Ballot drive to attack new districts
By Jim Sanders
jsanders@sacbee.com
jsanders@sacbee.com
Published: Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 3A
© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.
Legislative and congressional boundaries drawn by a citizens commission for the first time in California history were challenged Monday just hours after their approval.
Officials of the California Republican Party and the Senate Republican Caucus said they will support a signature-gathering drive aimed at overturning newly drawn Senate districts before they take effect.
"This is not an attack on the process – it's an attack on the product," said David Gilliard, a Republican strategist who will lead the referendum drive to place the Senate boundaries before voters.
"I think when voters see some of these crazy lines, they're going to question what the commission was thinking," he said.
The disclosure of a referendum drive came hours after the commission approved 80 Assembly, 40 Senate, 53 congressional and four Board of Equalization seats, ending months of public hearings and debate.
Twelve of the 14 commissioners supported all of the maps, while only Commissioner Michael Ward turned thumbs down on all 177.
California Common Cause and the League of Women Voters defended the maps as an acceptable climax to an open public process in which voters – rather than the Legislature – drew boundaries.
Charles Munger, who pushed the 2008 ballot measure that created the commission, said the new maps are "infinitely preferable to what the Legislature would have drawn."
Approval of any map required support from three of five Democratic commissioners, three of five Republicans, and three of four independent or minor-party members.
Ward accused the commission of "dinner table deals and partisan gerrymandering."
"This commission routinely neglected city and county borders in favor of communities of interest, which it interpreted as anything and everything – from traffic and joblessness, to air pollution and ethnicity," Ward said.
"As a result, this commission never had a consistent rationale for drawing districts," he said.
Commissioner Vincent Barabba, also a Republican, countered that districts were drawn fairly, openly, and with due consideration for ranked priorities – such as minority voting rights and geographic compactness – specified in state law.
"The sense that I get is that Commissioner Ward attended different meetings than I did – or saw them differently," Barabba said.
The referendum drive will be led by a group called Fairness and Accountability in Redistricting, or FAIR. The listed proponent will be Julie Vandermost, past president of the California Women's Leadership Association, a business group, Gilliard said.
California Republican Party Chairman Tom Del Beccaro said his party will raise funds and help gather signatures. Members of the business community also will participate, he said.
"There isn't any doubt that they inconsistently applied the criteria between the Assembly, Senate and congressional maps – and the worst of it relates to the Senate maps," Del Beccaro said.
The Senate Republican Caucus voted to support the referendum, but their vote did not commit any caucus or state funds. Lawmakers will decide individually whether to commit campaign funds.
To qualify the Senate map for the June 2012 ballot, the drive needs 504,760 valid voter signatures. If it reaches that threshold, the California Supreme Court would draw districts or decide which maps to use in next year's political races.
Opponents argue that the redistricting commission, under the guise of keeping various "communities of interest" together, drew lines in a way that favored some interests over others.
Del Beccaro particularly is concerned about the possibility that Democrats could gain two Senate seats, enough to give that party the two-thirds supermajority necessary to raise taxes.
"I think the Democrats have concluded that," Del Beccaro said of that party gaining a supermajority in the Senate. "If the Democrats are crowing about it, I'm certainly concerned about it."
Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat, characterized it as ironic that opposition to the new districts is coming largely from the GOP, whose members were instrumental in passing the 2008 ballot measure to create the commission.
"By and large, I think they did a fair job," Steinberg said of commissioners.
Officials of the California Republican Party and the Senate Republican Caucus said they will support a signature-gathering drive aimed at overturning newly drawn Senate districts before they take effect.
"This is not an attack on the process – it's an attack on the product," said David Gilliard, a Republican strategist who will lead the referendum drive to place the Senate boundaries before voters.
"I think when voters see some of these crazy lines, they're going to question what the commission was thinking," he said.
The disclosure of a referendum drive came hours after the commission approved 80 Assembly, 40 Senate, 53 congressional and four Board of Equalization seats, ending months of public hearings and debate.
Twelve of the 14 commissioners supported all of the maps, while only Commissioner Michael Ward turned thumbs down on all 177.
California Common Cause and the League of Women Voters defended the maps as an acceptable climax to an open public process in which voters – rather than the Legislature – drew boundaries.
Charles Munger, who pushed the 2008 ballot measure that created the commission, said the new maps are "infinitely preferable to what the Legislature would have drawn."
Approval of any map required support from three of five Democratic commissioners, three of five Republicans, and three of four independent or minor-party members.
Ward accused the commission of "dinner table deals and partisan gerrymandering."
"This commission routinely neglected city and county borders in favor of communities of interest, which it interpreted as anything and everything – from traffic and joblessness, to air pollution and ethnicity," Ward said.
"As a result, this commission never had a consistent rationale for drawing districts," he said.
Commissioner Vincent Barabba, also a Republican, countered that districts were drawn fairly, openly, and with due consideration for ranked priorities – such as minority voting rights and geographic compactness – specified in state law.
"The sense that I get is that Commissioner Ward attended different meetings than I did – or saw them differently," Barabba said.
The referendum drive will be led by a group called Fairness and Accountability in Redistricting, or FAIR. The listed proponent will be Julie Vandermost, past president of the California Women's Leadership Association, a business group, Gilliard said.
California Republican Party Chairman Tom Del Beccaro said his party will raise funds and help gather signatures. Members of the business community also will participate, he said.
"There isn't any doubt that they inconsistently applied the criteria between the Assembly, Senate and congressional maps – and the worst of it relates to the Senate maps," Del Beccaro said.
The Senate Republican Caucus voted to support the referendum, but their vote did not commit any caucus or state funds. Lawmakers will decide individually whether to commit campaign funds.
To qualify the Senate map for the June 2012 ballot, the drive needs 504,760 valid voter signatures. If it reaches that threshold, the California Supreme Court would draw districts or decide which maps to use in next year's political races.
Opponents argue that the redistricting commission, under the guise of keeping various "communities of interest" together, drew lines in a way that favored some interests over others.
Del Beccaro particularly is concerned about the possibility that Democrats could gain two Senate seats, enough to give that party the two-thirds supermajority necessary to raise taxes.
"I think the Democrats have concluded that," Del Beccaro said of that party gaining a supermajority in the Senate. "If the Democrats are crowing about it, I'm certainly concerned about it."
Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, a Democrat, characterized it as ironic that opposition to the new districts is coming largely from the GOP, whose members were instrumental in passing the 2008 ballot measure to create the commission.
"By and large, I think they did a fair job," Steinberg said of commissioners.
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