Schwarzenegger has plans for a mid-census redistricting of California perhaps to gain seats for the GOP in the House of Representatives like Tom Delay did in Texas. Below the fold are excerpts from an article in the
Sacramento Bee , .
A chamber of commerce official who served on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's transition team and is legal counsel to the governor's wife is launching a campaign to take redistricting powers away from the Democratic-controlled Legislature....
That could lay the groundwork for a ballot initiative campaign in 2006 - or earlier, if Schwarzenegger calls a special election to put before voters any of a variety of changes he is considering to the structure of state government and operations of the Legislature.
Lawmakers currently are elected from districts put in place in 2001 in a plan signed by former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis. Those new maps resulted from an agreement between the Democrats in the Legislature who controlled the once-a-decade redistricting process and Republican leaders, one that largely preserved the partisan status quo.
Schwarzenegger for weeks has floated the idea of a midcensus redistricting to be done by a nonpartisan panel of retired judges....
State Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres said the governor is using that reasoning as a pretense to shift the balance of power in his favor, and that business leaders who support him are doing so because "they think they'd get more Republicans."