SACRAMENTO - California's voter-created citizens commission on Monday certified the state's new legislative and congressional maps, scrambling the political landscape and setting off a wide-open campaign season next year.
The new maps appear to favor Democrats, putting the party in position to strengthen its influence in an already solidly blue state.
The 14-member California Citizens Redistricting Commission voted on final maps for Congress, the Legislature and the Board of Equalization, which administers sales and use taxes. The panel released drafts two weeks ago but gave formal approval Monday.
The new state Assembly, Senate and Board of Equalization maps were approved 13-1, with Republican commissioner Michael Ward voting in opposition. Ward, of Anaheim, and another Republican commissioner, Jodie Filkins Webber of Norco, voted against the new congressional boundaries.
Ward issued a statement saying he thought the panel failed to adhere to the federal Voting Rights Act, which requires that minority groups be placed in the same district.
"This commission simply traded the partisan, backroom gerrymandering by the Legislature for partisan, backroom gerrymandering by average citizens," Ward wrote.
The panel chose to preserve the influence of African-American voters in the Los Angeles area by breaking the population up into three congressional districts rather than clustering that community into one district. Leaders in that region's black communities had feared they could lose at least one congressional district as a result of black people migrating from the urban core to the suburbs.
Ward said the commission had failed to apply the act consistently.
Political consultants who have been monitoring the panel's work all year said Democrats would gain more seats through the process simply because of the state's population shift, which includes an expanding Hispanic voting bloc. GOP officials have been reviewing the maps and avenues for possible challenges - likely in the form of a ballot referendum on the congressional and state Senate maps.
GOP party Chairman Tom Del Beccaro has said the commission split cities and towns into some unnatural pairings in its effort to accommodate various interest groups.
Ironically, it was Republicans who supported the ballot initiatives that took the once-a-decade redistricting responsibility away from the Legislature. Voters created the independent citizens commission in 2008 and expanded its authority to congressional districts in 2010.
- Judy Lin, The Associated Press
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