Author: Joe Mathews

Terrible news! California has a big new problem at the heart of its democracy:

There are too many Asian Americans drawing lines.

The lines in question are district lines for Assembly, Senate, Congressional and Board of Equalization seat. The Asian Americans in question are four people from around California whose names were among the first eight people selected – via lottery — to serve on the new Citizens Redistricting Commission.

This over-representation of Asians is suddenly a concern for supporters on the redistricting commission, which is the product of two ballot initiatives, Prop 11 in 2008 and Prop 20 from this November. Those initiatives were supposed to create a line-drawing body independent from politics and representative of the state.

It remains to be seen how politically independent the commission will be. But the body’s structure puts the goal of a representative body beyond reach – and show just how preposterous the commission itself is.

I’ve been impressed by the first four weeks of Jerry Brown’s transition to the governorship.

“Huh?” you want to ask me. “He hasn’t done anything so how can you impressed?”

Exactly.

It’s all the nothing that impresses me.

Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger seem to agree on much in the way of policy, but they are men of vastly different temperaments, and strategies. Schwarzenegger promised “Action! Action! Action!” Brown and his people – on the rare moments when they can be bothered to comment – are promising “Inaction! Inaction! Inaction!”

This has flipped the usual dynamic of gubernatorial transitions on its head. Typically, one would expect the lame duck governor to do very little, while the incoming governor-elect is full of announcements and proposals. But California in the late 2010 is an upside-down place, with the hyperactive Schwarzenegger dominating the news with appointments and initiatives while Brown says very little.

You’re probably like me. When you sit down at Thanksgiving dinner and think about what you’re thankful for this year, your thoughts will quickly turn to Meg Whitman.

Yes, she lost her run for governor. Tragically. But her campaign continues to benefit many people, including myself. Here are five reasons I’m thankful for Meg’s campaign.

5. It produced the most delicious political story of the year, the allegations by Meg’s former housekeeper Nicky Diaz Santillan and her attorney Gloria Allred. Yes, the story didn’t give you anyone to root for—everyone was profoundly self-interested in this tale. But it offered a glimpse into the reality of California life – both for the very rich and for the working poor – and thus provided a brief bit of honesty in a thoroughly dishonest election season.

4. The one-woman economic stimulus. As bad as the California economy is, where would be without the $160 million-plus her campaign pumped into the state economy? At least there’s one Republican politician in this state who believes in stimulus. Thanks again, Meg.

It is terrible what happened to Don Perata in the race for Oakland mayor.

Did you hear? The man who ruled the state senate lost his bid to be mayor of Oakland. And it’s just so unfair, as many of Perata’s supporters have made clear. Perata’s consultant John Whitehurst declared that the election outcome had been “an injustice, and Oakland will pay the price.”

The problem, you see, was this new system called Instant Runoff Voting now being used in Oakland, San Francisco, and other cities around the country. In this system, cities – crazily — give voters more choice and avoid expensive runoff elections by allowing voters to rank their choices on the ballot, instead of just choosing one candidate.

So Perata, a fabulous public servant, won the most first place of any of the nine candidates running for mayor. He got 35 percent of those first place votes. But he lost because 35 percent of votes wasn’t a majority. The woman who finished in second place among first-place votes, a city council member named Jean Quan, won when the ranked choices were used to conduct an instant runoff. She had many more second and third place choices than Perata, and won when those were added to the tally.

I’d like to apologize for the $6 billion hole that’s already opened up in this year’s state budget.

I made the hole.

But I didn’t do it alone. I had help from a few friends. You may know them as the voters of California.

We made this hole together last year. Remember it? The hole was created back in May 2009, so long ago that Meg Whitman and Nicky Diaz Santillan were still family.

That month, the voters of California faced six ballot measures as part of a special election. The election had to be called to bless five pieces of a February 2009 budget deal that involved either constitutional changes or changes to programs like the lottery that were established by ballot initiative. (In California, when you change a voter-approved measure, you gotta ask the voters permission). Those pieces involved tweaks worth $6 billion in budget savings.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was right to call a special session in the waning days of his governorship. But in dedicating the session to the budget deficit, he chose the wrong subject.

Put simply, the last thing this state needs is another debate over how to cut the budget. Anyone paying attention to the California budget crisis figured out long ago that there’s no politically feasible way to balance the state budget. Schwarzenegger’s proposals for cuts are almost certain to be dead on arrival with legislative Democrats, who would prefer to deal with the Democratic governor-elect. Schwarzenegger’s decision to spend the last few weeks of his governorship banging his head against that wall is pointless.

A better approach would be to spend that time looking at constitutional changes that would reshape the budget system itself. Certainly, with a new governor coming in, such a session is unlikely to produce more reforms. But the special session Schwarzenegger has called isn’t any more likely to produce a balanced budget.

I will not concede.

It does not matter that I spent $140 million and am still a dozen points down in the exits. It does not matter that by waiting I am making myself look out of touch. I want to see results from the Secretary of State’s office. And then I want to wait a few hours more.

It does not matter if every media organization in the country has declared the incumbent U.S. Senator the winner – and me the loser. I will lash out at the media for calling the race, saying that “it was maybe not a smart thing to do.” And I will not be the least bit ashamed or apologetic the next morning, when I meet the media.

It does not matter if my party lost a record number of seats in the House of Representatives under my direction. It does not matter that the entire middle of the country thinks that I’m the devil. I will continue to lead my party, no matter what it does to my party.

For a journalist, there’s nothing quite like a really big disaster – the sinking of the Titanic, the explosion of the Hindenburg, the Meg Whitman campaign for governor. You can spend weeks or months or years sifting through the wreckage and pinning the blame. It’s a joyous exercise for reporters.

Let’s take the most recent of those historic calamities, Meg 2010. Now, this was a campaign with problems, including having too much money for its own good. Its strategic mistakes were numerous. The heavily staffed campaign offers many rich targets for balme.

But there is one specific criticism that should be re-examined before it becomes conventional wisdom: that Whitman could have escaped damage from the revelation that her housekeeper, Nicky Diaz Santillan, was an undocumented immigrant by putting the story out herself, shortly after she learned of the situation in June 2009. Handled this way, goes the media wisdom, it might have been a one-day story.
Nonsense. This would have been big news – and a serious problem for the Whitman campaign — whenever it was released.

Let’s imagine that Whitman had imbibed this media wisdom and had announced the news about the housekeeper on some August day in 2009. Let’s say that, in a speech on immigration, she would have mentioned that she had to fire herhousekeeper, whom she would not name, when she learned she was undocumented. Would the reaction really have been so different?

Gov.-elect Jerry Brown said Wednesday that Meg Whitman called him to concede and offered to do whatever she could to help him and California. When a reporter asked Brown if he wanted her help, he made a crack about how her money could help fill the state budget.

Funny, but Brown should take her offer seriously and give her a real task.

There’s one that fits her resume, and might result in a good outcome for the state and for Whitman.

That job?

Fix the damn computers.

California’s technology systems are failing to perform basic tasks. Controller John Chiang has said that computers are so broken that he can’t adjust payroll without creating problems. And on election night, the California Secretary of State’s system crashed. This is basic stuff that needs to be fixed.