By Dan Walters
dwalters@sacbee.com
Published: Monday, Jan. 18, 2010 – 12:00 am | Page 3A
As the process of selecting an independent commission to redraw California’s legislative districts gets under way, two rival groups are planning to ask voters to either eliminate the commission altogether or expand its reach into congressional districts as well. That could mean a very expensive political shootout later this year with national repercussions.
Charles T. Munger Jr., a wealthy Southern Californian whose father is billionaire financier Warren Buffett’s partner, has already contributed more than $2 million to qualify a ballot measure to expand independent redistricting to the state’s congressional districts.
Given that level of financing, there’s little doubt that the Munger measure will make the ballot. But there’s a late-blooming rival that’s been submitted to the attorney general’s office that would erase Proposition 11, the 2008 ballot measure that created the independent commission, and return the power over drawing new districts after the 2010 census to the Legislature.
UCLA law professor Daniel Lowenstein, who wrote one of the ballot arguments against Proposition 11, is the ostensible author of the new proposal. But he acknowledges the real sponsors are Democratic congressmen, led by Howard Berman, and Berman’s brother, Michael, the Democrats’ top redistricting expert.
“It’s Michael and Howard together,” Lowenstein said.
Whether the Lowenstein-Berman measure can make it to the November ballot, however, is problematic. Once it gets its official title from the attorney general’s office, proponents will have only two months to collect enough signatures to get it on the ballot. It could be done with a multimillion-dollar injection to hire professional signature gatherers, but timing will be tight.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and a coalition of political reform groups put Proposition 11 on the ballot, arguing that leaving redistricting in the hands of the Legislature is too self-serving.
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[...] Two years ago, voters narrowly approved the initiative that stripped legislators of their long-standing power to draw their own political districts and those for members of Congress. The new map drawers will be 14 citizens chosen through a long and complicated process that hasn't even come close to completion. And now, voters will be asked to again wade into the arcane but politically powerful world of redistricting. Prop 20 seeks to close an exception in the original measure that was the price of keeping powerful California members of Congress from killing it: having the commission add congressional maps to its marching orders. And knowing that Prop 20 was in the pipeline and well funded, the state's congressional Democrats decided to muddy the waters this fall with Prop 27, a measure to scrap the citizens commission altogether. The Democratic pols won't shed tears if Prop 27 fails… as long as voters also reject Prop 20, a 'voters say no to both' strategy. The real question is whether other critics of the independent redistricting process, one that's produced a pool of potential commissioners closely scrutinized, will step forward to be the face of Prop 27… while supporters of Prop 20 will probably focus their ire on one congressman in particular: Rep. Howard Berman, the veteran Democrat from LA who apparently played a key behind-the-scenes role in putting the anti-redistricting commission on the ballot. [...]