MAPPING IT OUT: The potential contours of a snap California redistrict are coming into focus (more on the politics of that exercise below).
Attorney General Rob Bonta suggested yesterday that lawmakers could put a new, fully realized map before voters for up-or-down approval. ”I think that’s what’s being contemplated here and I think that’s what the legal pathway is,” Bonta told reporters, noting he’d been in touch with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office. Remember, Bonta’s office would write an initiative’s official title and summary.
Newsom has said he’s reviewing three or four options to proceed, including simply having the Legislature draw lines on the theory it retains the authority to do so despite California’s independent commission. But Bonta’s remarks suggest a special election could be the smoothest path — though it would still be a bumpy one. Speaking of which …
MAPMAKING MELEE — Newsom’s push for a Democrat-boosting California gerrymander would have to run through the Legislature — where it could collide with lawmakers’ career plans.
Few prizes tantalize term-limited state lawmakers quite like a safe House seat that’s effectively a lifetime gig. But returning to a bygone era of redistricting hardball could complicate life for ambitious incumbents redrawing the seats they hope to one day represent. California voters chose in 2010 to sideline self-interested politicians from the map-making process; restoring their role, as the governor wants to do, reopens some of those old incentives.
“I’ve seen the negotiations. I’ve seen all the arm-twisting that Willie (Brown) and Phil Burton had to do,” said Bruce Cain, who helped craft maps for the former Democratic leaders. Burton, he added, “had to browbeat people into things they wouldn’t want to do.”
For now, California Democrats are publicly rallying behind a national push to counter Texas’ planned GOP gerrymander. Even frontline House members are saying Democrats have to be armed with every option.
But it’s one thing to proclaim your support for a plan embraced by party grandees like Newsom and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Getting 54 Assembly votes and 27 Senate votes for new maps is a different matter. Some of the Democrats who will be asked to vote for the gambit will have to balance personal plans and party priorities.
Rarely does a vote in the state Legislature so directly tie into national politics or draw in national figures….