Understanding Redistricting, Part 1

It matters how you draw the lines

Dante Atkins of Daily Kos has a very useful article on the importance of redistricting for progressives.

In most states, the decennial maps for congressional districts are redrawn and approved by state legislatures. Why does this matter? Because partisan state legislatures are likely to divvy up the districts in a way that benefits their party. How does this work in practice? At its most elementary, let's hypothesize a state with a population of nine people: five Democrats and four Republicans. And from those nine people, the Census Bureau required creating three districts with an equal number of people. If the state legislature were controlled by Democrats, they might make a map that carves the state in a way that has a majority of Democratic seats. But if Republicans were to control the legislature—something that happens from time to time in Democratic-voting states such as Minnesota—they just might pass a map with different districts that gives the GOP a majority of the seats. 

The 2010 elections will have long-lasting consequences for control of the House of Representatives. The problem isn't just that Republicans won so many seats; the larger problem is that they won them at exactly the right time. Incumbent representatives are hard to defeat, but unseating freshmen is generally an easier task. Unfortunately, having a wave election in a redistricting year allows the new majority party to take advantage of the redistricting process to shore up vulnerable members, usually by taking some friendlier territory from a safer, better-known incumbent—serving essentially to "lock in" that majority for the rest of the decade. In addition, less scrupulous legislators can use the redistricting process to consolidate the districts of opponents to force their members into either retirement or a bruising primary fight and removing them from their seats regardless—a process playing out right now to eliminate Democratic seats in states like North Carolina and Michigan. The GOP has also shown its willingness to use redistricting to ward off potential political disadvantages at the state legislative level as well: for example, Wisconsin Republicans are redrawing the state senate lines in a hurry before the recall elections, even though doing so right now would create a bureaucratic nightmare. Clearly, the GOP is willing to use redistricting as a political weapon in spite of any resulting collateral damage.

While most states have this concern, California no longer does. In 2008, voters passed Proposition 11, which created a so-called Citizens Redistricting Commission that removed the authority to draw legislative lines from the state legislature and put it into the hands of a supposedly non-partisan commission (in 2010, a second proposition was passed that put the authority to draw boundaries for congressional districts as well into the hands of this same body). The Democratic Party opposed this measure for obvious reasons: As Democrats have a substantial majority of seats, they control the redistricting process and could use it to maximize Democratic seats while ensuring no contentious primary battles among the state's delegation. (Full disclosure: I serve on the executive board of the California Democratic Party.)Furthermore, the commission's mandated structure is hardly representative of California's population: despite the fact that California is an overwhelmingly Democratic state, the commission is required to have an equal number of Democrats and Republicans serving, with absolutely no guarantee of geographic or ethnic diversity.

The commission has had other problems, such as missed deadlines and cancellation of draft maps—and right now, the current maps are likely to face suits, especially from organizations in the Latino community who feel that the maps dilute their community's voting power and are thus illegal under the Voting Rights Act. Nevertheless, among Democrats the mood of uncertainty at the congressional level has yielded to a cautious optimism, as the commission's draft maps (should they hold) will likely result in Democratic gains of multiple seats, and defeat or retirement of several longtime Republican members. 

Maine Heterosexual Supremacists Claim Enough Signatures For

Joe.My.God reported last week that the Maine organization "Stand For Marriage" is claiming that they have enough signatures to place a referendum on the November 2009 ballot as to whether the marriage equality bill Governor John Baldacci signed into law on May 6th should go into effect after all.

"In just four weeks, we've gathered more than 55,000 signatures from Mainers who believe they, not the legislature and governor, should have the final say on the definition of marriage," said Marc Mutty, Chairman of the coalition. "There has been an extraordinary outpouring of support from voters across the state. This response gives us momentum that will lift us over the first hurdle of putting the issue before the people and, ultimately, carry us to victory in November."

All signatures must be certified by the Secretary of State for validity. Once certified, the issue is cleared to appear on the November 2009 ballot.

"The fact that we've gathered all these signatures in just a month to proceed with the People's Veto suggests that the people of Maine, like those in 43 other states, want to restore marriage to its historical and time-honored definition as between a man and a woman," said Bob Emrich, founder of the Maine Jeremiah Project and an Executive Committee member of Stand for Marriage Maine. ÒWe look forward to submitting the measure for certification and engaging Mainers in a vigorous defense of marriage. Traditional marriage has never lost on the ballot in any state. We expect it to prevail in Maine."

The exact text of the question that will appear on the Tuesday November 3rd ballot will be:

"Do you want to reject the new law that lets same-sex couples marry and allows individuals and religious groups to refuse to perform these marriages?"

The correct answer is NO. So, again, if you are in FAVOR of marriage equality, one needs to vote NO on the ballot question, a very similarly confusing situation like 2008's Proposition 8.

The main organization fighting the referendum is Maine Freedom to Marry, which has recently relaunched their website. Please support them!

Furutani Wins 55th Assembly District Seat

The political dominoes continue to fall into place after the surprising sudden death of African American Congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald and the election of Assemblywoman Laura Richardson to represent the the 37th District of California and serve out the rest of Millender-Macdonald's term. Yesterday, the Labor-backed and EQCA-endorsed candidate Warren Furutani won election to fill Richardson's 55th Assembly District seat and serve out the rest of her term. Both Furutani and Richardson are supporters of equal marriage rights for lesbian and gay men in California. Both the 55th Assembly District and 37th Congressional District are racially diverse districts with significant percentages of Black, Latino, Asian and LGBT registered voters. Furutani is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District.

January 21, 2009

Local TV Coverage of California's Dirty Tricks Initiative

Saturday's Los Angeles Times carried a story which made it seem likely that the proposed ballot measure to change California's allocation of presidential electoral votes from winner-takes-all (as it is for for more than 520 of the 538 votes up for grabs in 48 of 50 states) to a district-based method is going to fail to qualify for the June 2008 ballot. Dubbed the Dirty Tricks Initiative by actor/activist Bradley Whitford, the measure would probably make it impossible for a Democrat to win the White House in 2008 if it were to be enacted.

Frankly, Mad Professah (and his readers) thinks the measure clearly violates the Federal constitution, since Article 2, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution gives to the Legislatures the right to assign Electors. It is doubtful whether the People of the State of California can change how Electors are allocated by exercising some legislative authority that the State Legislature has ceded them through enactment of the Initiative process, but that will be up for the United States Supreme Court to decide. Bush v. Gore, anyone?


Anyway, the story is starting to get local attention:

2007 Election Roundup

There were a few interesting election results yesterday, on Election Day 2007. Bloggernista has a round-up on recently elected openly LGBT elected officials. In the "Nation's Gay Capital City" of San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom was running unopposed despite attempting to legalize gay marriage, divorcing his wife, entering alcohol rehab and having an affair with his chief of staff's wife! There's already speculation on what his next political moves will be.

Generally, a year before the pivotal 2008 Presidential Election, Democrats did very well around the country.

In Kentucky corrupt incumbent Republican Governor Ernie Fletcher was replaced by Democrat Steve Beshear.

In Virginia (where Mad Professah was on election day), Democrats changed a 17-23 deficit in the state Senate to a 21-18 majority with one race too close to call.

In the "battleground state" of Ohio, Democrats won mayoral races all over the Buckeye State including such previously red areas like Columbus, Chillcothe, Marion, Canton.

Here's looking forward to November 4, 2008! It's gonna be an interesting year.

CA-37: Laura Richardson Elected To Congress

One year ago, Laura Richardson was a member of the Long Beach City Council. Yesterday, she won the general election in the 37th Congressional district of California by winning 67.05% of the vote. Turnout was incredibly light, with only 8.19% of the 262, 746 registered voters casting votes on a hot summer's day. Richardson received 14, 105 votes. When she won her 55th State Assembly district race in November 2006, Richardson received over 50, 000 votes and in June 2006 when she won the Democratic nomination for the 55th Assembly district with 15,551 votes.

CA-37: Special Election Today

The special election in California's 37th Congressional District is being held today, Tuesday August 21, to fill the seat vacated by the sudden death in April of U.S. Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald. 45-year-old State Assemblymember Laura Richardson won a hotly contested primary election in June to become the Democratic nominee and thus the overwhelming favorite to be the next United States representative for the 37th Congressional District.



Mad Professah has been following this race for months and looks forward to seeing who will replace soon-to-be Congresswoman Laura Richardson in the State Assembly, as well as seeing whether she will agree to co-sponsor important federal legislation like H.R. 3326 (Early Treatment for HIV Act), H.R. 2221 (Uniting American Families Act), H.R. 2015 (Employment Non-Discrimination Act), H.R. 1592 (Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act) and H.R. 1246 (Military Readiness Act).

Gays and Lesbians More Likely To Vote

In light of today's LGBT presidential forum, there has been lots of recent commentary in the media about the role of LGBT issues in electoral politics. At the Top of the Ticket blog at the Los Angeles Times they have a post up about a report by Community Marketing, Inc. which claims that 92.5% of gay men and 91% of lesbians voted in the 2004 presidential election, a participation rate far greater than the general population.

The survey results are included in the Gay Consumer Index™ and Lesbian Consumer Index™, precedent-setting national surveys of more than 12,000 gay Americans and 10,000 lesbian Americans conducted by Community Marketing Inc. in spring 2007 and set to be released later this month.

[...]

More than 92% of gay male respondents (92.5%) reported that they voted in the 2004 presidential election with nearly 84% (83.8%) reporting that they voted in the mid-term election in 2006. Results for lesbians were similar with nearly 91% (90.7%) of lesbian respondents reporting that they voted in the 2004 presidential election and 78% reporting that they voted in the mid-term election in 2006. In comparison, media reports estimate that 64% of the general population voted in the 2004 presidential election and just 40% of the general population voted in the 2006 mid-term election.

Slightly more than 31 percent of lesbian respondents (31.1%) reported that they made a financial contribution to a political party in the past twelve months. Forty percent (40.1%) of gay male respondents reported that they made a financial contribution to a political party in the past twelve months.

[...]

The Gay Consumer Index and Lesbian Consumer Index are groundbreaking national studies of gay and lesbian consumer preferences and behaviors. The median age of lesbian respondents in the survey was 44, which matches the median age of the general female population. The median age of gay male respondents in the survey was 44, which is slightly lower than the median age of 47 among the general male population.

Survey participants were solicited through over 75 widely distributed internet and print publications. These media partners contributed their survey participants into Community Marketing’s own proprietary survey panel developed since 1994, which includes respondents from many other leading event and media companies such as Advocate Magazine, OUT Magazine, Instinct Magazine, Curve Magazine, Gay.com, PlanetOut.com, and GayWired.com.

CA-37: A Primary Win for Black, LGBT Communities

In the hotly contested special primary election in to fill the congressional seat of Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-Carson) in the 37th district Assemblymember Laura Richardson defeated State Senator Jenny Oropeza yesterday by nearly 2000 votes out of almost 30, 000 votes cast, a turnout of a measly 11.14%.

Candidate            Votes           Percentage
Laura Richardson     11,027         37.76%
Jenny Oropeza        9,144          31.31%
Valerie McDonald     2,743          9.39%

This is a win for both the African American and LGBT communities. Although previously
Mad Professah had described this election as pitting the Queer vs Black vs Latino communities, because the gay-friendly African American candidate (Richardson) won over the homophobic Black candidate (McDonald) the LGBT community gains a gay-friendly congressperson, retains a Latino gay-friendly State Senator (Oropeza, who is a co-sponsor of the marriage equality bill) and punishes the politics of homophobia!

Now, if openly lesbian Gerrie Schipske will run to replace Richardson's seat in the State Assembly, that would be fitting, although an openly LGBT Latino candidate would be even better.

Oropeza Receives Huge Independent Expenditure Boost

The Los Angeles Times reported that the Morongo Indians has independently spent $270, 000 to support the candidacy of State Senator Jenny Oropeza in the hotly contested 37th district Congressional race to replace the recently deceased Juanita Millender-McDonald. This single expenditure is more than the $219, 000 that Oropeza had raised for her own campaign and dwarfs the mere $105, 000 that Richardson had reported raising. The reason why the tribe is supporting Oropeza is that she voted for ratification of Indian gaming compacts that the tribes negotiated with the Governor of California which must be approved (but not modified!) by the State Legislature before they go into effect. Labor is not happy about the level of worker protections in the current version of the compacts since standard federal labor laws do not apply on sovereign tribal ground. Although Oropeza made a campaign promise to oppose the compacts, she voted for them when they cleared the State Senate. The measure is still pending in the Assembly, where Richardson has vowed to vote against ratification. Labor has thus mainly endorsed Richardson in tomorrow's Special Election.

Mad Professah has been blogging about this race for weeks as it pits the Black, Latino and LGBT communities against one another since the district which the candidates are vying to represent (the City of Long Beach and its environs) has a very diverse demographic profile, with significant populations of LGBT, Black and Latino voters.

Sunday's Los Angeles Times carried an op-ed article ("The delicate balance of black and brown") by Harold Meyerson which argues that the racial tensions between Black and Latino voters are actually less than one would expect.

In a city like L.A., one would expect the city's black and Latino political communities to have clashed more frequently than they have. Liberalism may be their common ideology, but the economic interests of the black and Latino working classes have at times come into conflict as the Latino presence in the city grew. For example, Latinos have largely taken the janitorial and hotel jobs that blacks held 25 years ago. In the poorest quadrants of the city, violence between black and Latino gangs rages.

And yet L.A.'s black and Latino political elites have tended to avoid conflict more often than not. In the 2005 mayoral election, for example, both groups largely supported the candidacy of Antonio Villaraigosa. Multiracial coalitions have been, if not the norm, at least frequent in city politics — surprisingly frequent. Generally, as once heavily black parts of the city have become plurality or majority Latino, the elites have worked together to limit the possibility of Latino candidates winning elections in districts historically represented by blacks.

There are rumors on various blogs that Richardson's polling puts her up by 9 points while Oropeza's polling has the races her slightly ahead but within the margin of error of the poll.

Web Coverage of Debate in CA-37 Special Election

There was a debate between the eleven Democratic candidates running to replace recently deceased Juanita Millender-MacDonald on Thursday June 14th. I missed it too, but happily, dday from Calitics posted a link to where you can view the entire debate online.

Even better, dday also posted a rather complete play by play of the debate, from his very specific "Progressive Democrats of America" perspective. I will just reproduce his summary of each candidate's two-minute opening statements:

Ed Wilson: former mayor of Signal Hill, a small city in the district. He immediately went after the whole ethnicity issue, saying "this is not a black seat or a white seat or a Hispanic seat, it's your seat."

Peter Matthews: He's the PDA-endorsed candidate who has run for office many times, including challenging Millender-McDonald in a primary in 2006 (and getting 10,000 votes). Matthews is running on the progressive issues on getting us out of Iraq, closing the inequality divide, providing single-payer universal health care, and restoring tax fairness.

Jenny Oropeza: The state Senator was strong on the war, saying "we need to get out of Iraq now." She talked about the environment, health care, revising NCLB, and needing to "turn around trade agreements" that sacrifice American job (that was cheering). She closed with "You know my record," playing off her experience serving the area.

Laura Richardson: Assemblywoman Richardson is also running on her record. She kind of messed up her move from talking about Iraq to domestic issues, saying "I want to talk about the war in America" and then claiming that Al Qaeda is running rampant (I think she meant in Waziristan, not Long Beach). Didn't seem like much of a public speaker.

Valerie McDonald: The late Congresswoman's daughter talked about her ties to the area, the need to keep families together in the black community, and the importance of education.

Bill Grisolia: He's a longtime employee of Long Beach Memorial Health Center, so universal health care was one of his themes. But he was at his most powerful discussing the war in Iraq, and his desire to cut funding except to bring our troops home. He also tried to blunt the experience argument by saying "What have the electeds done for you?"

Mr. Evans: I forget his first name and it doesn't matter. He's a far-right immigrant-hating loon who somehow was let into the Democratic primary. He proudly namechecked Lou Dobbs in the first sentence of his statement and called himself a closed-borders candidate. There is a sense in the black community that immigrants are in competition with them for low-paying jobs, but this was the most extreme out-and-out black bigot I've seen.

Alicia Ford: Spent her entire statement talking about something she did a decade ago that ABC7 didn't cover, which made her bad. Also actually said "In Compton, they are without... a lot of things." Stirring.

Lee Davis: Her whole statement decried the front-runner assumptions of the media, and said that "if the top three had any self-respect they'd leave this stage right now" to allow for equal access, and then actually WAITED for them to leave the stage. They, er, didn't.

George Parmer: a truck driver from Long Beach, the first to actually call for impeachment and call out the Democratic leadership for their sell-out on capitulation in Iraq.

Jeffrey Price: Talked mainly about lobbying and ethics reform.

Albert Robles: a write-in candidate in a 17-candidate field. Best of luck to you. I mean, if you can't get the papers in on time...

The special election is Tuesday June 26th, with a run-off between the top two vote-getters scheduled for August 21 if no one gets 50% +1 vote.

Judging from their websites, I would say Jenny Oropeza has the edge over Laura Richardson. If Valerie McDonald has a website, it's well hidden! Peter Mathews' was a plaeasant surprise.

CA-37: Congresswomen Waters and Watson Take Opposite Sides

Reporter John Howard has a story published in Thursday's Capitol Weekly which says that the Congressional Black Caucus will not endorse in the race to replace one of their recently deceased members due to a bitter feud between two of its prominent African American female members: Maxine Waters and Diane Watson.

The Congressional Black Caucus, torn between two major African-American candidates in the special election to replace the late Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald in California's 37th Congressional District, has refused to endorse either candidate.

The decision, in part, stems from an internal political feud between two of California's most visible black members of Congress: Rep. Maxine Waters and Rep. Diane Watson, who split over who should get the Caucus' backing in the June 26 special election. In the end, the Caucus declined to endorse either one in the Long Beach-area race. Waters favors Assemblywoman Laura Richardson and Watson supports Valerie McDonald, the daughter of the late congresswoman. The dispute over the endorsement was marked by heated exchanges involving Waters and Watson.
The Congressional Black Caucus' decision was in sharp contrast to the state Legislature's nine-member Black Caucus, which endorsed Richardson.

Wowsa. Wouldn't you have liked to be a fly on the wall seeing Waters and Watson throw down? It shouldn't be a surprise that the Califonia Black Legislative Caucus would endorse Richardson since she is a member of that organization!

Oropeza Loses Labor Support in 37th CD Race

Wednesday's Roundup from the Capitol Basement alerted me to an article on the 37th Congressional District race in the Daily Breeze:

The L.A. County Federation of Labor dropped its long-standing support for state Sen. Jenny Oropeza on Monday, endorsing her opponent in the race to succeed the late Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald.

The County Fed, the region's most influential labor organization, voted Monday night to put its considerable backing behind Assemblywoman Laura Richardson.

Oropeza traced the decision to her vote last month for five tribal compacts that would more than double the number of slot machines at California's American Indian casinos. Labor groups have strongly opposed the compacts on the grounds that they contain insufficient organizing protections.

Mad Professah has been blogging about this race for awhile, which pits African American Assemblymember Laura Richardson versus Latina State Senator Oropeza to fill the seat vacated by the untimely death on April 22nd of Congresswoman Juanita Millender-McDonald. Another candidate in the race is Valerie McDonald, the Congresswoman's daughter. The special primary election is June 26.

Endorsements For Tuesday's City Election

There's an election tomorrow in the City of Los Angeles. Yes, THIS Tuesday. March 6.

MadProfessah lives in Mayor Antonio Villaraigoas's former City Council district, Council District 14, where Jose Huizar is now the incumbent. Huizar is being challenged by a former employee named Alvin Parra who has run for this seat a number of times before without success. Mad Professah's endorsement for this race is for the incumbent, Jose Huizar.

However, there are a number of other races which you may not be aware. There are 4 seats on the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District up for election on Tuesday. The Los Angeles Times published an article on the fact the incumbents and the challengers are both running as slates of candidates last Friday. Mad Professah endorses the slate of incumbents with Sylvia Scott Hayes, Mona Field, Georgia Mercer and Warren Furutani.

Last (and least) there are two City of Los Angeles ballot measures: Measure L and Measure M.
Measure L is the controversial one. It is sponsored by Huizar and would "reform" school board elections by placing City Council-like limits on financial contributions and on terms (12 years). It would also establish a commission to study whether school board members should become full-time employees with commensurate pay. Although generally opposed to term limits the rest of measure sounded reasonable and thus Mad Professah endorses passage of both measures L and M.

Antonio Wants A Bigger One Than Gavin

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, fresh off his short-lived but much-noticed post-Grammy Award summit with Paris Hilton, yesterday announced plans to create a citywide free wireless internet service by 2009, called the L.A. WiFi Initiative.

"By giving every resident high-speed access, we will transform Los Angeles into a cutting-edge city across every neighborhood and every economic sector.

[...]

"LA WiFi will help us meet the technology needs of our world-class media and creative industries, give a leg up to small businesses, plug every neighborhood directly into the knowledge-based global economy and make computer training programs for students an after-school reality."

The plan, which the Los Angeles Times estimates would generally cost $125,000 per square mile per year to cover the 498 square miles of our fair city (for a grand total of $62 million annually), would be paid for by a public-private partnership between the City of Los Angeles and the network operators.

Of course, the part that Antonio likes is that his (city's wireless network) will be bigger than Mayor Gavin Newsom's (proposed wireless network, the implementation of which was delayed yesterday by a vote the San Francisco Board of Supervisors). So there!

Senator Boxer Announces Re-election Campaign for 2010

As reported on Calitics and DailyKos yesterday, United States Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has announced that she is indeed running for re-election in 2010. This is significant because this is the next election where statewide constitutional officers (i.e. Governor, Lieutenant Governor, et cetera) will be decided. Currently Arnold Schwarzenegger is termed out and can not run for re-election. The next available higher office he can seek is Boxer's United States Senate seat. However, Boxer by announcing so early is channeling Jennifer Hudson by saying "And I Tell You I Am Not Going":

I want you to be the first to know: I'm running!

No, not for President, but for re-election to the United States Senate when my term expires in 2010. The Senate is so important, and I am so proud that the people of California have sent me there three times.

Why I am starting now? Because there are already many rumors and reports that my Republican friends still can't believe I'm in the Senate and are just waiting to force me out of the race or, failing that, overwhelm us with resources.

So we are doing what we must -- declaring early and starting the fundraising work that is an absolute necessity to hold on to this critical California seat, a Senate seat which has been a constant voice for peace, the environment, and all the priorities that keep the American dream alive.

By announcing early, Boxer is putting potential primary challenger sand Republican opponents like the Governator on notice that "there's no other place [she] wants to be."