Redistricting Defanged by Energy Crisis

BERKELEY —  If it weren’t for the energy crisis, which is rapidly becoming a budget crisis, the subject consuming Sacramento about now would be redistricting. Redistricting season opened officially late last month, when the U.S. Census Bureau released the detailed population figures the Legislature will use to redraw district lines for its members and for members of the California congressional delegation.

No process in government is more nakedly or purposefully political. The U.S. Supreme Court, perhaps inadvertently, underscored that point last week in its decision on a long-disputed congressional district in North Carolina. In effect, the court ruled that state legislatures can gerrymander to their hearts’ content as long as the purpose is to enhance partisan advantage rather than solely to boost the chances for election of candidates from a particular race or ethnicity.

The party with enough votes to decide where the new political lines go can determine the partisan makeup of the Legislature and the House of Representatives not only for the next election, but for the next decade. That’s why the stakes were so high in the 1998 gubernatorial race and in last year’s legislative elections.

Gray Davis’ gubernatorial victory and Democratic gains in both election cycles make California one of 21 states in the country in which both the legislature and the governorship are controlled by the same party, and one of only eight states where that party is Democratic.

But the sweet visions of a partisan gerrymander that danced in the heads of Sacramento Democrats for 18 months, and the various schemes for revenge by ballot initiative or court challenge that comforted Sacramento Republicans, have given way to a new, shared nightmare:

What if voters angry over skyrocketing energy prices, rolling blackouts and now the threat of higher taxes or budget cuts in popular programs decide to throw the bums out in 2002? And not just the Democratic bums who are supposed to be in charge of the Legislature, but the Republican bums who supported energy deregulation in the mid-’90s?

Nothing concentrates the political mind like the prospect of involuntary retirement. The energy mess is opening the way for a very different kind of gerrymander than anyone in or out of Sacramento expected. As one leading Republican on the elections and reapportionment committee put it, “Given the uncertainty about Gray Davis’ strength, and given the uncertainty about blackouts next year, the Democratic definition of a safe seat changes.”

Consider the current situation in the state capital. Davis may be bearing the brunt of media scorn and voter anger for not delivering on his vows to hold electricity prices down, ensure adequate power supplies or punish energy producers that have manipulated the markets. But the Legislature hasn’t got much to show either for a four-month “emergency” session that has produced exactly one new conservation law--two if you count the technical correction of the first one--and a series of measures granting the governor authority to engage in energy-supply purchases that now appear to be costing millions of dollars more than anyone anticipated and eating away the budget surplus.

Before the phrase “average cost of a kilowatt hour” entered the political vocabulary, this year’s assorted redistricting scenarios shared a few common themes. First, a presumption that Democrats would re-carve the congressional districts artfully enough to shore up swing seats, like those of Reps. Ellen O. Tauscher in the Bay Area, Lois Capps in Santa Barbara and Jane Harman of Rolling Hills.

Second, that the essentially Democratic district in Long Beach now represented by moderate Republican Rep. Steve Horn would be redrawn to assure Democratic victory, or more likely collapsed and parceled out to best suit other Democratic needs. Third, that California’s new 53rd congressional district would be lodged somewhere in San Bernardino or Riverside and would, however it was configured, result in a net gain to Democrats, who dominate the current congressional delegation 32 to 20.

In the state Assembly and Senate, where Democrats are shy by only a few seats in each chamber of the two-thirds majorities, the decision about where and how to rearrange the map was essentially a calculation about greed. That super-majority is attractive, because it is both veto-proof and sufficient to pass the budget and other important bills--including redistricting plans--without any need for Republican votes.

On the other hand, how close to the magic two-thirds number is it worth getting when the governor belongs to the same party, and how brazenly can existing GOP districts be sliced and diced when Republican votes are still necessary to approve this year’s redistricting legislation?

It all promised to be a delicious political stew even without considering more subtle and vexing issues like dividing territory among rival ethnic groups or power contests between north and south, central valley and coast, urban and rural areas. Those conflicts don’t go away because politicians are worried about getting punished by voters for the energy mess, but the calibrations all change.

“I think there is an acceptance by all people in leadership that we don’t push partisanship too far,” said a Democrat closely involved in redistricting strategy. “I think the energy argument has some relevance further down the road, but I don’t think [the connection between the energy crisis and redistricting] has been looked at very widely yet.”

Such redistricting restraint by Democrats and the possibility for genuine cooperation by outnumbered Republicans strongly suggest we will be looking at something the academics like to call a bipartisan gerrymander. That has kind of a nice ring, but is perhaps better thought of as incumbents’ protection act.

“A Democrat incumbents’ protection act,” the GOP lawmakers was quick to point out, “also means safe Republican seats becoming safer, marginal Republican seats becoming safer, and there are more swing seats.”

As redistricting veterans like to remind mere observers, the most vicious and important fights are not necessarily partisan. They are intraparty, between those who hold seats and those who would like to hold them. That dynamic is particularly complicated in a world of term limits, where the game is less about protecting your current legislative territory than it is about securing a safe district in the seat you aspire to: the one in Congress, which has no term limits.

The heavy bargaining, arm-twisting and bruised-ego massaging that will be required to divvy up the congressional spoils will be handled lawmaker to lawmaker and probably won’t occur until late in the summer. Meantime, the preliminaries and the map drawing are being handled by Michael Berman, a famously reclusive Democratic political consultant who has been hired both by Senate President Pro Tem John Burton, to do the Senate redistricting, and by Democrats in the California congressional delegation, who have chipped in $20,000 each to pay for his services on their behalf.

Berman learned his craft at the knee of Rep. Phillip Burton, the state senator’s late brother and California’s great master of the gerrymander. He himself is the brother of veteran Southern California congressman and former Assemblyman Howard Berman, one of the beneficiaries of Phil Burton’s district-carving talent.

Cozy as all that may be, consultant Berman faces the daunting task of having to satisfy conflicting interests of three distinct groups: termed-out or soon-to-be termed-out state legislators with their sights on Washington; nervous congressional Democrats who want both protection from ambitious colleagues in Sacramento and safer reelection margins; and national Democratic leaders who look to California to offset GOP redistricting gains elsewhere in the country and help Democrats retake control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The man who had been expected to be brokering this set of negotiations was Davis, who, at least publicly, has urged all along that Democrats not overplay their redistricting hand. Political translation? The governor would be less than pleased to see fellow Democrats with enough votes to override his veto. Whether he actually emerges from the energy wars to have a significant role in how new political maps get drawn is an open question.

The smart money says Davis is still the favorite in the 2002 gubernatorial elections, because no Republican can tout an energy “solution” that differs from what the governor has tried. But Sacramento Democrats seem to be hedging their bets.

In that sense, the “bipartisan gerrymander” may say less about the final shape of the redistricting plan than it does about belated consciousness raising. Democrats perhaps have figured out that while they belong to the same party as the governor, they also belong to the Legislature. And despite the ravages of term limits, that still happens to be a separate branch of government.