Day: June 12, 2011

Different Animals: Why Female Officials Don’t Cheat

Trish

The shorthand of it is that women run for office to do something, and men run for office to be somebody. Women run because there is some public issue that they care about, some change they want to make, some issue that is a priority for them, and men tend to run for office because they see this as a career path.

Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, quoted in a New York Times story on the disparity in scandals between female and male members of Congress.

Redistricting Puts California Republican Party At Risk – Dems Could Add Five New Seats in U.S. House

Jon Ponder

House Rules Chair David Dreier, at risk
House Rules Chair David Dreier, at risk
In the 2010 elections, Californians stood fast against the GOP-tea bagger tide that swamped other states. California voters elected Democrats to every statewide office and retained Barbara Boxer’s U.S. Senate seat Democrats won all these seats but one by double digits. They also added a seat or two in the Legislature.

In years past, these gains would have put California Democrats in charge of the state’s decennial, post-Census redistricting of congressional and legislative districts. It’s also more than likely that the Democrats would have continued the bipartisan practice of carving up the state to, first, protect its majority *and, second, protect incumbents in both parties — insofar as the second objective did not interfere with the prime.

Under the backroom scratch-backing system, it is true that the California GOP would have paid for its losses and for the related fact that GOP registration is down to a historic low of 31 percent in the state. The party would likely have lost a few more seats in the Legislature, but its 19 seats in the U.S. House delegation would likely have remained intact.

But the maps are being redrawn under a radically different redistricting system this year, because in 2008 California voters, in their infinite wisdom, decided via a ballot initiative to hand the responsibility for redistricting to a new 14-member California Citizens Redistricting Commission — five Democrats, five Republicans and four unaffiliated.

That’s right. Redistricting for the largest state in the union has been handled by a committee of amateurs.

It’s fair to say that political insiders assumed that the CCDC would redraw the map to the advantage of Republicans. But that assumption turned out to be wrong. The redrawn maps, which were released on Friday, revealed a reconfiguration that, while not as radical as it could have been, spells trouble for the GOP. It is, as a GOP political analyst described it, “cause for full-out panic … This is musical chairs with switchblades.”

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