Comments on: Supreme Court denies redistricting challenges

By: Tom Benigno

Tom Benigno — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 23:50:03 +0000

Allan Payton:
Did you voice your concerns at the meeting, or they wouldn’t let you speak? If not you should have walked out of the meeting in protest, that would have got their attention. If the citizen’s can’t speak at these meeting why have them. As I have always said if you can debate them you can beat them. Quoted by myself Tom Benigno.

By: John W

John W — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:52:16 +0000

Allan Payton,

Yes, I agree. The new supervisor districting is a definite improvement but could have been better, as you stated. In San Ramon, I was in the same district as Discovery Bay. At least that’s no longer the case, no thanks to the other three sups you referenced.

By: Allen Payton

Allen Payton — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 14:52:30 +0000

John W – as for the process by the CC Board of Supervisors, I would also prefer an independent commission redrawing their lines. In fact, Supe Gioia predicted if they didn’t redraw the lines in a common sense way, that would happen.

But, to be fair, at least they used the plan our Contra Costa Citizens Redistricting Task Force developed, which by far garnered the most support county-wide, as the basis for their final plan. Both Supes Gioia and Glover supported plans very similar to ours, but none of the three ladies on the Board would.

So we have the gerrymandered plan that they ended up adopting. But, it’s close and better than the previous districts and the others some of the Supes proposed.

By: John W

John W — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 20:40:55 +0000

Hey, I don’t like the fact that San Ramon was drawn into the Stark district. But I’ll take this independent process any day over the corrupt, incumbent-protection system that previously existed. Too bad Contra Costa County didn’t have a similar process for supervisor districts. No way was the commission going to make all of us happy. It’s a tough job. They did it, and the court wisely and unanimously [emphasis on "unanimously"] recognized there were no legal grounds for it to micromanage the outcome. When this thing started, it was both Democratic and Republican party and elected officials who opposed it, especially including Congressional districting in the process. I’d love to see a more balanced mix of moderate Repubs and moderate Dems running the show in California. But Repubs do everything imaginable to stay out of the game.

By: Tom Benigno

Tom Benigno — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 19:13:46 +0000

Nuts:
As a former member of the republican central committee and a candidate for congress,in lite of the situation,I see no way of winning for most of the republican candidates in 2012 and beyond. I’m confident, as WW2 GENERAL MARK CLARK responded to a German officer as he asked the U.S. General to surrender,Clarks response was NUTS’..!!! SO THE REPUBLICANS RESPONSE SHOULD BE NUTS’TO THE SUPREME COURT.

By: Allen Payton

Allen Payton — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 08:28:24 +0000

That’s unfortunate on the congressional districts lawsuit. I was at the Commission meeting, the day the Commission created the final East Bay congressional districts and gave input, and witnessed how their decisions on where to draw the lines were based on clearly false information.

Commissioner Galambos Malloy from Oakland repeatedly, falsely stated they couldn’t follow COI (Community of Interest) testimony – given by over 300 people from the East Bay – to use the East Bay hills as the natural dividing line between districts, as it would affect the Monterey County Section 5 District.

That was not true, and not only did a group of us provide the Commission two sets of maps demonstrating that they could use the East Bay hills as the dividing line without impacting not even Santa Clara County, much less Monterey County, but a staff member of their own hired consultants, Q2, presented them a map alternative showing the same thing.

The Commission chose to ignore the public input – a requirement of the process – and instead created districts that: 1. split Antioch and Martinez while keeping the largest city in the East Bay, Oakland, whole; 2. splitting off San Ramon from the rest of the San Ramon Valley and put it in a separate congressional district; and 3. protected the three East Bay Democrat incumbents – Lee, Miller and Stark. Whether or not that was the intent, it was the result.

I fault not only Gallambos Malloy for misleading the rest of the Commissioners, but also Commissioner Blanco who pushed to have Richmond included in the same congressional district as Central Contra Costa county connecting the two areas by San Pablo Dam and Alhambra Valley Roads, which makes no sense, clearly violating their own policy of geographic commonality.

By the way, one of the plans we submitted – both in time before the Commission’s cut-off for public input, and both which I drew using the same software Q2 used to draw the statewide maps, called Maptitude – was based on their final draft maps of the East Bay CD’s and only affected five districts in Alameda, Contra Costa and Solano Counties.

Unfortunately, the lawsuit didn’t include that information and the Supremes thus denied the will of the people of the East Bay.

So we’re stuck with the districts the flawed Redistricting Commission gave us.