Sacramento Bee’s veteran political columnist, Dan Walters, pens a piece today where he laments that that despite extremely low public-approval ratings for the legislature, the partisan redistricting
plan ensures that virtually every legislative seat will be retained by the political party that holds it now.
He does note two areas where seats held by Democrats are in trouble — the upper San Joaquin Valley (Stockton area) and central Orange County:
There will be, as noted earlier, a few vacant districts in which there could be at least a ghost of partisan competition in November, the gerrymander notwithstanding. The suburban San Joaquin Valley seat held by termed-out Democrat Barbara Matthews of Tracy, for example, could turn over because the Democrats have lost four percentage points of their voter registration margin in the last four years.
The middle of Orange County could be an especially heated partisan arena as Democratic Sen. Joe Dunn and Democratic Assemblyman Tom Umberg, both of Santa Ana, are termed-out of districts that have seen sharp drops in Democratic registration. The 10-point advantage that Democrats enjoyed in Dunn’s 34th Senate District in 2002 has dwindled to under three points and the 34th is now viewed as this year’s top partisan battleground.
Walters says that GOP primaries can be interesting, but that the real action is in Democrat primaries since they control both houses of the legislature. About those Dem primaries, he says:
Bottomline – look for more looney-left policy idiocy coming from the legislature this year!
You can read Walters’ entire column here.