The case affirms that voters have legislative authority through the initiative process, a powerful boost for initiative lawmaking. Justice Anthony Kennedy, the only Californian on the court, who himself was involved in a California initiative when he practiced law in California, joined the majority.

The case arose when Arizona legislators challenged the right of voters to set the parameters of congressional elections. The U.S. Constitution specifically cites that legislatures are to set the rules of election.

However, the court agreed that the voters can act as legislators.

That’s the way California sees it.

California’s Constitution says, “All political power is inherent in the people.” The next sentence in the Constitution reads: “Government is instituted for their protection, security, and benefit, and they have the right to alter or reform it when the public good may require.”  That’s just what the voters did in passing Prop. 20 in 2010 – they altered the system of redistricting in an attempt to find a fairer system for the public good.

In fact, in the California Constitution the right of initiative appears ahead of powers granted the Legislature. And the section on the legislative power granted the California Legislature even acknowledges that, “the people reserve to themselves the powers of initiative and referendum.”

The final paragraph of the majority opinion: “The people of Arizona turned to the initiative to curb the practice of gerrymandering and, thereby, to ensure that Members of Congress would have “an habitual recollection of their dependence on the people.” The Federalist No. 57, at 350 (J. Madison). In so acting, Arizona voters sought to restore “the core principle of republican government,” namely, “that the voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around.” Berman, Managing Gerrymandering, 83 Texas L. Rev. 781 (2005). The Elec­tions Clause does not hinder that endeavor.”

The decision is a strong endorsement of the initiative process.

A tale of two controversies

“The fate of the citizen redistricting commission hangs most directly in the balance, pending a decision by the court in June about whether such panels are legally allowed to determine congressional districts,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “If the court strikes down independent commissions, it could set off a scramble in the Legislature to redraw California’s congressional map.”

In another case, the Supreme Court could make even bigger waves next year with a ruling on who must be counted within a state during the district-drawing process. As Yale law professors Bruce Ackerman and Ian Ayers noted, the court will face “two basic options. It can stick with what most states do now and require each district to contain an equal number of inhabitants: This will favor urban Democratic areas with many immigrants and children. Or it can instead insist that districts include an equal number of eligible voters, and thereby favor rural Republican regions.”

High stakes

For those working to legalize unlawful immigrants, much was placed at stake by the court’s decision to take up the case. If the court were to rule against counting immigrants with partially legal or illegal status, the political balance of power in California would transform overnight. What’s more, the push to fully legalize all immigrants would hit a substantial and symbolic obstacle.

But restricting statewide head counts to eligible voters only — a much smaller population than the one excluding unlawful immigrants — could send political shock waves through California. As the Washington Post confirmed, “high-diversity districts like the 40th in Los Angeles County have substantially fewer eligible voters than the whiter, rural section of the state represented by the northern 1st District. Measured by population, the two districts are equal in size. Measured by eligible voters, the northern 1st District is twice as big as [the] LA-area’s 40th[.]”

State Senate Leader Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, bridled at the implications of that shifted standard. Referring to the time period before 1964, when the court ruled districts had to be approximately equal, de Leon noted that “Los Angeles County and its 6 million people […] had the equivalent voting power in our state Senate as a rural district with barely 14,000 people.”

Hoping to prevent that kind of change, Ackerman and Ayers have argued that Section 2 of the 14th Amendment should determine the outcome, since its language clearly indicates that districts “shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.” But even if the court shies away from leaving uncounted all residents ineligible to vote, the exclusion of native Americans could be interpreted as a logical precedent for excluding immigrants lacking a formally and fully legal relationship with the federal government and the state within which they reside.

Partisan heat

Until now, the Supreme Court has not seen fit to intervene so extensively in the way redistricting is done. From a nonpartisan standpoint, the plaintiffs’ case offered an opportunity for the court to clarify an area of constitutional law that had been left unspecified.

Partisan standpoints, however, have prevailed to date. As the New York Times observed, the headcount case originated in “a challenge to voting districts for the Texas Senate,” brought by two voters “represented by the Project on Fair Representation, the small conservative advocacy group that successfully mounted [an] earlier challenge to the Voting Rights Act. It is also behind a pending challenge to affirmative action in admissions at the University of Texas at Austin.” That pedigree has gone a long way to shape expert reaction to the case.

Proposition 11, the 2008 initiative voters passed, created the Citizens Redistricting Commission to apportion state legislative and congressional districts. It was modified slightly by Proposition 20 in 2010.

The reforms occurred after numerous gerrymandering abuses when the Legislature drew districts to benefit incumbents. Rep. Loretta Sanchez, R-Garden Grove, in 2002 described how it worked for the redistricting after the 2000 U.S. Census. She told the Orange County Register she and other legislators paid $20,000 to Michael Berman, the redistricting consultant to the majority Democrats in the California Legislature who drew up the districts. She called it an “incumbent protection plan.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, on Monday the court heard arguments in a suit “that Arizona’s Republican-controlled Legislature has brought. The legislators want the justices to rule that only elected state lawmakers, not voters or an independent citizens commission, may draw the boundaries of districts for members of the U.S. House of Representatives.”

At issue are the words of the Constitution, “the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.”

Defenders of the redistricting reforms insist an initiative is a kind of legislative act by the people.

But those bringing the lawsuit insist there’s nothing in there about taking a vote of the people. Although the Founding Fathers probably didn’t intend for the severe gerrymandering that has occurred in recent years.

Another factor is the “one man one vote” Supreme Court rulings of 50 years ago, such as the 1962 Baker v. Carr case, disallowed districts not strictly apportioned by population. Before that, legislatures could make districts along geographic lines, with some districts more populous than others.

The court is expected to decide the Arizona case before June. That means it could affect the 2016 election, with the Legislature itself redrawing the districts.

By WAYNE LUSVARDI

The intent of California political redistricting has been to attract more centrist candidates who might reduce the notorious political dysfunction in the state Legislature. A candidate has entered the race for the newly created State Assembly District No. 41, centered in Pasadena, who may signal just such a shift in the Democratic Party.

Victoria Rusnak, a 43-year-old owner of 11 auto dealerships, a lawyer and an environmentalist, doesn’t meet the stereotype of a Democrat, or a Republican for that matter.  Rusnak is a late entrant into the race, which already has two Democratic Party candidates and a Republican Tea Party candidate.

Rusnak formerly worked for the Sierra Club legal defense team, for a Washington D.C.-based gun control group called Ceasefire and for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.  She apparently knows how government works as well as how to run a chain of auto dealerships with more than 700 employees.  Rusnak took over the running of the dealerships founded by her father, Paul Rusnak.  Rusnak’s platform is “a new approach to running things,” focusing on the economy and job creation.

Under Proposition 14, the top two vote getters in the primary election will proceed to the general election, regardless of party affiliation. If the top two vote getters in the primary are Rusnak and a fellow Democrat, the Tea Party vote, normally Republican, could shift to her.

The realignment of registered voters for the newly formed Assembly District 41 looks like this:

Source: California Citizen’s Redistricting Commission 

Rusnak Challenging Democratic Party-Machine Candidates

Rusank will be challenging Democratic Party machine candidate Chris Holden.  Holden is a current termed-out city councilman in Pasadena and the son of Nate Holden, a long-term Los Angeles City councilman and State Assemblyperson from South Central Los Angeles.

Holden has been the beneficiary of gerrymandering – the geographic configuring of political districts to gain an advantage.

Holden has already been endorsed by the California Democratic Party and has a reported war chest of $255,000.

The other Democratic Party candidate for Assembly District No. 41 is Michael Cacciotti, a South Pasadena city councilman and attorney with the State Department of Justice and a member of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

But Cacciotti has recently lost his campaign manager, Ramon Miramontes, to none other than Victoria Rusnak after she threw her hat into the race. Miramontes is a member of the Pasadena Board of Education. So Rusnak has already stolen the campaign manager of one Democratic Party candidate and established a foothold in the local Hispanic community. 

Tea Party Dilemma?

Republican Donna Lowe, founder of the Tea Party in nearby Claremont, has announced she will run against Democrats Rusnak, Holden and Cacciotti.  If she fails to make the runoff election, Tea Party voters may end up voting for Rusnak, given her pro-jobs platform.

However, if Rusnak and Lowe end up the two run off candidates, then it would eliminate both political insiders within the majority Democratic Party, Holden and Cacciotti. Whoever wins under such a scenario would not be either an incumbent or majority party candidate previously elected elsewhere.

This might signal the end of the Democratic Party nomenklatura — a select list or class of people from which appointees for top-level government positions are drawn especially by unions in California.

Incumbent Portantino Termed Out and Pushed Out 

Whoever wins the race for Assembly District No. 41 will replace incumbent Anthony Portantino, who is both termed out of office and pushed out of his old district by redistricting.  Portantino has no district to run in unless he moves into one of the newly created districts along with his $900,000 political war chest.

Despite portraying himself as a “political maverick,” Portantino has voted nearly a straight party ticket in his four years in office. He voted No on just 3 percent of bills advanced in the Assembly in the 2011 legislative session:

YES — 1,296
NO — 43
ABSTAIN — 87

Portantino’s major financial contributors have been unions, the liquor industry, Indian tribes, lawyers, lobbyists, gambling and casinos. And his largest individual contributions are from the California Faculty Association (professors), the Professional Engineers in California Government, the District Council of Ironworkers, the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California and Pacific Gas and Electric.

Would Rusnak Vote Differently?

Whether Rusnak would pose a threat to these special interests remains to be seen.  If she is going to be just another hackneyed member of the status quo, there will be little real change in the state’s political dysfunction.

A revealing question to ask Rusnak might be if she would support re-opening oil leases in the Santa Barbara Channel, the revenues from which would go toward maintaining roads and bridges?  If California needs jobs and increased tax revenues, re-opening dormant oil leases off the California coastline might meet Rusnak’s platform of a “new approach to running things.” 

Why Auto Dealerships Died in Pasadena 

New Assembly District No. 41 includes Pasadena, which lost three auto dealerships after the Mortgage Meltdown and Bank Panic of 2008.  Auto dealerships are the most lucrative tax generators for local governments.

But it wasn’t the economic downturn that solely caused the three Pasadena auto dealerships to close.  Rather, it was failure of auto dealers to relocate adjacent to the new 210-Freeway after the western segment was completed in 1976.  Those auto dealers that remained along Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena — the famed route of the annual Rose Parade — mostly died for lack of freeway exposure.  The Housing Bubble artificially kept them alive for three decades.  But poor locations and bad management resulted in their ultimate closing when the economy collapsed.

Another contributing factor in the closure of auto dealerships in Pasadena was the failure of city planners to re-zone enough land to commercial use along the new 210-Freeway after 1976.

The Rusnak auto dealerships have been able to weather the lack of freeway exposure because they cater to a niche market of upscale autos: Audi, BMW, Jaguar, Mercedes Benz, Porsche, Rolls-Royce, Bentley and Volvo.

The nearby City of Arcadia stripped its redevelopment agency of the power of eminent domain to condemn more land for the Rusnak dealership in their city due to the popularity of a local mom and pop restaurant — “Rod’s Grill” — located on adjacent land.  Eventually, Rusnak was able to buy two acres of nearby land for expansion without having to use eminent domain.

Would Rusnak desire to restore redevelopment agencies that have been shut down by Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature?  Or would she advocate re-opening redevelopment agencies at the expense of robbing property taxes from public schools?  There are no solutions in public policy, only tradeoffs.

Affordable Housing or Auto Dealerships?

One of the reasons that not enough land along the 210 Freeway was zoned for residential use, rather than commercial, is the State of California’s affordable housing mandate.  California requires each city to file a Housing Element, including zoning land for affordable housing. What California’s so-called affordable housing law does is require the building of brand new affordable housing rather than counting older housing stock as affordable.  Affordable housing mandates are a way that local communities get around NIMBY resistance — “Not In My Back Yard!”

Pasadena built out more than 1,000 units of new housing in its downtown commercial core since 2003, but lost three auto dealerships due to lack of enough commercial-zoned land along the 210 Freeway.  If public policy is going to shift toward jobs creation, then perhaps the misplaced priority on luxury affordable housing will have to be questioned.  Would a candidate like Rusnak be serious enough to take on the affordable housing lobby in the Legislature?

The city of Pasadena has an updated Housing Element and is compliant with its state affordable housing mandate. But the Business Element of its General Plan hasn’t been updated since 1987.  It is no surprise that Pasadena, and California, can’t find policies to generate more jobs.

Pasadena is in the process of developing a new Economic Development Strategic Plan that has been neglected for decades. But most of the commercial land has already been gobbled up for new housing due to the State’s Affordable Housing mandates.  There is little land left not only for auto dealerships but also for any re-industrialization.  You would think that cities like Pasadena had learned a lesson that it over-invested in housing in the last decade. Instead, it has recently reaffirmed its support for continuation of inclusionary housing.

Gerrymandering for Jobs, Not Politicians

Gerrymandering has been humorously defined as a process where “politicians get to pick their constituents rather than the other way around, which is the opposite of democracy.”   Will the new gerrymandering in California end the process where politicians get to dilute democracy?

Will a new political class of Democratic Party centrists arise?  Follow the race of Victoria Rusnak in new Assembly District No. 41 to find out.

By JOHN HRABE

Parents and gamblers have a hard time being objective.

“If you ever put that much money on a pony, you kind of like it when it rounds home,” the self-described “proud father” of the Citizens Redistricting Commission, Charles T. Munger Jr., told a redistricting conference last September. Munger financed the Proposition 11 and Proposition 20 initiatives that instituted the commission.

Last month, Munger’s problem child received an undeserved stamp of approval from the California Supreme Court. Or, if you prefer the gambling analogy, the commission’s maps won because all other maps were disqualified as illegitimate contenders. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court’s decision is rewriting the redistricting history to eliminate all mention of the commission’s flubs. “The Commission-certified Senate districts also are a product of what generally appears to have been an open, transparent and nonpartisan redistricting process as called for by the current provisions of article XXI,” the court wrote in the first draft of California’s redistricting history.

That might be the worst unintended consequence of the court’s decision: an endorsement of a flawed process that desperately needs fixing. The redistricting commission ran over budget, failed to deliver its three draft maps for public input, went dark and reversed its call for public input, relied on outside help to make data publicly available and even had one meeting end in tears. In mid-July 2011, editorial boards were berating the commission. (See the Ventura County Star, the Los Angeles Daily News, the San Diego Union Tribune and the Santa Cruz Sentinel editorials.) Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye was looking into hiring map-drawing consultants.

“The process that the Citizens Redistricting Commission used as a first time effort should not be replicated without significant systemic revision,” Commissioner Mike Ward told me via email. Matt Rexroad, a partner with Meridian Pacific and redistricting expert, offered a few suggestions in a Sacramento Bee opinion piece back in October. Editorial boards and good government groups should set aside their hatred of Republicans and give Rexroad’s reforms a serious look. CalWatchdog has assembled our own list of reforms.

1. Deliver Draft Maps on Schedule as Promised

Problem: The commission promised three draft maps for public input, but failed to deliver anything but the first draft. “Not only did they completely abandon the first draft maps, but they failed to release another complete set of maps until the day prior to the vote,” Rexroad wrote in his second suggestion. The visualizations encouraged the commission to fluctuate back and forth between angry interest groups. When the commission announced it was skipping the second draft maps, Dan Walters described it as taking “the process behind semi-closed doors.” Not so open and transparent, after all.

Solution: Listen to KQED’s John Myers. He first pointed out that the commission confused its legal timeline. “The commission is operating under the belief that the final maps should be available for public inspection for two weeks before being certified on August 15,” he wrote in mid-July. “However, a review of both Proposition 11 and Proposition 20 — the templates for the process — reveals no requirement for that lengthy of a review, other than the public have notice of any meeting at least 14 days in advance.” Two extra weeks could have made the difference between draft maps and visualizations.

2. Adopt an Email Retention Policy to Preserve the Public Record & Ban Private Email Accounts

Problem: It’s never been reported, but Karin McDonald, the mapping consultant for Q2, demanded that commissioners communicate with her about redistricting business via her private email account, not her government email account. Peter Scheer, the executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, has written extensively about why government agencies shouldn’t be allowed to conduct government business via private email accounts. McDonald’s motives are unclear because the emails aren’t public. The commission never had an explicit policy forbidding such behavior or mandating the retention of private email records.

Solution: Adopt Peter Scheer’s three-point email retention policy. Read it here.

3. Commission Oversight: Swap the State Auditor for the FPPC

Problem: The State Auditor was the wrong state agency to monitor redistricting commissioners for potential conflicts of interests. The State Auditor has minimal understanding of the intricacies of campaign finance laws and is a poor choice to review the backgrounds of the commissioners and their families. A memo from the State Auditor’s office that was provided to CalWatchDog.com by an agency spokeswoman described their background searches as “routine” and “obviously rather brief.” 

Solution: Require the Fair Political Practices Commission, the state agency responsible for administering conflict-of-interest documents, to conduct all campaign finance background checks of redistricting commissioners.

4. Campaign Finance Restrictions: Lower the Disclosure Amount to $100

Problem: A campaign contribution is protected political speech because the donation itself is an expression of support for a candidate. It’s not just what the money can buy. Commissioner Gabino Aguirre’s $100 contribution to Assemblyman Das Williams, D-Santa Barbara, wasn’t going to make or break the Democrat’s campaign. However, it showed a potential conflict of interest. It was evidence that Aguirre liked and supported Williams for state office. But redistricting commissioners were only required to close donations of $250 or more. 

Solution: Lower the redistricting commissioner disclosure threshold to $100 for campaign or political contributions. The $100 threshold will match state campaign finance law.

5. Campaign Finance Restrictions: Add Business Contributions to the Disclosure Requirements

Problem: Within 18 months of her appointment, Commissioner Jeanne Raya’s business made four campaign contributions to a state political action committee. The business contributions were sizeable, totaling $1,000. Former chairman of the Fair Political Practices Commission Dan Schnur said, “The applicant should have listed the contribution: a contribution from a business in which you are the principal is a legitimate indicator of political involvement.” 

Solution: Require commissioners to disclose campaign contributions made on behalf of businesses and organizations in which the applicant serves as a principal officer.

6. Improve Commissioner Disclosure Forms

Problem: State law requires all redistricting commissioners to complete a supplemental application, in which applicants must: “Describe the professional, social, political, volunteer, and community activities in which you have engaged that you believe are relevant to serving as a commissioner, as discussed in Regulation 60847.” This self-disclosure of facts that “you believe are relevant” grants commissioners too much leeway to play innocent later.

Solution: Use the history and public record from this year’s redistricting process to compile a list of relevant organizations. We have an example of the wide range of various community and special interest groups that testified or lobbied the redistricting commission. Compile a list of all organizations and provide a supplemental sheet with specific examples.

7. Sequester Commissioners from Personal Interests, Affiliations and Geographic Bias

Problem: Commissioner Aguirre influenced the commission’s Central Coast maps to favor his political allies at the Central Coast Alliance for a Sustainable Economy. Even if commissioners can set aside personal biases, the commission’s code of ethics requires commissioners to “disclose actual or perceived conflicts of interest to the Commission.” Aguirre wasn’t alone. Other commissioners allowed personal histories with geographic areas to affect their map-drawing decisions. (See Rexroad’s Number 8.)

Solution: Sequester commissioners from mapping decisions from affiliated groups, personal and professional relationships and relevant geographic regions.

8. Hire a Neutral In-Process Reviewer to “Check the Checker”

Problem: In his speech at the August 15 press conference, Commissioner Ward outlined why an in-process reviewer was necessary: “This commission also failed on the openness and transparency front, when it failed to adopt an in-process review, a system to ‘check the checker’ to validate that information was accurate, forthright and correct. In one instance, I found that mapping consultants had incorrectly represented the public’s comments.” The commission almost went forward with an in-process reviewer but, according to John Eastman and Charles Bell, writing on the Flash Report, had to backpedal when “a public outroar ensued.”

Solution: Hire an in-process reviewer to evaluate the commission’s work and guarantee that the reviewer is independent and unaffiliated with commissioners, commission staff or mapping consultants.

9. Ban Partisan Hiring Decision or Require Bipartisan Hiring Practices 

Problem: The first time Republicans’ feathers got ruffled was when the commission hired Q2 as the lead mapping consultant. According to the Sacramento Bee, “Q2 met bidding requirements only after a last-minute change by the commission, which initially demanded experience in redistricting projects involving about 2 million people but dropped the standard to about 300,000.” Add the Rose Institute’s disqualification, and you’ve got at least the appearance of biased staffing decisions. Ironically, Doug Johnson of the Rose Institute was one of the first people to argue that the commission didn’t violate the Voting Rights Act with the Los Angeles County congressional splits. (See his quote in my City Journal piece.) There’s no question that Johnson and the Rose Institute would have provided neutral advice to the commission. The commission should have hired Rose and Q2 to avoid partisan complaints. 

Solution: Don’t amend any “invitations for bid” at the last minute and always hire both a Republican and a Democratic mapping consultants.

10. Honesty: Disclose that Commissioners Know How Incumbents Are Affected 

Problem: Proposition 11 mandates, “The place of residence of any incumbent or political candidate shall not be considered in the creation of a map.” The worst secret of the redistricting commission is that commissioners knew where incumbents lived. Emails from the public referenced how incumbents were affected by the draft maps. The commission’s press office distributed news roundups about all redistricting stories, which included the media’s horse race and campaign analyses. Of course, Aguirre knew where Williams lived because he contributed to his campaign. 

Solution: Come out with the secret. Disclose on the record at the start of the process where all incumbents live. It’s better than hiding or pretending that the commission is ignorant.

(See the related article from yesterday by John Hrabe, “CA GOP ‘Idiots’ Lose State Senate.”)

By JOHN HRABE

Back to the campaign drawing board for California Republicans.

The California Supreme Court recently upheld the maps drawn by the California Citizens Redistricting Commission.

The immediate fallout: State Sen. Sam Blakeslee, R-San Luis Obispo, told his hometown paper that he wouldn’t seek reelection, due to the unfavorable maps approved by the court. In another swing seat, Republicans have yet even to field a candidate. State Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Moorpark, announced that he wouldn’t seek reelection in order to run for a new seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

If Republicans lose both state Senate seats, their Senate caucus will be reduced to fewer than 14 members, the all-important two-thirds threshold that gives Republicans the ability to block tax increases. At 13 Republican and 27 Democratic state senators, Democrats in the Senate could vote to impose infinite tax increases.

“It’s going to be seriously difficult for Republicans to stay above one-third in the Senate because of this,” California Republican Party Chairman Tom Del Beccaro complained to the Mercury News. “It puts the two-party system in the Senate in jeopardy.”

$2.1 Million Dollars for Useless Referendum

Republicans can now put a cost on their defeat: $2.1 million.

According to its fourth quarter campaign finance report, the Republican group Fairness & Accountability in Redistricting spent a whopping $2.1 million on its effort to put the new state Senate maps to a vote in November. The committee collected $1.7 million, or 80 percent, of its funding from the California Republican Party. That’s money that a cash-depleted party could have invested into voter registration programs for the three competitive state Senate districts.

“The CRP already spent a few million dollars on the referendum and varied lawsuit, all this while one of their best senate candidates, Jeff Miller, has no million-dollar voter registration program and can’t even afford a new URL,” observed the January 30th Redistricting Partners newsletter.

But it didn’t have to end this way for Golden State Republicans. Not if they’d followed the old maxim: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Lesson One: Research redistricting commissioners and use legislative strikes wisely.

Propositions 11 and 20 gave legislative leaders of both parties the power to strike up to two names from the final applicant subpool of redistricting commissioners. Republican leaders could have spent a few thousand dollars on opposition research reports on the backgrounds of redistricting commissioners. Or they could have spent just a few hours cross-checking applicants against the state’s campaign finance database. Had anyone at the California Republican Party done a few hours of research, they’d have discovered several campaign contributions by two commissioners.

Back in July 2011, CalWatchDog.com first reported on two redistricting commissioners’ partisan histories and campaign contributions. Commissioner Jeanne Raya failed to disclose four contributions totaling $1,000 made on behalf of her business to a state political action committee.  State law requires commissioners to disclose any civic, political or charitable donations of $250 or more.

Commissioner Gabino Aguirre made three campaign donations to Democratic candidates for state office. In November 2008, Aguirre contributed $100 to Ferial Masry, the Democratic nominee for the 37th State Assembly District. A year later, he made a $200 contribution to Gloria Romero, a former Democratic state senator. Aguirre also has extensive ties to a redistricting special interest group, the Central Coast Alliance United for A Sustainable Economy (CAUSE). The progressive social justice organization submitted its own redistricting maps for the Central Coast. It’s no coincidence that Blakeslee and Strickland’s seats, which are now likely to flip to the Democrats, are both on the Central Coast.

With just a little bit of research, Republicans could have made an educated decision to strike Raya and Aguirre. But Republican legislative leaders didn’t want to spend the money. One high-level staffer described Republican legislative leaders’ approach to the redistricting process as “an inexcusable reluctance to spend the resources to research the background of the commissioners.” Another senior staff member for a Republican legislator put it simply, “The truth is we’re idiots.”

While neither staffer wanted to be identified by name, one Republican political consultant openly defied party leadership in an attempt to save the GOP from itself.

“When you start the process telling people not to be involved and then end the process complaining that others were too involved, you have created your own emergency,” wrote Matt Rexroad, a partner with Meridian Pacific, in his rant for Capitol Weekly. “The issue that really galls me is that Republicans can cry foul all they want, but legislative leadership made it very clear that they did not want any Republican consultants to engage on redistricting.”

Lesson Two: Focus on the flawed process, not self-interested outcomes.

If they had been consistent in their objections, Republicans could have convinced the public that the redistricting process was flawed.

Republicans were right: the redistricting process was corrupted by special interest groups. Background research could have helped expose Aguirre, but the full extent of his partisan activities couldn’t have been fully brought to light in time for the legislative strikes.  That’s because Aguirre’s last and most egregious contribution, a $100 check to Democratic Assemblyman Das Williams, posted to the Secretary of State’s website nine days after the Bureau of State Audits completed its background check.

Williams had a vested interest in redistricting. Yet the commission took no action to disclose this potential conflict of interest or sequester Aguirre from Williams’ region. They did the opposite. Aguirre was put in charge of overseeing the Central Coast mapmaking.  He promptly adopted the maps suggested by his friends at CAUSE.

Jerry Roberts and Phil Trounstine, who have been highly-critical of the Republicans’ redistricting referendum, questioned the cause of Willliams’ redistricting good fortune. “When you look at Williams’ new 37th Assembly district, which is about as safe for him as can be, along with the new 19th SD, the future of the hyper-ambitious young pol looks bright indeed, whether he sits still for two more, two-year terms in the Assembly, or jumps into a 2012 race that could bring two four-year terms in the senate. Coincidence? You be judge,” the CalBuzz team wrote back in August.

Republicans didn’t concentrate on this message, in part, because they liked the configuration of the State Assembly maps. They also ignored the Voting Rights Act violations with the congressional maps because those were favorable to high-ranking House Republicans. Instead, Republicans voluntarily swapped a message about the flawed process for a pity-party about losing one-third control of the State Senate.

Lesson Three: Don’t look a gift commissioner in the mouth.

Redistricting Commissioner Mike Ward, an Orange County chiropractor with no prior involvement in state politics, demonstrated a more coherent message than Republican political pros.

“The Citizens Redistricting Commission has certified maps that are fundamentally flawed as a result of a tainted political process,” Ward said at the commission’s August 15 press conference. “This commission simply traded the partisan, backroom gerrymandering by the Legislature, for partisan, backroom gerrymandering by average citizens.”

Then Ward did what you’re supposed to do when you object to a corrupted process: he voted against all of the proposed maps. He didn’t cherry-pick maps based on those that would help his political party. The Senate referendum quashed Ward’s message about the flawed process. If the process was corrupted, why only challenge one set of four maps? Republicans’ inconsistent message impressed upon the press, public and ultimately the State Supreme Court that the referendum was motivated by partisan interests.

Lesson Four: Courts are influenced by public opinion.

Republicans’ last error with its redistricting message came with the referendum lawsuit. Republicans turned the lawsuit into a legal argument about the rule of law, the right to referendum and the will of the voters.

“In the law, the word ‘stay’ has a clear meaning. To ‘stay’ an action means to stop that action. The most authoritative legal dictionary of American law defines ‘stay’ as, ‘To stop, arrest, forbear.’ To ‘stay’ an order or decree means to hold it in abeyance, or refrain from enforcing it.” Black’s Law Dictionary, at 1267 (5th ed. 1979).

Assemblyman Don Wagner wrote in the Flash Report, “Thus, because the petition is ‘likely to qualify,’ the Supreme Court was directed by the Constitution to ‘refrain from enforcing’ the Commission’s Senate maps. In short, the California Constitution, with a simple, four letter word of indisputable meaning, stays or stops the use of the Commission lines until the people have their say on those lines at the ballot box.”

Legally, Wagner may be right. But, who cares? Not even the Supreme Court cared about legal precedents or Black’s Law Dictionary when public opinion stood on the other side.

Said the court’s unanimous opinion, “The Commission-certified Senate districts also are a product of what generally appears to have been an open, transparent and nonpartisan redistricting process as called for by the current provisions of article XXI.” In other words, the Court was influenced by press accounts and public opinion when deciding what to do with the redistricting mess.

In their stories about the court decision, neither the Los Angeles Times nor Sacramento Bee included a word about the corrupted process. Mike Ward was left out completely.

By the end of the redistricting scandal, Republicans had so badly muddled their message that there was no longer any reference to a corrupted process.

(Related: 10 Ways to improve the Citizens Redistricting Commission.)

By JOHN SEILER

As I was the first to predict 15 months ago right here on CalWatchDog.com, the 2011 redistricting likely would bring 2/3 Democratic dominance in the California Legislature. The reasons were increased voter registration by immigrants, who vote 70 percent Democratic; and the new California Citizens Redistricting Commission, which was tasked with ending heavily gerrymandered districts produced in the 2001 redistricting.

We won’t know for sure until the 2012 election, but that seems to have happened. Democrats currently are just two votes shy in each house of the Legislature from obtaining a 2/3 supermajority. That still gives Republicans leverage over tax increases, which require such a supermajority. Come December 2012, that leverage could be gone.

Reported the Los Angeles Times, “California’s new voting districts could put Democrats within reach of as many as five more seats in Congress and enough in the state Legislature for the two-thirds majority needed to raise taxes, according to Democratic and Republican analysts.”

If that happens, Republicans essentially would be come irrelevant in the state Legislature.

However, Democrats then would bear full blame for whatever happens to the state economy. Currently, Democrats are again passing slews of anti-business bills. If that is coupled with a slew of new taxes in 2013, California’s economic climate, currently worst in the nation, could become a complete basket case.

GOP and Latinos

The problem remains the GOP’s difficulty in attracting Latino votes. Republicans in other states have managed to do so. Nevada just elected as governor Brian Sandoval. And New Mexico just elected as governor Susana Martinez.

Martinez will speak at the Flag Day celebration of the Republican Party of Orange County on June 13. So perhaps Republicans in California will use her as a model and inspiration on what they have to do to win again.

Both Sandoval and Martinez hold sensible positions on balancing budgets and keeping taxes reasonable. When Democratic tax increases make California’s budget deficits even worse by destroying businesses and jobs, perhaps the Latino Republicans’ day will have come.

Latinos in California, as elsewhere, avidly have been starting new businesses. This new business class may not see eye-to-eye with the aged Anglo elite that currently still runs the Democratic party: Gov. Jerry Brown, Treasurer Bill Lockyer and senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein.

To attract Latinos, Republicans also will have to change their positions to be more pro-business. In votes this year to end redevelopment, only one Republican in the Legislature, Chris Norby of Fullerton, has voted to cancel the $1.7 billion tax subsidies to well-connected businesses.

Redevelopment commonly means big big businesses uses eminent domain — property seizures — to grab the property of small businesses, often at below-market compensation rates. Given that the growing Latino business class is mostly made up of small businesses, this hurts them. Jose’s Muffler Shop is no match for Costo.

To attract the Latino business owners, the GOP is going to have to show that is talk about property-rights principles is more than just rhetoric.

Other Developments

In other developments from the redistricting proposal, Gerrymandering seems to be gone. The weirdly shaped districts of the 2001 redistricting have been replaced with districts of more geometric shapes. The districts also tend more to follow natural civic and geographic boundaries. In this, the Commission appears to have done its job well.

Finally, for years those seeking to split in two the massive state of California have called for a North/South division. But the new maps proposed today by the California Citizens Redistricting Commission show an obvious East/West division, with Democratic-leaning districts lined up along the coast, and Republican-leaning districts lined up on the state’s Eastern border.

Talk of splitting up the state waxes and wanes. But should it ever take flight again, the initial division now is obvious.