Walters: California Democrats mulling a return to state’s sordid gerrymandered past

Under pressure from President Donald Trump, Texas’s dominant Republicans are attempting to redraw the state’s congressional districts and thus increase the number of GOP-held seats after the midterms.

Republicans have a paper-thin majority in the House of Representative. Trump obviously fears that Democrats could win control next year and he wants mid-decade redistricting to make congressional regime change less likely.

Meanwhile, Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders want to counter the nakedly partisan effort in Texas by gerrymandering California’s congressional districts to neutralize whatever Texas does. It’s faintly reminiscent of the Spy vs. Spy comic strip in MAD Magazine that baby boomers might recall, or perhaps the classic Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoons.

However, there’s nothing funny about trampling — in the lust for partisan political power — the quaintly democratic notion that congressional districts should fairly represent the characteristics and values of their constituents.

However it plays out, it’s another chapter in the tortured history of redistricting in California.

After the 1970 census, Republican Gov. Ronald Reagan and Democratic legislative leaders deadlocked on redistricting and the state Supreme Court intervened, creating its own mechanism to draw new maps.

A decade later, after the 1980 census, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, legislative leaders such as Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, and Phil Burton, leader of the state’s congressional delegation, drew very weird-looking, politically lopsided districts — one of which Burton described as “my contribution to modern art.”

Republicans persuaded voters to reject the maps via referendum. However, the state Supreme Court decreed that the challenged maps be used for the 1982 election anyway. After that election, Brown and legislators simply adopted slightly changed versions.

Republicans tried again to overturn the Democrats’ maps via ballot initiative but the state Supreme Court cancelled it, declaring that the state constitution limited redistricting to one each decade. Speaker Brown publicly thanked “Sister Rose and the Supremes,” referring to Chief Justice Rose Bird, one of several reasons Bird was ousted by voters a few years later.

After 1990 census, Republican Gov. Pete Wilson and Democratic legislators once again stalemated and once again the Supreme Court stepped in. However, after the 2000 census, although Democrat Gray Davis was governor, leaders of both parties forged a bipartisan gerrymander, freezing the numerical status quo in the Legislature and the congressional delegation.

After Davis was recalled, successor Arnold Schwarzenegger mounted a campaign to reform redistricting, backed by Charles Munger Jr., a very wealthy physicist and son of the famous businessman and investor Charlie Munger. Voters passed their 2008 initiative to create an independent commission for legislative seats and a 2010 measure to extend its authority to congressional districts despite opposition from both parties.

The commission drew maps after the 2010 and 2020 censuses and both plans helped Democrats achieve supermajorities in legislative houses and the congressional delegation — thanks largely to demographic trends and declining GOP voter registration.

Today, Republicans hold just nine of the state’s 53 congressional seats and Newsom is ready to cut that in half. He says that the revised districts would be in effect until the commission is revived after the 2030 census.

However, due its almost nonexistent population growth, California could lose as many as four seats after the 2030 census. Having seized more power over redistricting, would Democrats really be willing to return to the commission system they once despised?

Dan Walters is a CalMatters columnist.