Prop. 20

PPP polled prop 20, the proposition that takes California's congressional districting out of the legislature's hands and gives it to the same independent commission that's doing legislative redistricting.

Nancy Pelosi will go ballistic when she sees this. Pelosi and Howard Berman spent a lot of time and influence to protect California's Democratic representatives in the last redistricting, at times with very gerrymandered districts. The ironic thing is that I think Democrats will do better with fair redistricting. There are currently 30 districts D +8 or better and 10 districts R +8 or better. The other 13 districts have 10 Republican leaning and 3 Democratic leaning.

If they let some of those D +10-15 districts become D +5-9 a number of the Republican leaning districts would become Democratic leaning. In a bad year that could mean the Democrats would only win 28-30 races but in a normal year they'd probably win 35-37. In a good year they'd get over 40.

The Democrats picked up only 1 of the 20 Republican seats despite huge gains elsewhere. They only got that one because of Richard Pombo's ethical problems. The 3rd, 4th, 44th, and 50th would've gone over in the last election if there were just a few more Democrats in those districts. The 26th, 45th, 46th, and 48th would've been possible too.

Jane Harman won 4 congressional elections in the old 36th, but each time she won by 8.5% or less. In the 4 since she's won by 26% or more each time. They took out Palos Verdes and some other Republican leaning precincts and gave them to Dana Rohrbacher in the 46th. He's two districts away. It's an absurd gerrymander. Harman should win even with Palos Verdes, but Democrats don't want to take the chance.