California's Legislature is on the brink of unprecedented turnover next year, prompting interest groups to intensify their efforts to raise money and recruit candidates.

Seat-shuffling caused by term limits and the decennial redistricting process could mean upward of 40 percent of the Legislature's 120 seats will be filled by freshmen come next December, some observers and analysts project.

At least a dozen incumbents, including some elected for the first time just last year, are eyeing bids for Congress or other legislative offices.

"This will be probably the biggest turnover in modern memory," said Robert Stern, president of the nonpartisan Center for Governmental Studies.

Roughly one-third of Assembly members must vacate their seats every two years due to term limits. But the new political boundaries, drawn for the first time by the independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, produced more competitive districts in some cases and a handful of open seats.

"There's a ton of opportunity out there," said Douglas Herman, a Democratic consultant who serves as political adviser to Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez. "When these redistricting years come around … those are when you see the big changes in terms of the composition and the makeup of the bodies of the Assembly and Senate."

New faces mean new opportunities for interest groups seeking allies to fight for their causes under the dome. Some groups already are mobilizing to make sure that, come 2012, at least some of those empty seats are occupied by legislators who share their views.

The efforts include candidate recruitment and training as well as fundraising to support a new crop of prospective legislators on the ballot.

"These advocacy groups are in essence filling the void of the political parties in California," said Republican consultant Kevin Spillane, a former Assembly Republican Caucus political strategist. "These groups are doing it earlier and more systemically then they ever have before. And they're doing it more aggressively than the parties are."

A new political fundraising committee, Californians for Fiscal Accountability and Responsibility, has reported raising $600,000 to spend on the next election. Contributors include several labor unions and statewide associations representing doctors, dentists and Realtors.

Paul Hegyi, a vice president for the California Medical Association, has cast the committee as part of a larger movement to "look for new leaders, new candidates to try to shake up the Legislature" in light of the new maps and the state's new top-two primary system.

The fundraising efforts are in part a response to the anticipated increased cost of competing under the new districts and a primary system in which the top two vote-getters regardless of party advance to the general election. The changes are expected to make more seats competitive in the primary and general elections.

California Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Allan Zaremberg said his organization has launched a fundraising campaign to explain to members, businesses and local chambers that "fairer representation and more competitive races requires more resources to compete."

Securing funding for the campaigns is only half the battle for groups gearing up for 2012. They also need to find candidates they feel are worth the investment.

"Especially with term limits, you just constantly have to be looking for good people," said Zaremberg, noting that the chamber works with local business groups to identify new individuals to back.

The role of interest groups – and their money – in shaping the freshman class is problematic in the eyes of some government watchdogs.

One concern, said California Common Cause Policy Advocate Phillip Ung, is that new legislators who lack experience start their jobs "beholden to the special interests that funded their way though" the campaign.

Some groups start the process of grooming potential legislators far before the filing deadlines to run for office.

EdVoice, an education advocacy organization, hosted 16 prospective candidates at Lake Tahoe this summer as part of an ongoing campaign training effort.

"Our objective has been to take champions for kids and teach them 'Politics 101,' what it takes to run for office," political director Gary Davis said of the program, which he said has attracted participants from both sides of the aisle.

Davis said EdVoice sees the upcoming election as an "opportunity to shake things up" by supporting candidates who will put education issues ahead of caucus politics.

Voter-approved caps on service – six years in the Assembly and eight in the Senate – give interest groups less time to develop relationships with lawmakers once they are in office. Now they start before they get to Sacramento.

For Lea Ann Tratten, political director for the Consumer Attorneys of California, that means working with attorneys and political organizations – including labor unions and environmental groups – to identify and support candidates early in the process. The unknowns of the new district lines and primary system have made that help even more valuable, she said.

"I do think it's more important than ever to build relationships with all the candidates," Tratten said, "while they're navigating their way through these campaigns."

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Call Torey Van Oot, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 326-5544.

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