Earlier this year, some California Republicans—notably House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy—made it clear they were content to go along with an ostensibly “nonpartisan” redistricting plan that would cost the GOP five of the 19 U.S. House districts it now holds in the Golden State. But recent revelations of a scheme by state Democrats to influence the citizens commission on the shape and population of California’s new congressional district lines has now put that plan into legal question and begun to rally state Republicans to shout: “Scrap the plan and investigate further!”
“Everyone needs to take a second look at this plan and get to the bottom of just how much Democrats influenced the commission that drew it,” State GOP Chairman Tom DelBeccaro told HUMAN EVENTS last week, “The report by ProPublica commands anyone who reads it not only to take a second look at the plan, but also to get to the bottom of just how far the Democrats went in gaming the system.”
DelBeccaro was referring to a sensational expose earlier this month by the non-profit Pro Publica, whose investigative journalism won it a Pulitzer Prize in 2011. According to Pro Publica, after a private meeting (without staff) of Democrats in the state legislature, they began “[w]orking with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee” to begin “strategizing about potential future district lines” which were being drawn up by a non-partisan commission of private citizens empowered to do so under a statewide initiative.
To get around the commission’s vow not to base the new U.S. House and state legislative district lines on testimony from political actors, Pro Publica reported, “Democrats surreptitiously enlisted local voters, elected officials, labor unions and community groups to testify in support of configurations that coincided with the party’s interests. When they appeared before the commission, those groups identified themselves as ordinary Californians and did not disclose their ties to the party. One woman who purported to represent the Asian community of the San Gabriel Valley was actually a lobbyist who grew up in rural Idaho, and lives in Sacramento.
“In one instance, party operatives invented a local group to advocate for the Democrats’ map.”
The final plan created two instances in which two Republican U.S. representatives would be in the same district (Representatives Ed Royce and Gary Miller in Orange County and Representatives Elton Gallegly and Buck McKeon in Los Angeles County), made the marginal district of one Republican lawmaker (Rep. Dan Lungren in the Sacramento area)more difficult for him to retain and eliminated outright the district of another (House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier).
An effort to upend the plan through an initiative fizzled out when supporters could not raise the money or secure the support of the National Republican Congressional Committee. As HUMAN EVENTS reported earlier this year, Rep. McCarthy, the No.3 official in the House GOP hierarchy, was a key player in turning off the money spigot for the proposed initiative. Under the plan, McCarthy’s district became substantially more Republican.
GOP Hopes Rest on Voting Rights Act
At this point, the lone hope of stopping the gerrymandered plan created by a clearly tainted commission is a suit in U.S. District Court charging that the new district lines are in violation of the Voting Rights Act.
Although many Republicans have long criticized the Voting Rights Act for creating “majority-minority districts,” the California lawsuit was begun by conservative former Rep. George Radanovich (R.-Calif.) and its chief proponent in court is Steve Baric, vice chairman of the California Republican Party.
Reached by HUMAN EVENTS while he was on Christmas family visit to British Columbia, Baric explained to us that the commission plan “created two historically African-American districts in which the African-American population will be strongly watered down and this was done in order to maintain a third, predominately African-American district in South Central Los Angeles.” (He was referring to the two districts of Democratic Representatives Maxine Waters and Karen Bass, both of whose districts lost significant pockets of black voters, and that of Democratic Rep. Laura Richardson. All three lawmakers are African-American and all of their districts have had major drops in population over the past ten years.).
The suit, Baric explained, will argue that the plan violates the Voting Rights Act not only for creating districts that affect blacks negatively, but also violates the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.
Baric said he fully expects the case will go “all the way to the Supreme Court.”
Whatever the last chapter in the whole saga of California redistricting, it is clear that the idea of a “non partisan” citizens commission was severely tainted in a very big way. As Baric put it, “The story coming out showed that the process we all hoped would be truly non-partisan turned out to be a case of partisan politics at its worst.”
