Playing 10-year-game of election boundaries

Press, 10 August 1981, Page 16

Playing 10-year-game of election boundaries

By

JOHN HUTCHISON

in San Francisco

Every ten years, when the United States census reveals new shifts in the American population, the 435-member House of Representatives must be reapportioned among the states.

Coincidentally, the 80 members of the California Assembly and the 40 members of the state Senate —legislative bodies with approximately equal powers — also face a shakeup. Both are apportioned

on the basis of population. The Democrats hold the trumps now, in this game which can sustain or suffocate the political destinies of these 120, and of the 43 California congressmen in Washington, of whom the majority are Democrats. (United States senators are not affected; each state elects two at large.) The reapportionment process is invariably applied to protect or improve the majority

party's grip. The result is sometimes some curiously shaped areas. Their delineation. since 1812, has been called "gerrymandering.” A politician named Elbridge Gerry was involved in the reshaping of an election district resembling a salamander, and a new word and a durable tradition were born.

In 1964, the United States Supreme Court decreed that election districts be “compact” and of “contiguous territory.” Within that somewhat imprecise instruction, Californian politicians are busily playing the Ten-Year Game. The stakes are unusually high. Republicans are making their most determined effort in many years to capture the state legislature and the Congress.

But even within the Californian Democratic Party, there is much pulling and hauling at the blanket, which is not quite wide enough to cover the family bed. California is growing faster than the United States as a whole and is therefore enlarging its share of seats in the House of Representatives. but in both the state and national governments, southern California is the beneficiary. It is more populous, and growing faster, than northern California.

However, shuffling arid dealing the cards in the redistricting game are two of the shrewdest players in Californian politics, and they are both San Franciscans. They are Mr Willie Brown, speaker of the Assembly, who dominates the legislative committees which make the most important legislative decisions in Sacramento, and Mr Philip Burton, Congressman from San Francisco. He is the unchallenged leader of his state's Democratic delegation in Washington.

He and Mr Brown are close friends. They are making southern Californian Democrats nervous. They are giving Californian Republicans the jitters. They have not divulged their intentions in detail, but their strategy will. begin to unfold on August 10, when the committee process begins in Sacramento. Soon thereafter Mr Burton will have to tip his hand on the national districts.

The Republicans are already crying foul before they know, where they will be hit. All Mr Burton will say to them is, “Don’t worry; you’re in your mother’s arms.” To the Republicans that sounds like something the wolf would croon to Little Red Riding Hood.