Opinion: Democrats’ “ultimate budget solution”: Dominate

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As lawmakers continue dickering with the governor and each other over the 2008-09 state budget, overdue by 44 days, state Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres sent an e-mail plea Wednesday to Democrats calling on them to work for ‘the ultimate solution’: snagging two-thirds of the Legislature and making Republicans superfluous not just during most of the legislative year, but at budget time as well.

Torres asked party loyalists to give money to help grab six seats in which Republicans are being termed out and Democrats have their first shot in years. Closest to home, conservative Republican Tom McClintock is leaving the Ventura County 19th Senate District, which (oddly) abuts perhaps the state’s most liberal Democratic zone, centered in Malibu. Moderate Republican Shirley Horton has been able to keep her 78th Assembly District, south of San Diego, in her party for six years but it hasn’t been easy. Sole legislative Latina Republican Bonnie Garcia – the one Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger once called “very hot” (and who in turn offered that she wouldn’t kick Schwarzenegger out of bed) –- is leaving her Palm Springs-area 80th Assembly seat. The other three seats targeted by Torres represent the region stretching from the Sierra foothills to the Bay Area and centered on Sacramento itself.

As it is, Democrats are by far the majority in the Capitol and really don’t have to give the minority Republicans the time of day – and generally don’t – until they need 54 votes in the Assembly (they currently hold 48 seats, but one is virtually empty due to illness) and 27 in the Senate (they have 25). That happens in only two circumstances: when they are trying to raise taxes, courtesy of Proposition 13’s two-thirds requirement, or when they are adopting a budget, due to a Depression-era two-thirds law. Then they have to give up much of their platform in a bid to pick off the few Republican votes they need to get across the finish line.

One Democratic response has been to try to eliminate the two-thirds budget requirement, and that would make a great deal of sense. It’s a threshold shared only with Arkansas and Rhode Island, hardly in the same budget league as California. It gives the minority party disproportionate influence in the state. It has made the budget late almost every year for the last decade.

But it’s not going to change. Voters rejected a 2004 ballot measure that would have lowered the budget and tax threshold to 55%. Republicans have lost seats in both houses, but the closer they get to the one-third margin, the harder they will fight (and with good reason) to hold on to the supermajority laws. So Democrats naturally are turning to the electoral option. If they win a few more seats in each house they will have enough votes to thumb their noses at Republicans all year long.

That situation puts into context the Democratic Party panic over redistricting, especially this year’s Proposition 11. In theory, both parties would be giving up their duopoly over drawing district lines, but the GOP is a lot more comfortable with a format that could give Republican candidates a better shot at winning districts that currently have them pushed to their last finger-hold on legislative relevance. Democrats know that a process outside their control could easily set back their quest for an unassailable two thirds in each house.

So they work to defeat Proposition 11 (pdf) and to make the two-thirds law moot. Their chief weapon in McClintock’s district is liberal and environmental icon Hannah-Beth Jackson. She faces her ideological opposite, Tony Strickland. So much for the idea that swing districts make for more moderate candidates.

Horton’s district is a toss-up between former San Diego State Dean Marty Block, the Democrat, and Chula Vista Councilman John McCann, the Republican. Garcia’s pits former Palm Springs Police Chief Gary Jeandron (Republican) against school board member Manuel Perez (Democrat).

If the Democrats win these three and the three up north besides, and hang on to the rest of their seats, they’ll still be one short of the budget margin in each house. But they’ll be within easy pick-off distance.

So part of the budget negotiation that may now be reaching its final hours is how deeply the Democrats would lock themselves into an agreement today that they can’t get out of after election day, when the numbers may change. If they agree, for example, to a sales tax that rises now but falls below the current level in two or three years, can they live with it –- if they will soon have the votes to keep the sales tax intact instead of letting it decline?

Republicans know what Democrats are thinking, and if they are to agree to a temporary sales tax increase, they’ll want some way to lock in the future decline. That will be tough, though, if they lose their power minority of one-third-plus-one in each house.