Why the 2010 Redistricting Matters Locally

The recent rant by Rancho Cucamonga's own Bob Dutton, our state senator, against another local Republican, Anthony Adams, serves to remind us of how much the upcoming redistricting matters. Our current district lines provide simply too many safe havens for either abundant lunacy and/or apathy, which provides manna from heaven for elected crooks and loony-tunes. Even more to the root of the problem is that the existing districting pattern encourges all sorts of artifical divisions that are self-defeating for nearly everyone in our region.

No one is happy with the budget deal that the governor signed on Friday. No one should be happy with the cuts, tax increases and further state indebtedness that it takes to close a $42 billion deficit. But what State Assembyman Adams of Claremont did, when he cast one of the six GOP vots needed in both the Assembly and the Senate, was necessary and wise. The alternative was to plunge the state into insolvancy. Which is why it is utterly repulsive to those of us who value good governance and hard-headed realism, to witness the petulant meltdown of Senator Bob Dutton. Did he expect his untenable stance of "new new taxes," to prevail? What happened is what had to happen. His house of joker cards came crashing down as reality told us it should. What should happen next is a fundamental reappraisal of Dutton's own Reaganesque approach to governing, instead of his childish threat to strip Assemblyman Adams of his position within the San Bernardino GOP apparatus.

We see many Bob Duttons proliferating in the safe enclaves provided for wing-nuttery in the various state and national office districts that ring our local mountains. I refer to the relatively affulent and largely white foothill districts that are occupied by the likes of Jerry Lewis, David Dreier, Gary Miller, Ken Calvert, Bob Dutton, Bob Huff, Bill Emmerson and other right wingers who uniformly have supported deregulatory and other reckless policies that have brought us all to the brink of another depression. To know one is to know them all. Recently, the Daily Bulletin reported on candidates for the Rancho Cucamonga city council, and what we heard from them was ditto-headedness on steriods. It was little else but one-upmanship attacks on liberals, who apparently are more of a civic threat than criminals, meth-heads, foreclosures and other features of a community in crisis and a falling economy.

When I think of the upcoming 2010 redistricting, which will be the first to be fashioned by a party other than the state legislature, my thoughts are split between what should happen and what is likely to happen. What is likely to happen is that incumbants will prevail and get district lines that preserve entrenched power balances. But a man can dream, and I hope that the panel will wield pens that move north to south rather than east to west. It has always seemed strange that a city like my own Upland, is tied politically to places like Redlands and Arcadia, with which it shares only superficial similarities, than Ontario, with which it shares a history and many other ties.

Another rationale for having new lines drawn with a north-south orientation, is to break up the "good old boy" networks that dominate politics on the valley floor. If politics in the foothills is dominated by cabals of right-wingers, politics on the flats is dominated by deeply entrenched cabals of men and women on the make and take. Whether in Pomona or in Ontario, the city council players take advantage of the inattention of a largely apathetic and uninformed local electorate to reward friends and punish enemies. Even though Ontario seems to assidously avoid racial politics, inspite of some prominent examples to the contrary, and Pomona seems to play that card with relish, both cities end up being governed with the end game of getting the more ambitious elected upwards and outwards. Congressman Joe Baca seems to be the very epitome of the other kind of dysfunction we end up with, a deal-maker that no one who is interested in common development and good governance can trust. Oh how we miss Congressman George Brown, a Democrat we could be proud of.

While Democrats in the foothills face the naturally demoralizing consequences of perpetually being out of power, it seems to me that we are in better shape than Democrats who are demoralized by having distasteful rouges and sell-outs in power. Breaking up the status quo could enable new dynamics that will give progressive Democrats real opportunties to govern. I see it as mixing in the political vigor and networking of foothill Democrats with the untapped voting power of the natural Democrats who are clustered in the flats. The marriage of the two disempowered factors could produce a Tom Bradley coaliton that flattens the towering arrogance of the local GOP cliques that now dominate the hills, and that elevates the political life and the concept of what constitutes community interests in the valley.

2010 is coming fast. It is time to get a discussion going on how we can take advantage of the opportunities that could open up like Spring after a prolonged Winter.