33rd Congressional District: A "Non-Partisan Gerrymander"

Barbell or dumbell, the redistricting which has cut Torrance in two and joined the South Bay to Beverly Hills has many heads wagging politicos pondering, but not in a good way.

Someone should have barred this dumb set-up when South Bay residents had the chance to sound the alarm.

Only one member of the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, Michael Ward, descried the "ribbon of shame" along the Western most part of Dockweiler Beach, which has joined together two of the most similarly dissimilar of regions in Southern California. He even interviewed on Channel Four News with Conan Nolan, only to be rebuffed and snuffed out altogether.

Malibu and Beverly Hills have nothing in common with Manhattan Beach and Palos Verdes beyond wealth and "white-ness", whatever the second element means. Yet no two sections could be more distinct and disparate than Hollywood and the Hollywood Riviera of South Torrance.

I thought that giving the responsibility of redistricting to a "non-partisan" commission would have put aside questions of race and class in this state, both of which unjustly inform our politics, and that to the detriment of everyone.

I am most disturbed by the growing notion that the South Bay hugging the Pacific Ocean will be answering to a long-reigning incumbent who has rarely bothered to mount a campaign for reelection in many decades. Henry Waxman has already indicated that he can carry the entire district without even campaigning in the sliver South of Dockweiler. Voters who approved Prop 27 envisioned districts in which state and federal officials would be more accountable and more conciliatory with the opposition. Perhaps this dramatic shift in representation will benefit wide swathes of the state, but the residents of El Segundo to South Torrance will once again by afflicted with playing second-fiddle to a Congressman who coasts into office on the long waves of Los Angeles liberalism.

At least Proposition 14, sponsored by Republican Moderate and former Lieutenant Governor Abel Maldonado, ensures that every politician in this state will face some opposition in the general election, even if the candidate running against is from the same party. Intraparty strife may better serve the business and environmental interests than the Red-Blue rivalry that has benefited the Democrats most of the time.