As I mentioned earlier, the Supreme Court decided a few things on redistricting today. Obviously this is a major blow to the Republicans. Let the whining commence:

Republican State Sen. Mimi Walters of Laguna Niguel, a leader of the referendum drive, blasted the ruling as “shortsighted and disrespectful” of California voters who signed petitions and are awaiting the opportunity to vote on the commission’s Senate maps.

“They kind of gutted the whole idea behind the referendum process,” said Dave Gilliard, another leader of the drive to kill the maps.

Peter Yao, current chairman of the commission, countered that use of the commission maps is important to maintain electoral stability and that the challenge is based on “partisan self interest” that has “cost precious taxpayer dollars to defend.”(SacBee)

Except that, as the court stated in the decision the power of referendum isn’t the only constitutional right in question in this case. The power of referendum, which grants to 5 percent of the state’s voters the power to put to a vote, does not override all other constitutional rights.

But whine as they may, the Commission’s maps do present a very good Democratic opportunity to pick up that fateful 27th seat.  With Sen. Blakeslee already saying he wouldn’t run in the Commission’s district, there are few routes for the Republicans to maintain 14 seats. Possible, certainly, but they’ll need a pretty strong election cycle.

It is all rather ironic, really. Now that Schwarzenegger got his wish in the redistricting initiative, the Republicans are freaking out. While the Republicans (and ProPublica) whine that the system was gamed, six Republican appointees just finalized (mostly) the process.

As was said on Twitter by many Sacramento-watchers, what could the CRP have done with all the money they just wasted on this measure. It now seems rather hard to fathom that the CRP either has the resources to pass this measure, or would even want to.  Who knows what other map is around the corner. This was really all about stalling the Commission maps for a cycle. It would have been expensive and unlikely that they could defeat the maps, and the CRP knew that. They were just hoping to hold on for one more cycle.

So much for that.  I’ll be posting a brief summary of the legal opinion shortly.