Tony Quinn: Redistricting reform OK, but it's only a start

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and reform groups deserve credit for once again tackling the Gordian knot of redistricting reform. A proposal to remove the drawing of legislative districts from the Legislature and give the task to a nonpartisan commission will probably appear on the November ballot.

But redistricting reform is being oversold as a way to achieve funda- mental change in the Legislature – by both its supporters and opponents. In fact, a Legislature elected in commission-drawn districts will not look much different than the Legislature we have today. Real reform will have to go beyond simply redrawing district lines.

Fairly drawn districts will not markedly change the partisan makeup we have. Democratic opponents of reform claim Democrats could lose up to 10 Assembly seats under the governor's plan. That's nonsense; the Democrats actually elected more legislators in 2000, under the last year of state Supreme Court's masters-drawn legislative plan, than they have in this decade. The 2001 bipartisan gerrymander has actually kept Republicans at an artificial high while the state has become more Democratic.

Reform will not bring about the nirvana of thoughtful moderates from marginal districts supporters hope for, either. That's because even non-legislative redistricting in 2011 will create far fewer marginal districts than we had in the 1990s, the last time California enjoyed non-gerrymandered districts.

The reason is voter self-selection into similar-voting communities, a phenomenon a number of scholars have noted in recent years. The American Enterprise Institute recently cited a number of demographic trends to watch for in the 2008 and future elections.

Among them were: "Increased geographic clustering of people with similar ideology and partisanship, the decline of the white working class and the rise of a mass upper-middle class, and the twin increase of highly observant Christian evangelical denominations as well as the secular, the nonobservant and those with nontraditional religious practices."

All these trends are apparent in California. Democratic areas are becoming more Democratic, Republican areas are hardening in their Republicanism because of the clustering of people with similar ideologies.

The white working class that was open to voting Republican has been replaced by a Latino working class that is not. Church attendance rises in Republican areas, drawing together people of similar religious views, while secular values have drawn people of more diverse lifestyles to Democratic areas. All this has a direct political impact.

As an example, the California Target Book in its analysis of 2008 Assembly elections found that Republicans may lose their last Assembly district in the Bay Area, the 15th Assembly District in the East Bay suburbs, while Democrats may lose their last rural Central Valley district, the 30th Assembly District running from Fresno to Bakersfield. California simply has less politically marginal territory.

Redistricting reform will result in more-logical districts with a less-brutal hacking-up of the political map than the current gerrymandered plans. But it is very unlikely to result in many more politically marginal districts. We will simply reaggregate Democrats in Democratic areas and Republicans in Republican areas in a more rational manner.

Does this mean Schwarzenegger and the reformers should abandon redistricting reform? Not at all. It is an important step in the direction of making a more responsible Legislature. But it should be only the first step. To effect real change in how legislators behave, we need to change the dynamics within each district.

California tried that in 1996 by adopting the "blanket primary" that allowed voters to choose any candidate in a party primary. The two cycles in which the blanket primary was in effect, 1998 and 2000, saw voters crossing over and legislators more in tune with all the voters in their districts. But the parties hated the blanket primary and got the U.S. Supreme Court to throw it out.

About the writer:

• Tony Quinn is co-editor of the California Target Book, a nonpartisan analysis of legislative and congressional elections.