Fascinating National Journal report.

Snippet on Sherman-Berman:

That new commission lumped Sherman and Berman into the same district in 2012. The clash was bitter. They disagreed little on policy (“Two Jews, One District” was the tag-line on a blog devoted to the race in the local Jewish Journal), but the attacks were fierce. The two nearly came to blows during a debate, until a police officer intervened. The contest was one of the nation’s costliest and, in the end, it was a blowout. Sherman, the backbencher, trounced Berman, the congressional heavyweight, 60 percent to 40 percent.

South said that Berman ultimately succumbed to that classic Washington syndrome: He lost touch back home as his profile swelled in D.C. and abroad. “It is very, very easy for a member of Congress to think you’re hot shit in Washington because your chairman of some committee,” he said. “It’s ‘Chairman This’ and ‘Chairman That.’ You think that’s filtered back to your district. Guess what: It’s not.”

Or, as one elected Democrat in Los Angeles put it, “Howard was busy trying to make peace in Israel, and Brad was attending Ari’s bar mitzvah in Encino.”