I know we’ve all blamed California Democrats plenty for cowardice in 2002, but I’ve thought about it and I come to a clearer decision. Things were different then. They had just been through the hard fought 90s where they had to fight tooth and nail to win the senate Seats, the Governorship and a huge numbers of house seats.
Look at the political environment. Gray Davis was very unpopular, the Gary Condit scandal had just racked state Democrats, and Bush was wildly popular and many of areas of the state looked a lot different than they do now, after another 8 years of political trends.
The one thing I think we can all be assured on is that they won’t be so timid again, not after Kerry’s and and especially Obama’s margin in the state, Obama is the benchmark I’d use because he will be running again in 2012 and hopefully will win the state by an even bigger margin then giving coattails. Regardless many of the states areas and major Demographics are trending even more Democratic and doing so very fast.
Here are a list of the Republicans who must be targeted and how.
Dana Rohrabacher. No excuse for having someone this vitrolic a Representative. There’s no way LA should have a representative who refused to meet President Bush at one time because he was too liberal and who would dress up with Minute Men if he could. Obama made progress in this current gerrymander which contains all the Republican coastal areas south of LA. The 46th has a large hispanic population that is growing quickly, and a large Asian population.
Democrats will probably take move hispanic areas out of CA-37 and CA-36 to make a coalition Hispanic VRA district. All they would need to do is increase it by 24 points from 16% to 40% and then use the large Asian population. Laura Richardson’s district has plenty of Democrats to spare, as does Harman’s, and Harman is a little to conservative for her district anyway. Doing this to Rohrabacher just gives me a certain pleasure, there’s such a fitting irony to it. Hopefully he will be defeated by a Hispanic Democrat.
Ed Royce is another big, sore thumb. McCain still own it 51-47. It covers northern Orange County, I’d change that. The best way to change it would to be to lop off that southern hoof into Orange that goes around Loretta Sanchez’s district and move the district North into some of the areas repesented by Grace Napiltano and Linda Sanchez, notable Cerritos. I’d make the new 40th about 56-43 Democratic to just to be safe and then I’d leave all the remaining Republican areas in the 42nd district, I’d buff it up with all the most conservative areas.
As I’ve said elsewhere Bilbary can be targeted. Susan Davis’ district has become so overwhelmingly Democratic it can be diluted a little. Bilbary’s district is trending out from under him for, an ironically, second time, losing the first time to Susan Davis. A little mixing up could create two San Diego districts that went around 59-40 for Obama and both would be Hispanic coalition VRA districts and would be hispanic majority by the end of the decade. The San Deigo can safely support two Democrats now, its time to get to it here.
CA-03 should also be made more Democratic. It can be done. I’d revert it to a district similar to its old boundaries; part of Sacrmento and North Sacremento County Amador County and Yolo. Yolo county is so liberal it would push the district back to the left and Lungren wouldn’t be able to hold such a district. CA-01, Mike Thompson, doesn’t need Yolo anymore. Its become so liberal anyway and the trend doesn’t show any sign of stopping.
Ken Calvert is weak Republican and politician. He’s been racked by scandal in the 90s and barely managed to win a swing district then. So Democrats did the sensible thing, (and I’m mocking them here), and gave him a safely Republican district. When that trended towards Democrats he nearly lost again. I see a trend here. If his district were finally to be made Democratic leaning he’d lose to a strong candidate. It can be done, but to do it I’d make Mary Bono Mack and John Campbell safe. One out of three ain’t bad, and the Inland Empire can’t support more than one Democrat safely right now and Calvert is the weakest of the three so he should be the one targeted.
And there you have it. A loss of five Republican Congressional seats and without going to such extremes as Republicans did in Texas. If we went that far we could probably knock out another two districts or so.
P.S. Please vote in my diary. I use it as a counter to see how many people read a given thing.
Loading ...
No map, just some discussion and a baseline for what I think should and will happen.
So that would have to be repealed in 2010 for your scenario to take place.
Really depends on 2010. If Dems pickup more than 2 seats in 2010 then picking up 5 in 2012 is probably unlikely. I don’t think that scenario will happen though.
My best guess is Dems gain 1 or 2 seats in California in 2010 and with agressive redistricting pickup another 5-6 seatsin 2012. Obama being on the ballot in 2012 will probably provide an additional boost downballot.
But our one and only Dem in need of shoring up is McNerney (CA-11). That district can be transformed quite easily from an R+3 or so district to something along the lines of a D+4 or 5 seat since most of the surrounding areas are excessively Democratic territory.
between PVI and the party representing the district.
It has already been noted here that most of our best pickup opportunities in 2010 are in Southern California. I’m in favor of packing the most heavily Republican parts of southern California into 2 or 3 solidly Republican districts. Within 10 years even those districts will be competitive.
Any idea where the leading redistricting players (Democratic state house and senate majoprity leaders) are from in California? If one or more of them live in southern CA or other marginally republican districts it might cause them to gerrymander a particular republican out of their seat in order for them to run for the redrawn dem-leaning district.
This happened in Florida in 2002 when Tom Feeney and Mario Diaz-Balart were in the GOP leadership and drew themselves favorable seats.
But I really do not think Democrats are going to be all that aggressive in their redistricting. GOP still holds power to stop the budget. They can hold it indefinitely. While that would probably make them horribly unpopular in the state when public services begin to shut down, they might just be willing to do it. Think of all the Democrats that fled Texas during Delay’s redistricting.
Hopefully Democrats will be able to get enough votes, and they’ll make some serious changes to California law. 2/3 for budget, 2/3 for tax increase, simple majority for ballot initiatives for both bonds and constitutional amendments. Our state is so fucking up, and its because of Democracy…. haha I’ve said it before, and I”ll say it again, irony is fun.
Democrats ended up winning every single statewide office in California in 2002, bucking the Republican trend of the rest of the country. Though of course we all know what would happen in the next year.
Have any of the state’s top Dems suggested that they will do anything other than another incumbent protection map? Because unless there is evidence to the contrary, I am going to assume that the CA Dems will take the path of least resistance again.
One big warning sign to me is that the frontrunner to be the next head of the CA Dem Party is John Burton, a former state senate leader who played a big role in creating the 2002 map. I strongly doubt he will be pushing the Dems in Sacramento to be more aggressive with their maps.