Author: Allan Hoffenblum

The California elections in 2010 have all the makings of a three-ring circus and subscribers of the California Target Book, along with other political junkies, are coming together for a Sacramento conference on Thursday to get a first look on what’s coming down the pike.

California voters will likely be deciding on several ballot measures that could have a direct impact on how we elect our elected representatives and how they shall govern.

Should partisan primaries be scraped and be replaced with an open primary where the two top vote-getters, regardless of party, face a November runoff election? Should we have a part-time legislature? Should we change the way congressional district maps are drawn? Or, should we scrap everything and call for a constitutional convention to overhaul state government?

On the legislative campaign front, we’ll be replacing more than 25% of the state legislature with new people, mostly due to mandatory term limits. Those races are usually easy to read. But the massive decline in Republican voter registration makes more races interesting… and competitive. The increase in voters registering as Decline To States will also throw off the predictability scale of many contests.

Last May I posted an article in
F&H Daily titled, "California’s Republican Legislators – a White Males’
Club".

One of many points raised in the
article is the failure of the state GOP to elect a significant number Latinos,
Asians and other people of color to congress and the state legislature. 

Among the 19 member of the House GOP
delegation, all but one is a white male.  Among the 15 Republicans in the
state senate, all but two are white males. Among the 20 Republicans in the
state assembly, all but four are white males.

A Field Poll was released
recently showing the dramatic changes the past thirty years in the ethnic
makeup of California’s registered voters.

I read an interesting article last week, written by California pollsters Stephen Kinney and Matthew Jason with the California branch of Public Opinion Strategies.

According to their research, voter registration among LATINO voters is 57% Democratic, 19% Republican, 20% Independent, and 4% other; among ASIAN voters, it is 30% Democratic, 29% Republican, 39% Independent, 2% other; and among BLACK voters, it is 83% Democratic, 8% Republican, 9% Independent.

Only among WHITE voters does the GOP in California have a registration advantage, it being 42% Republican, 40% Democratic, 14% Independent, 4% other. When this group was broken down by gender, Republicans had a 46%-31% registration advantage among white males, while Democrats had a 48%-39% registration advantage among white women.

Going into the 2010 election cycle — the last election in which candidates will run in districts drawn in 2001 – the biggest story is the plummeting Republican voter registration throughout California.

Not only is the current statewide Republican registration of 31% a historic low, but for the first time there is not a single congressional, state senate or assembly district that has a majority Republican registration.

Back in 2001, when the redistricting mapmakers gerrymandered the 80 assembly districts in an attempt to keep the status quo of 50 safe Democratic districts and 30 safe Republican seats, five of the assembly districts had solid Republican majorities and an additional five had a GOP registration of between 48 – 50 percent. Today, it’s zero majority districts and only two with GOP registration over 48 percent (Jean Fuller, AD32; Jeff Miller, AD71).

It was near miraculous that the Democrats did not pick off a Republican incumbent congressman in California last November.

Not only did Barack Obama carry California by the largest margin since the Roosevelt – Landon landslide of 1936, Obama was able to outpoll John McCain in EIGHT of the NINETEEN congressional districts currently held by a Republican.

The principal reason for their lack of success is that with the exception of the race in CD4 between Republican Tom McClintock and Democrat Charlie Brown and the race in CD50 between Republican Brian Bilbray and Democrat Nick Leibham — both narrowly won by the Republican — national Democratic leaders didn’t make a full court effort to win any additional Republican seats in California.

They are not likely to make this mistake in 2010.

In earlier posts for Fox and Hounds, I asked the question, "Can Assembly Democrats gain the six seats needed to reach a two-thirds supermajority?"

I then went on to list the six GOP-held assembly districts I and my fellow editors of the California Target Book believed would be the ones most likely targeted by the Democrats to achieve that goal: AD10 (D-Alyson Huber vs. R-Jack Sieglock); AD15 (D-Joan Buchanan vs. R-Abram Wilson); AD26 (D-John Eisenhut vs. R-Bill Berryhill); AD36 (D-Ferial Masry vs. R-Audra Strickland); AD78 (D-Marty Block vs. R-John McCann); AD80 (D-Manuel Perez vs. R-Gary Jeandron.

We also stated that the Democrats would also need to hold on to AD30 that was represented by termed out Democratic Asm. Nicole Parra (D-Fran Florez vs. R-Danny Gilmore).

Our predictions turned out to be quite prophetic, because the Democratic leadership did attempt to achieve that supermajority and they in fact focused on the six GOP-held districts mentioned above.

For Democrats to achieve a veto-proof “supermajority” in the state Assembly come next Tuesday, they must pick up six seats currently held by a Republican, while holding on to AD30, which is the sole Democratic held seat that is being seriously contested.

Last August, the California Target Book put out it’s Assembly Target List, listing six Republican held districts that the editors believed would be the Democrats’ best opportunities to pick up seats: Assembly District 10 (suburban Sacramento), AD26 (Central Valley), AD15 (East Bay), AD37 (Ventura County), AD78 (inland San Diego County), and AD80 (Imperial County).

From the get-go, the Assembly Democratic leadership and/or independent expenditure committees supporting their agenda put big bucks behind their nominees in four of the above mentioned districts: ALYSON HUBER in AD10, JOAN BUCHANAN in AD15, MARTY BLOCK in AD78, and MANUEL PEREZ in AD80.

Now, it appears they are going after all six.

Some key Independent Expenditure Committees (IEs) have jumped into targeted Assembly races in attempt to influence their outcome come November.

The biggest player, thus far, is an IE titled Opportunity PAC, which is being funded by the CA Faculty Association ($350,000), CA State Council of Service Employees ($300,000), SEIU 1000 ($250,000), Political Action for Classified Employees of CA Schools ($400,000) and the CA Federation of Teachers ($100,000).

As of this writing, they have spent:

• $167,612 in support of Democrat ALYSON HUBER, an attorney running in the 10th Assembly District (AD10) against Republican JACK SIEGLOCK, a former member of the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors.
• $331,000 in support of Democrat JOAN BUCHANAN, a San Ramon Valley School Board member running in AD15 against Republican ABRAM WILSON, the mayor of San Ramon.
• $159,670 in support of Democrat MANUEL PEREZ, a Coachella Valley School Board member running in AD80 against Republican GARY JEANDRON, the former Chief of Police of Palm Springs.

Going on offense is an IE titled Faculty for Our University’s Future, which is funded totally by the California Faculty Association.