{"id":13273,"date":"2011-03-18T01:12:42","date_gmt":"2011-03-18T01:12:42","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-03-18T01:12:42","modified_gmt":"2011-03-18T01:12:42","slug":"partisan-redistricting-commission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2011\/03\/18\/partisan-redistricting-commission\/","title":{"rendered":"Partisan Redistricting Commission?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in February I wrote about the efforts of the new Citizens Redistricting Commission<\/a> to hire a consultant to help them draw our new districts and how Republicans were trying to blow up the process.<\/p>\n

Well on Saturday the Commission will finally be making a decision and the Reps are still at it. One of the two finalists is the Rose Institute. The LA Times, Sacramento Bee and California Journal have all called Rose a Republican-oriented, conservative organization.<\/p>\n

Running the project for Rose is Doug Johnson. Johnson is a registered Republican who was once the Legislative Director for Republican Congressman Steve Horn. He worked for the Republican-dominated Florida State Senate on redistricting, which passed a Republican partisan gerrymander. A federal court found, “The Republican-controlled legislature intended to maximize the number of Republican congressional and legislative seats through the redistricting process.”<\/p>\n

Even worse, two of the final four candidates for the Commission’ attorney charged with protect the federal voting rights of California’s diverse electorate are also hard-core Republicans. One firm, Nielsen, Merksamer, has represented Republicans in statewide redistricting litigation. Partner Steven Merksamer was chief of staff to Governor Deukmejian. Attorney Daniel Kolkey from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher was Governor Wilson’s Legal Affairs Secretary and represented him during the 1990 redistricting cases.<\/p>\n

We need to step up and make clear to Commissioners that they have been charged by the people of California with drawing lines in a fair and impartial manner and hiring a Republican line-drawer and Republican attorney would be a serious violation of the public’s trust. Send your comments to votersfirstact@crc.ca.gov. The deadline is Friday at 1 PM. For those in the Sacramento area, you can attend their hearing on Saturday at 9 AM in Room 447 of the State Capitol.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in February I wrote about the efforts of the new Citizens Redistricting Commission<\/a> to hire a consultant to help them draw our new districts and how Republicans were trying to blow up the process.<\/p>\n

Well on Saturday the Commission will finally be making a decision and the Reps are still at it. One of the two finalists is the Rose Institute. The LA Times, Sacramento Bee and California Journal have all called Rose a Republican-oriented, conservative organization.<\/p>\n

Running the project for Rose is Doug Johnson. Johnson is a registered Republican who was once the Legislative Director for Republican Congressman Steve Horn. He worked for the Republican-dominated Florida State Senate on redistricting, which passed a Republican partisan gerrymander. A federal court found, “The Republican-controlled legislature intended to maximize the number of Republican congressional and legislative seats through the redistricting process.”<\/p>\n

Even worse, two of the final four candidates for the Commission’ attorney charged with protect the federal voting rights of California’s diverse electorate are also hard-core Republicans. One firm, Nielsen, Merksamer, has represented Republicans in statewide redistricting litigation. Partner Steven Merksamer was chief of staff to Governor Deukmejian. Attorney Daniel Kolkey from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher was Governor Wilson’s Legal Affairs Secretary and represented him during the 1990 redistricting cases.<\/p>\n

We need to step up and make clear to Commissioners that they have been charged by the people of California with drawing lines in a fair and impartial manner and hiring a Republican line-drawer and Republican attorney would be a serious violation of the public’s trust. Send your comments to votersfirstact@crc.ca.gov. The deadline is Friday at 1 PM. For those in the Sacramento area, you can attend their hearing on Saturday at 9 AM in Room 447 of the State Capitol.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[190],"class_list":["post-13273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-190"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-3s5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}