growing coastal urban areas to fast-growing interior counties, opening opportunities for some politicians while discomfiting others. 

Dan Walters writes for The Bee's Capitol bureau. E-mail: dwalters@sacbee.com; mail: P.O. Box 15779, Sacramento, CA 95852.