California: Fragmented, or what?By Tim Redmond
Calitics is awash with talk about the new Field Poll on California demographics And although the SF Chron has ignored it, ol' Dan Walters at the Sacto Bee is all over it, lamenting that the poll shows "the division of a once-cohesive society into its many component parts."
Robert Cruikshank takes issue with Walters:
California's society has never, ever been cohesive. Not in the 20th century, not in the 19th century, not even during the dozens of millennia of Native American settlement. Certainly our electorate hasn't been cohesive. Until the 1950s state politics were defined by an urban-rural split with a crosscutting cleavage (apologies for the poli sci jargon) of intensive racial division. Even after the legal barriers of racial exclusion came down at mid-century segregation and discrimination persisted.
All of which is certainly true. He continues:
Some fragmentation is likely to continue. Californians are continuing to self-segregate according to political preference, leaving only the newer and affordable exurbs as the few places in the state up-for-grabs.
And blames the political structure:
What I see as the main problem facing California is obsolescence. Our government and our politics are still stuck in 1978. We've had fragmentation and a well-governed state, and fragmentation and a badly-governed state. That suggests to me we need to look at a system of governance that has remained almost unchanged since 1978 despite all the demographic changes reported in the Field Poll.
Again, true -- and getting rid of the two-thirds majority for budget approval would make a big difference. It wouldn't, however, undo all of the other awful things about state politics, including Prop. 218, which makes it almost impossible for local government to raise taxes, and Prop. 13, which is in many ways the root cause of the state's total economic meltdown.
Paul Hogarth at Beyond Chron imagines
a California where the state legislature passes a budget by majority rule, and you can register to vote on Election Day. Three Strikes has been reformed to require the third “strike” to be a violent felony, and we have single-payer health care. The wealthy pay a higher income tax rate, and – just like in Alaska and Texas – oil companies must pay a modest tax for the privilege of extracting oil.
And Hogart argues that the progressives need to take back the initiative process to make that happen.
For once, I'm going to be the downer here: I don't see progressives winning a whole lot of major statewide initiatives that make structural reforms in California government. We can win one or two -- we can certainly overturn Prop. 8, and maybe repeal the two-thirds tax rule.
But the state is so big now that to run an effective initiative campaign requires big, big money -- and that's proven impossible for the left to raise on a consistent basis. If we had a membership organization like the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association (only bigger), and a million liberal Californians each put up $100 a year for a targeted series of initiative campaigns (by the way, sign me up), we could talk seriously about this. But otherwise, I don't see where the cash is coming from -- the cash to defeat the insurance industry, the oil industry, and the anti-tax industry.
What I do see is Cruikshank's point that Californians are self-segregating -- not by race but by political preference. We are not one state anymore; we are at least two and probably three distinct psychographic and political entities --and that doesn't have to be bad.
What's wrong with liberals wanting to live in a liberal community and conservatives wanting to live in a conservative community? Why can't we look at real political reform -- either break up California or create a set of semi-autonomous ministates with the right to make their own economic and tax policy?
We are all becoming environmental locavores these days: Eat local, shop local, create sustainable cities ... why not take that a step further? Why not political locavorism? Why not focus our reform efforts on the idea of giving much more power to cities and counties, particularly the power to raise (or cut) taxes? How about creating real regional government entities? I'd rather run a campaign to repeal Prop. 13 in the Bay Area than in California as a whole.
I'm not saying this is perfect, and I know that in the civil rights era, liberals wanted a strong federal government to force racist states in the deep south to respect basic human rights. But maybe on economic policy (and to a significant extent, on social policy) money has so come to dominate politics that the only way for progressives to win is to make the playing field more manageable.
It works for district elections in San Francisco: None of the progressives on the board today would have won a citywide race. Cut the voter population down and you can win with grassroots organizing instead of tens of millions of dollars.
Just a thought.
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Comments (8)
Fuck me, you have ignored it too until some one else did the reporting! Do you classify your 'yoke' as a newspaper and yourselves as reporters?
Posted by Shane | August 4, 2009 09:14 PM
Tim - and what happens when these "semi-autonomous ministates" don't vote the way you or the Guardian wants? Do you then break them up until you get the desired result - eventually ending up with "semi-autonomous ministates" composed of a few string of blocks in the Haight, Noe Valley and the Inner-Richmond?
I think you inadvertently exposed the whole reason for NOT undergoing your little experiment: "None of the progressives on the board today would have won a citywide race."
Uhhh - exactly.
Turning the rest of the Bay Area into an enormous homeless encampment where government is run by, for and about Non Profit Inc. and no one but the very poor qualifies for housing assistance sounds just about as bad, if not worse, than the fucked up situation we have currently.
I mean - even Chris Daly is fleeing this place. If he doesn't want to deal with the mess he and the other "progressives" on the board have created then why should we?
Posted by Lucretia Snapples | August 4, 2009 11:48 PM
That's exactly it.
TR wants to gerrymander the political boundaries until there is the perfect little microcosm where his way out ideas cans crape 51% of the vote.
Posted by Tom Foley | August 5, 2009 04:37 AM
Folks, you all miss the point. It's not that small districts are ideologically pure -- it's that you can run campaigns without a lot of money. The reason David Campos or Eric Mar would have trouble getting elected citywide has nothing to do with their politics or qualifications, and everything to to with the fact that a citywide race requires upwards of $300,000 -- and you can only raise that kind of money from business interests.
Same statewide: A campaign to reach 17 million California voters and give them a fair debate on the issues is far too expensive (unless you're the insurance industry).
Posted by tim redmond | August 5, 2009 12:45 PM
The teacher's unions seems to do just fine with getting statewide ballot measures passed. As a matter of fact most of the unions have a pretty swell time passing ballot measures, so it's not "far too expensive," you just have to have a compelling message.
Posted by Lucretia Snapples | August 5, 2009 02:15 PM
The teachers union has a lot of money. So do some other unions (prison guards, for example). But I don't think state or local political decisions should be controlled by any interest group, union or business or anyone else, just because they have big money.
As long as Buckley v. Valeo remains in place, and the government can't regulate campaign spending, it's going to be impossible to have intelligent discussions around initiatives in California; the state is just too big.
Posted by tim redmond | August 5, 2009 02:36 PM
Tim is raising important dilemmas of representation that have no simple answers. But there ARE better methods than what we are doing now. Here is a link to a reform proposal for how we could elect the state legislature in a way that would respect the state's regions, allow broad and diverse representation, and actually bring us closer together as a state in the process:
http://www.newamerica.net/publications/policy/remapping_nation_without_states
Posted by Representation for All | August 5, 2009 04:19 PM
Tim,
I realize your idea was more an idle speculation than a serious policy proposal. But even so, the logical flaws in your thinking should be exposed.
Your idea to further balkanize Bay Area politics is ironic because in fact if you take any other major U.S. urban area with a population similar to the Bay Area (5 million or so), they have one single, unified political administration (NY, LA, Chicago, Houston).
It is already idiosyncratic that the Bay Area should have eleven. And to recommend fragmenting that further smacks more of political opportunism than sound reality. Indeed it is the current fragmentation which explains why, for instance, nearly all Oakland's major shopping is in Emeryville. While all the big box stores are immediately south of the San Francisco County line. Why San Jose is so much more attractive to business. And so on.
These anomalies shouldn't happen. And if San Francisco really could vote to excuse itself from Proposition 13, what do you think all the homeowners would do? They'd sell up and buy 7 miles north, east or south.
You appear to see the fatal flaw in your plan yourself though. If we could use our time machine and go back and change the result of the American Civil War, we would have a result closer to your model. And about a dozen States would still have slavery. What you win on the swings, you would lose on the roundabouts.
Take the good with the bad, Mr Redmond. It's the American way. And why we have Constitutions.
Posted by Tom Foley | August 6, 2009 12:56 AM