Stuart Leavenworth
It’s Wednesday at noon in Vince’s Italian Restaurant in Elk Grove. The local Rotary Club is gathered for lunch, and about 80 people are digging into their steaks and shrimp salads.
The meeting starts with a rousing rendition of “You’re a Grand Old Flag” and the usual salutations, announcements, the Pledge of Allegiance and greeting of guests. It was at that point that I noted Abram Wilson, sitting over to the left.
Wilson stood out for several reasons. He was dressed in a dapper suit. He was one of the few African Americans in attendance. He was also the only mayor in the room.
Wilson is the mayor of San Ramon.
What was the mayor of San Ramon doing in Elk Grove, 54 miles away from home? “I am running again for AD 15,” he told me. By AD 15, Wilson means the 15th Assembly District, one of the more artful works of gerrymandered cartography that California’s politicians have produced.
A Rorschach blotch that stretches from Walnut Creek to Livermore to Stockton and Elk Grove, AD 15 would not exist except for politicians attempting to rig elections. Following the last census, Democrats and Republicans huddled in private and attempted to draw up safe seats for their respective parties in Congress, the Legislature and the state Board of Equalization.
It is not a perfect science. The kingpins designed AD 15 to be a Republican stronghold, but in the anti-GOP wave of 2008, Democrat Joan Buchanan of Alamo swept into office, defeating Wilson, a Republican. But Wilson hopes to seize on a current backlash against incumbents. That’s why he is burning rubber and piling up the mileage between the East Bay and points inland.
We’ve all heard the usual arguments against gerrymandering. It stifles political competition. It results in a Legislature dominated by ideologues on the left and right, with few or no moderates.
Less noticed is the impact of gerrymandering on communities such as Elk Grove. Over the last decade, Elk Grove was one of the state’s fastest-growing cities. In fact, this city of 136,000 experienced the nation’s fastest growth rate among large cities between July 1, 2004, and July 1, 2005, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
By rights, voters in such cities should be represented by someone with some sort of geographic connection. A former mayor of Stockton or Lodi might fit that bill. But a former member of the San Ramon school board, like Buchanan? Or a San Ramon mayor? How can they possibly represent a district that stretches into four counties and three distinct regions?
To be sure, Buchanan and Wilson make an effort to stay connected. Hours before Wilson was at the Rotary Club on Wednesday, Buchanan had hosted a free pancake breakfast in Elk Grove. She is deep into re-election mode, months after a costly and failed bid to win the open 10th Congressional District seat.
Still, because of gerrymandering, Wilson and Buchanan are like political Bedouins. They wander the electoral desert with no single place to call home. And if Assembly District 15 were to exist in perpetuity, residents of Elk Grove would probably never have one of their own in the seat. The district’s votes are predominantly in the East Bay.
There is some hope for an end to Rorschach blotches like AD 15.
Voters in 2008 surprised the naysayers by passing Proposition 11, a redistricting reform measure. Because of that initiative, state auditor Elaine Howle is putting together a panel of citizens to draw maps for the Legislature and BOE after the next census. Some 31,000 Californians have applied for the job. By October, the auditor’s office will narrow that pool to 60 finalists – 20 Democrats, 20 Republicans and 20 from neither party.
Clearly, there is no way to keep politics out of redistricting. Yet The Powers That Be are so threatened by Proposition 11 that they are working to overturn it.
As The Bee’s Capitol Alert noted this month, 14 Democrats in California’s congressional delegation, along with Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, have dumped $160,000 into a campaign initiative account to eliminate the 14-member citizen redistricting commission.
If they can raise enough money and persuade voters to repeal Proposition 11, California could see a return to the days of fat-cat politics gerrymandering seats.
I asked Wilson what he thought about Bass and other Democrats trying to overturn redistricting reform.
“Terrible, terrible,” he said.
Then he returned to gripping and grinning, trying to win back a seat that, by design, was supposed to be safe for the GOP.