A recent column in the Orange County Register titled “Making sense of pre-election polls” quotes Rose Institute Fellow Douglas Johnson. Published on October 22nd, the article features Johnson discussing how while the “bipartisan gerrymander of 2001 may have protected incumbent state legislators from serious challenges but probably hurt Democrats later.”
The article describes how “even though Democrats had the majority in the Legislature in 2001, they teamed up with Republicans to make sure each had very safe seats at election time. And now the state Democratic Party is endorsing Proposition 27, which would make sure legislators get to draw the lines again instead of the independent commission approved by voters in 2008 as Proposition 11.”
According to Johnson, if the 2001 district lines had not been gerrymandering, “the national Democratic wave of 2006 and 2008 might have given Democrats two-thirds majority in Sacramento…With two-thirds of both houses, they could have passed a state budget without needing Republican votes or even a signature from the governor.”
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