While legislative Democrats dreamed for much of 2008 of pulling within one seat of a supermajority in the state Senate, they will find themselves even further away than they started when the new Legislature convenes on Dec. 1.
First, the party appears to have failed to pick up a seat in the upper house in the fall campaign.
Second, Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas, a Los Angeles Democrat who is taking a seat as county supervisor, must resign his post in Sacramento in the next week.
Combined, that will leave the majority party with only 24 members in the Senate for at least the next several months -- three shy of the two-thirds needed to raise taxes or pass a budget.
"It just underscores how important it is that we get this done before the 2009-2010 session begins," said Jim Evans, a spokesman for incoming Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg. "We're definitely holding out for a deal."
The Big Five are meeting this afternoon in hopes of striking an accord, with session tentatively scheduled for Tuesday.
The outcome of the Democrats holding only 24 votes assumes that Republican Tony Strickland maintains his 1,328-vote lead over Democrat Hannah-Beth Jackson in the race to replace termed-out GOP Sen. Tom McClintock. The final 14,000 provisional ballots in that campaign could be counted as early as today, the Ventura County Star has reported, but almost all the votes from Jackson's Santa Barbara base have been tallied.
Democrats currently control 25 seats in the 40-member Senate. But that margin is not enough to raise taxes or pass a budget in California, which require a two-thirds majority, or 27 votes.
Democrats and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger focused in 2008 on trying to "pick off" two Republican senators for a tax-hike package to balance California's budget. The budget is $11.2 billion out of balance in the current year and faces a $27.8 billion deficit over the next 19 months.
Those efforts failed and led to, in part, the longest budget standoff in state history.
Now, the path to two-thirds looks to steepen, if ever so slightly.
"The two-thirds budget process makes it imperative there is some sort of bipartisan agreement," Evans said.
After Ridley-Thomas resigns his Senate seat (which must happen before next Monday, when he is sworn in as a county supervisor, according to spokesman Fred MacFarlane), Schwarzenegger must then call for a special election.
The special election will likely be consolidated with the March Los Angeles municipal primary. If no candidate wins a 50 percent majority in that race, a runoff would likely have to wait until June.
"Sen. Ridley-Thomas' seat will eventually be filled by a Democrat (in the spring) and then the normal budget process will be underway," said Evans. Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans in the left-leaning district.
But the vacant seat dominoes don't end there for the Democrats.
Two Democrats -- Assemblymen Mike Davis and Curren Price -- have said publicly they will likely seek Ridley-Thomas' seat. If one of them wins, that opens up a vacancy in the Assembly, where Democrats are set to control 50 seats in the 80-member house next session (up from the current 48). Fifty-four votes are needed to pass a budget in the Assembly.
Either way, the party's legislative leadership is bracing for months without their full caucuses at a time when every vote matters.
Photo: Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas during a Senate committee on business, professions and economic development hearing at the State Capitol in May, 2007. Credit: Sacramento Bee/ Brian Baer
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