By HOWARD FINE
Just a week after the failure of the open primary initiative Proposition 62, momentum is building to eliminate the safe seats that many blame for Sacramento’s fractured state.
A proposed initiative circulated by Republican Ted Costa to reform the redistricting process became a focal point of attention last week. Costa is the activist whose recall measure forced Gov. Gray Davis out of office last year.
Although both Democratics and Republicans are expected to work against the proposal, Costa is hoping to get support from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other political moderates who feel that safe seats encourage partisanship on both sides of the aisle.
Ballot Loss
Schwarzenegger supported Proposition 62 but didn’t actively campaign for it. It fell 54% to 46%. The competing Proposition 60, placed on the ballot by state legislators, passed.
(Proposition 60 guarantees the winner of each party’s primary has a place on the ballot in general elections. The open-primary initiative would have taken the two top primary vote-getters regardless of party affiliation, making Democrat vs. Democrat or Republican vs. Republican runoffs a possibility.)
The governor also fell short in helping elect several moderate Republican legislators he supported. In Schwarzenegger’s post-election news conference, he said he’s considering whether to launch an initiative to change the way district boundaries are drawn.
“We want to not have extremists that are so bad for the state,from the extreme right and the extreme left,” he said.
So far, Schwarzenegger has not endorsed the Costa initiative. Last week, spokeswoman Ashley Snee said the governor still is considering his options.
The once-a-decade practice of redistricting long has been a contentious issue in California, where the state Legislature has the responsibility for drawing boundaries.
In the 1980s, Republicans unsuccessfully sued to overturn a Democrat-led redistricting that they said favored Democrats too heavily.
But in 1991 Republican Gov. Pete Wilson rejected the Democrat-controlled Legislature’s plan, thus forcing redistricting into the courts.
A panel of three retired judges drew the boundaries that were in effect through the 2000 election.
But the 2001 redistricting done by consultants hired by the state Legislature has drawn nearly universal criticism. It drew heavily partisan districts,some with the incumbent party holding a 20-point or even 30-point registration edge.
As a consequence, only a handful of legislative districts have been competitive in general elections. In the rest, the winners have been determined in the primaries, where candidates appealing to the hard core of their own party usually won.
The result has been a Legislature dominated by liberal Democrats with a conservative Republican minority party. The political center,where most deals get cut,has shrunk, leading to bitter and protracted struggles over the budget and key legislation.
Costa’s initiative would take the redistricting process out of the hands of legislators and give it to a panel of retired judges.
Financial Backer
In the recall campaign, Costa drew financial support from deep-pocketed businessman-politician Darrell Issa. This time, he has a potential backer in Republican Steve Poizner, a retired millionaire who spent nearly $6 million of his own money in a failed attempt to win an open Assembly seat in the Silicon Valley.
Last week, Poizner vowed to use his wealth to sponsor a redistricting initiative. But, as of late last week, Costa said he had not yet spoken to Poizner.
It’s likely that all the initiative needs is a modest amount of financial backing to garner enough signatures to qualify it for the ballot.
Costa said his initiative probably would run into opposition from both political parties,just as the open-primary measure did.
To the extent that any redistricting eliminates safe seats, it also will make incumbents more vulnerable, weaken party loyalty and strengthen political moderates.
“Of course the Democrats are opposed as the majority party, but even the Republican Party regulars are against it,” Costa said. “I’m not very popular among Republicans these days.”
This is where Schwarzenegger’s support would be key. To date, every measure he has actively campaigned for or against has gone his way.
Costa said he is aiming for a special election in November 2005.
Otherwise, it will compete against a host of other initiatives in the next statewide election in June 2006.
“That’s what happened to the open primary initiative this November,” he said. “There were so many measures on the ballot that no one took notice when the Legislature put on a competing measure to weaken it.”
Talk of Compromise
Because of the anticipated opposition, there has been talk of a compromise in which term limits are lengthened. Currently, Assembly members serve only three two-year terms. Senators serve only two four-year terms.
Term limits, which California voters enacted in 1990, have been widely blamed for another type of dysfunction in the Legislature, as lawmakers have cycled in and out and have always kept an eye on their next office.
Yet poll after poll has shown Californians favor term limits and are loathe to alter them, let alone get rid of them.
Costa said he wanted the initiative simply limited to redistricting.
Fine is a staff writer with the Los Angeles Business Journal.
