Ahnold gave his State of the State address yesterday, and gave spotlight to his desire to see California change the way incumbents have a lock on office by handing the diennial redistricting job to a panel of retired judges.
From the CS Monitor:
[Schwarzeneggger's] speech touched on a suite of reforms from teacher pay to government spending. But in many respects, his effort to change the way politics works is the most far-reaching and ambitious - for California and the country.
We could be cynical and just respond that Republicans are only Reformers when they don't hold as much power as they want.
As Democrats, our impulse is to want to thwart Schwarzenegger (fun phrase to say, huh?), but as Reformers, we may want to applaud. A setback of a few California seats might be a necessary sacrifice to break the sclerosis of incumbency and more effectively change the status quo.
"This is not a California problem, it is a national problem," says Elizabeth Garrett, director of the USC-Caltech Center for the Study of Law and Politics. "Our representatives are much more partisan than we are ... and one reason is that this favors people with extremely partisan ideological positions."
To Dr. Garrett and others, the so-called red-blue divide so evident here and nationwide is less a function of changing American character or culture than it is of politicians' increasing desire to squelch any competition in election years. The result is hundreds of legislative districts across the United States that lawmakers have drawn to keep incumbents in office - artificially making them more "red" or "blue."
The practice is as old as the Republic. But in many cases, the motive is no longer for the party in power to gerrymander more seats for itself. The rising cost of elections has meant that both parties are now willing to settle for a divided status quo in return for an easier ride through election season.
Governor Schwarzenegger learned the lesson in the last election, when every California candidate he campaigned for lost. In all, there were 153 congressional and state legislative seats in play in California last November. None changed parties.
...
A dozen states have done what Schwarzenegger wants to do - take from lawmakers the job of redrawing legislative districts every 10 years and give it to a panel of retired judges. Yet eight times in the past 70 years, California voters have rejected initiatives to reform the process - including proposals similar to the ones linked to Schwarzenegger.
Should we oppose this redistricting reform in a state where Democrats hold an advantage, or applaud it in hopes that the national focus on California may influence similar reforms in less blue states?
I'm not asking rhetorically--my mind is not made up. In fact, I'd rather see wholesale change from single member districting to more proportional voting, but I'm in a small minority on that issue.