A CA gerrymander could shake up its Democratic hierarchy

from Dan WaltersCalMatters

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Democratic politicians across California — those already in office and those aspiring — are predicting that voters will redraw the state’s 52 congressional districts next month and create new career opportunities.

The assumption is well founded. A a recent CBS News survey found that 62 percent of the state’s likely voters, driven by contempt for President Donald Trump, would accept Proposition 50plan to transfer five more congressional seats to Democrats, even though they already have 43.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s gerrymander would offset pro-Republican redistricting schemes in Texas and other states that Trump is seeking to retain or perhaps expand the slim GOP majority in the House next year.

Since Prop. 50 looks like a bump, incumbent Democratic members of Congress and candidate candidates are scrambling to figure out who will run for what — no small feat. To create the new seats, Democratic political mappers must spread the party’s 10.4 million voters more thinly, reducing its margins in districts it already holds.

Nor has California been immune to the Democrats’ generational conflict since their loss to Trump last year following the ousting of an elderly and clearly damaged President Joe Biden.

A politician states that “fully half of older Democrats in the state House will face same-party challengers next year . . .”

The most interesting example is in San Francisco, where in 1985 Representative Nancy Pelosithe former speaker of the House of Representatives, who has held her seat in Congress for nearly 40 years, has already won over two primary opponents, although she has not announced whether she will run again.

First up was Saikat Chakrabarty, 39, a former campaign aide and staffer for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who epitomized the young progressives who resented their party’s geriatric leadership.

His candidacy forced the issue for state Sen. Scott Wiener, who at 55 is no spring chicken. He has been patiently waiting for years for Pelosi to retire. Wiener announced his candidacy this week, telling the New York Times, “The world is changing. I’ve made a decision that it makes sense to get into the race now because I’m passionate about San Francisco having the best performance possible.”

Pelosi won’t announce her intentions until Prop. 50. But if she retires, she probably wants to choose her successor — which is how she got her seat in Congress in 1987.

San Francisco politics has a long history of being controlled by several powerful factions, the most famous of which was created in the 1950s by Willie Brownbrothers Philip and John Burton and George Moscone.

Both Burtons have served in Congress. John Burton was a longtime legislative leader, and Moscone, then the city’s mayor, was assassinated in 1978.

Brown, now 91 and the only one of them still alive, wields enormous influence in the city, having been the longest-serving speaker of the assembly and won two terms as mayor. He was instrumental in the careers of Newsom and former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Pelosi, born into a powerful political family in Baltimore, continued the family business in 1963 after she married Paul Pelosi, scion of a powerful San Francisco family, and moved to his city.

She was integrated into the Brown-Burton-Moscon organization. When Philip Burton died in 1983, his widow Sala took his seat in Congress and then, before she died in 1987, named Pelosi as her successor.

San Francisco media have speculated that if Pelosi steps down, she may favor Connie Chan, a city supervisor, as her successor, noting that Chan was the only local official who spoke alongside Pelosi at a recent Prop. rally. 50. But there is also talk that daughter Christine Pelosi may want to succeed her mother.

That’s how things have been going in San Francisco for decades. Will it last or is evolution up in the air?

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.