Every ten years after the census is taken, America’s political fault lines shift during the process of redistricting. Whole political districts can be swallowed by massive population shifts or in other cases political districts emerge unscathed.

Although we don’t have complete census data we can tell where the state is growing and have some rough numbers.   It is clear where the political fault lines will shift the most.

In California, voters rewrote the rules for how state legislative and congressional districts will be drawn in order to remove politics from the process. Instead of politicians drawing district boundaries, an independent citizen commission will determine the new district lines.

California’s new process of redistricting will likely result in some districts being entirely redrawing with new boundaries. For example, the district currently held by Congresswoman Lois Capps cannot exist under a plan drawn by the independent commission because it can’t possibly be justified with the new criteria.

On the other hand, the new redistricting process may have significant effects on other districts without the need to redraw the entire district boundaries. This could be the case for Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack’s district. The east side of her district is the state line and for most of the district the north and south boundaries are the Riverside County border.  So it is possible that three sides of Congresswoman Bono Mack’s district are already determined.

The west boundary is where it gets complicated.  Each Congressional district will have about 700,000 residents.  Let’s assume that the Bono Mack seat stays only in Riverside County.   With the high growth rate in the desert over the past decade the current 45^th Congressional district has more than 900,000 residents.  This district will need to shrink about 200,000 residents.

So the important question is what 200,000 residents will this district lose.  Surely the Congresswoman would benefit from removing Palm Springs.  Palm Springs is a liberal island in a conservative sea in the Inland Empire. Yet it would be hard to imagine that a district that needs to lose 200,000 would see them come anywhere but off the western edges of the district probably making it less Republican.

So who benefits from the Republican on the west side of the county getting taken out of the current Bono district?  Assemblyman Victor Manuel Perez is sitting right there anxious to see the new lines that just might give him a good shot at a seat in Congress.  So is Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet.  He ran against Bono Mack in November and has the ability to raise large sums of money with a nationwide network.

Another option for mapmakers would be to go south to include Imperial County but that is not a good choice for any Republican – but would be welcomed by Perez.  This is a county that traditionally supports a candidate with a Latino surname yet San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom beat Lt. Governor Abel Maldonado by more than 6 points.  Every Republican statewide candidate lost this county by a large number in the November election.

The possible options as a result of this census data are limitless.  However, a few things are starting to clear up just based on the facts at hand — some Republican members of Congress are going to be in jeopardy once these new districts come out of the redistricting commission.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 19th, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.