{"id":1756,"date":"2003-10-21T00:55:25","date_gmt":"2003-10-21T07:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mossback.org\/archives\/2003\/10\/to-burtonize-a-verb\/"},"modified":"2003-10-21T00:55:25","modified_gmt":"2003-10-21T07:55:25","slug":"to-burtonize-a-verb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/2003\/10\/21\/to-burtonize-a-verb\/","title":{"rendered":"To Burtonize: a verb"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tThere’s been a fair degree of whining on the left<\/a> about the audacity of Tom DeLay’s redistricting in Texas, simply because DeLay is a Republican and therefore a lightning rod for left-wing hate. There is apparently some democratic principle, knowable only to those with rarefied sensibilities, that dictates a state with a 60% Republican population<\/a> should be required to send a Congressional delegation to Washington with a Democratic majority in perpetuity. I don’t understand that kind of thinking. <\/p>\n

And I expect there will be the same sort of whining in California as the Ted Costa plan<\/a> nears the ballot, for pretty much the same reasons. California’s legislature and Congressional delegation are to the left of the population thanks to the 1980 district maps drawn up by the late Phillip Burton, elder brother of state Senate leader and major coke fiend John Burton. (Phillip’s life is chronicled in A Rage for Justice<\/i><\/a> by John Jacobs, a great read.)<\/p>\n

Burton’s 1980 map was the first use of computers in redistricting, although the driving force was Burton’s rabid partisanship. Check this description<\/a> on a notable members of Congress site (scroll down):<\/p>\n

\n

At least two political surnames have become verbs. “Gerrymandering” entered the political lexicon in 1812, in association with a formidable leader, Elbridge Gerry, and refers to “the drawing of legislative district boundary lines to obtain partisan or factional advantage.” (Plano, 1993, p. 140) Given the high stakes that ride on redrawing district boundary lines every decade, it may not be surprising that the verb “to burtonize” also has to do with political cartography. It derives from the work of Rep. Phil Burton, a Californian, whose computer-based skills after the 1980 census brought gerrymandering into a whole new level of precision….<\/p>\n

Nature abhors a vacuum, so when the legislature in Sacramento had given little thought to redistricting, Burton moved in. Officially, he was the Democratic congressional liaison to the state legislature; but politically he was the close ally of House Speaker Willie L. Brown, Jr, who later has become the mayor of San Francisco. Because Burton had an abrasive side, he also had a number of enemies in Sacramento — many of them Democrats.<\/p>\n

California had acquired two additional seats in Congress under the 1980 apportionment, raising its number of congressmen from 43 to 45. Most of this increase was owing to immigration into Republican-dominated southern California, and the districts in the San Francisco Bay area in 1981 were from sixty to eighty thousand people smaller than the Supreme Court’s one-person, one-vote dictum would have them be. <\/p>\n

Burton was the leader of the congressional Democrats, who held a paper-thin 22-to-21 majority. Early on, it was clear that Burton was seeking a potential Democratic of two seats by placing one of the two new districts that would be needed in central San Diego. Also, if another district were carved into the San Joaquin Valley, there was hope of gaining another Democratic seat in the Fresno area. The real challenge, however, was in the Bay Area. In addition to his brother John’s Fifth District and his own Sixth, there were those “undersized” districts represented by Vic Fazio (4th), Ron Dellums (8th), Fortney “Pete” Stark (9th), George Miller (7th), Don Edwards (10th), and Norman Mineta (13th). In addition, Hungarian-born Tom Lantos had won an unexpected upset of a Republican in the 11th District, and it seemed improbable that this additional seat could be retained. As one Democratic strategist observed, “It’s going to be a phenomenal feat to balance them in such a way that all five are preserved.”<\/p>\n

In the end, taking maximum advantage of computer technology, Burton redrew the state in a way that created five<\/u> new Democratic districts. His GOP congressional counterpart on the state redistricting panel fumed that the result was “bizarre,” and “an abomination,” and that Burton had “personally put his thumb print on the state of California.” (CQWR, 1981, 2155.). Burton loved being chastised however, and gleefully pointed out that the mean variance in population among the forty-five districts he had created was a scant 65 people! (CQWR, 1983, 2155.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Phillip Burton called his map his “contribution to modern art” because it was so ugly and obviously unfair, but he got it passed by creating safe seats for enough Republican incumbents to ensure its approval by the legislature, and the incumbency protection racket was born. Burtonized maps create special districts for minorities and Republicans that essentially guarantee regular re-election at the expense of obscurity: the holders of these seats never have to reach out to the majority with the kinds of policies that might win them acclaim and state-wide recognition. So California has no blacks and no Republicans in the US Senate or in statewide office except one, Swarzenegger, who was able to become famous outside politics. <\/p>\n

If California had a fair and straight district map, the legislature would be about 45% Republican instead of 36%, and legislative battles would be about policy instead of party loyalty. The Costa plan is even more dangerous to the anti-democratic spirit of the Left than the Recall was, and they fear it. <\/p>\n

We’re in the lull between elections right now, but expect the unions and the Casinos to pump all their spare cash into the defeat of this measure.<\/p>\n

See: Irish Lass<\/a> for more.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s been a fair degree of whining on the left about the audacity of Tom DeLay’s redistricting in Texas, simply because DeLay is a Republican and therefore a lightning rod for left-wing hate. There is apparently some democratic principle, knowable only to those with rarefied sensibilities, that dictates a state with a 60% Republican population … Continue reading “To Burtonize: a verb”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbifyw-sk","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bennett.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}