California Governor Gavin Newsom wants to call a special election to take the power to redistrict congressional seats from the state’s Citizens Redistricting Commission and return the map drawing ability to politicians to create more Democratic seats.
No surprise that Newsom and the party leadership are willing to kinda/sorta dump the redistricting commission, since they’ve hated the idea from the beginning. In 2008, the Dem state central committee put up about $400K to fight Prop. 11, which set up the commission for state races. In 2010, the party put up another $400K or so to fight Prop. 20, which extended the commission to congressional races and pump for Prop. 27, which would have killed the commission entirely. Plenty of Democratic officeholders dumped campaign funds into the effort, including Padilla, Schiff and Pelosi. Convincing Democratic officeholders to give up some of their reliable voters might not be so easy, though. At the 2000 Democratic convention in LA, Terry McAuliffe, then head of the DNC, talked about how the Dems could get four or five more seats in CA through a tough, partisan redistricting. You saw how well that went down.
Good to hear from you John. I recently had a post on Prop 27 and suggested with the history of an effort to undo the redistricting committee that may be the goal here too, ultimately. Most people were not aware of Prop 27 now but I’m not surprised you remember. Here’s a link if you didn’t see it. https://joelfox1.substack.com/p/newsom-using-texas-to-eliminate-californias
I like the idea of redistricting commissions taking control of the process away from the parties too. However the situation in Texas clearly also demonstrates the problem with the non partisan commissions making each state map fair individually. I wonder if instead of getting rid of the commission you fix them so that the incentive to do mid decade redistricting goes away by changing the goal of the commission. Instead of having the goal be to make the California map as fair as possible you could make it so that the goal is to make the national map as fair as possible (there may be some details about what makes the national map fair that would need to be worked out by better minds than mine). This has a few advantages over a just Newsomemandering (as you describe it ) in response to Texas republicans stealing five seats by making 5 new California democrats. These advantages include:
1. It, if anything, defends the idea that redistricting should be fair and that people should pick the politicians and not the other way around.
2.It gets rid of the problem of principled unilateral disarmament wherein democrats simply say “ well our state maps are fair” while allowing republicans to cheat the preference of people in their states.
3. This national fairness standard might be added to other state commissions which may reduce the disenfranchisement of republicans in any one state including California.
I agree with the goal, Seth,but the devil will be in how to make it work. I mentioned in the post Congressman Kiley wanted to pass a bill to outlaw mid decade redistricting. Perhaps this would begin the debate for a national solution for fair representation.
Agree that a federal bill would not pass for a number of reasons especially because the president would oppose. It will be interesting to see what happens with state commissions in the current heated political environment
No surprise that Newsom and the party leadership are willing to kinda/sorta dump the redistricting commission, since they’ve hated the idea from the beginning. In 2008, the Dem state central committee put up about $400K to fight Prop. 11, which set up the commission for state races. In 2010, the party put up another $400K or so to fight Prop. 20, which extended the commission to congressional races and pump for Prop. 27, which would have killed the commission entirely. Plenty of Democratic officeholders dumped campaign funds into the effort, including Padilla, Schiff and Pelosi. Convincing Democratic officeholders to give up some of their reliable voters might not be so easy, though. At the 2000 Democratic convention in LA, Terry McAuliffe, then head of the DNC, talked about how the Dems could get four or five more seats in CA through a tough, partisan redistricting. You saw how well that went down.
Good to hear from you John. I recently had a post on Prop 27 and suggested with the history of an effort to undo the redistricting committee that may be the goal here too, ultimately. Most people were not aware of Prop 27 now but I’m not surprised you remember. Here’s a link if you didn’t see it. https://joelfox1.substack.com/p/newsom-using-texas-to-eliminate-californias
I like the idea of redistricting commissions taking control of the process away from the parties too. However the situation in Texas clearly also demonstrates the problem with the non partisan commissions making each state map fair individually. I wonder if instead of getting rid of the commission you fix them so that the incentive to do mid decade redistricting goes away by changing the goal of the commission. Instead of having the goal be to make the California map as fair as possible you could make it so that the goal is to make the national map as fair as possible (there may be some details about what makes the national map fair that would need to be worked out by better minds than mine). This has a few advantages over a just Newsomemandering (as you describe it ) in response to Texas republicans stealing five seats by making 5 new California democrats. These advantages include:
1. It, if anything, defends the idea that redistricting should be fair and that people should pick the politicians and not the other way around.
2.It gets rid of the problem of principled unilateral disarmament wherein democrats simply say “ well our state maps are fair” while allowing republicans to cheat the preference of people in their states.
3. This national fairness standard might be added to other state commissions which may reduce the disenfranchisement of republicans in any one state including California.
I agree with the goal, Seth,but the devil will be in how to make it work. I mentioned in the post Congressman Kiley wanted to pass a bill to outlaw mid decade redistricting. Perhaps this would begin the debate for a national solution for fair representation.
I agree that federal legislation would be an optimal solution however I have 3 quibbles:
1. Such a bill can’t bypass a filibuster.
2. Such a bill won’t pass congress as currently constituted and the pending veto definitely could not be overridden.
3. Several states have redistricting commissions by changing them in this way a proportional but firm response can be generated
Agree that a federal bill would not pass for a number of reasons especially because the president would oppose. It will be interesting to see what happens with state commissions in the current heated political environment