The Buzz

Jim Sanders, Micaela Massimino
The Sacramento Bee
October 3, 2011

$14 million for new districts: Money well spent, he says

Charles T. Munger Jr. says he has no regrets about spending $14 million to alter California's process of drawing new legislative and congressional districts -- even if the newly drawn maps bite his Republican Party.

Speaking Friday at a redistricting conference by UC Berkeley's Institute of Governmental Studies, Munger said that he would have "absolutely" spent the money even if his own party controlled the Legislature.

Munger said he contributed more than $1 million to Proposition 11 in 2008, and about $13 million to its companion measure, Proposition 20 of 2010, because he is a firm believer in fair districts and was fed up with legislative gerrymanders.

Munger, a research physicist, declined to predict how many seats will change party hands next year. Whether Republicans or Democrats lose seats, the losing party will have deserved it, he said.

Munger also steered clear of commenting on the districts themselves, but said he feels "a bit like a proud father" now that the state's redistricting commission has approved 80 Assembly, 40 state Senate and 53 congressional maps.

"If you ever put that much money on a pony," he said of his investment, "you kind of like it when it rounds home."

-- Jim Sanders

TODAY AT THE CAPITOL

The clock is ticking for Gov. Jerry Brown, who has through Sunday to work through the bills sent him by legislators last month. That means lawmakers' lobbying window is closing as well. Brown's office estimated that, as of Friday, the mountain of measures on the governor's desk had shrunk but was still no molehill, with about 440 bills to go.

-- Micaela Massimino

WORTH REPEATING

"The best plaintiff for that is not a white former congressman from Fresno."

-- MATT REXROAD, Republican political consultant, commenting on a lawsuit filed by former Rep. George Radanovich, R-Mariposa, which challenges California's new congressional districts for being unconstitutionally unfair to Latino and Asian American voters