California will still have the largest delegation with 52 seats, but one fewer district could force members into campaign clashes. | Mario Tama/Getty Images
OAKLAND — Slow-growing California is losing a House seat for the first time, setting off an unprecedented political reshuffle that will ripple through every level of government.
California’s elected officials and prospective challengers have spent months in a campaign holding pattern, waiting to see how U.S. Census Bureau data would reshape the state legislature and congressional seats. The announcement Monday was expected after trickling growth in a state with a severe housing shortage and high costs. Redistricting could set off a cascade of decisions if incumbents with less favorable districts decide not to seek reelection.
“I think people are waiting and I think there will be a two-week period when you see a billion different announcements,” Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon said recently in an interview.
California will still have the largest delegation with 52 seats, but one fewer district could force members into campaign clashes. No one has forgotten the acrimonious 2012 contest between Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman and former Democratic Rep. Howard Berman when they were redistricted into a faceoff.
Demographic trends suggest that California's lost seat will come from the greater Los Angeles area, a region with no shortage of ambitious Democratic elected officials. Los Angeles County itself lost population last year while outlying counties like Riverside and San Bernardino grew, potentially presaging district shifts.
The older age of California’s congressional delegation has injected another element of uncertainty. Close to a third of the caucus will be 70 or older by November 2022, and political observers believe some of those incumbents could retire rather than adapt to new districts. That could yield a generational changing of the guard with broad implications for California politics.
“Do they keep going or do they retire, especially if it looks like Democrats are going to lose the House?” said Democratic campaign consultant Andrew Acosta.
In addition to keeping an eye out for open House seats, members of the Legislature are waiting to see how their own districts will be affected. They could see the demographics of their electorates shift significantly. Adding another wrinkle, California law requires state legislators to live in the districts they represent.
“There’s definitely candidates that are trying to decide whether or not they’re going to run in 2022 and the district lines will be the determining factor,” said Republican consultant Dave Gilliard. “They’re waiting to see if they need to move if they’ve going to run because their homes may not be in the districts their homes are in, whether they’re going to be in competitive districts or not.”
The fluid situation has frozen some potential challengers’ campaigns. But it has also created a dilemma for current officeholders who must lay initial groundwork “not just in their existing district but in what they think may be their district,” said Darry Sragow, who publishes the nonpartisan, election-handicapping California Target Book.
“That’s not easy to do because you don’t want to step on anyone’s toes. There’s a certain etiquette to this,” Sragow said.
We won’t know for a while: the deadline for new maps has already been bumped to mid-December due to the monthslong delay of Census Bureau data and may get moved again.
While California remains America’s most populous state, its growth has steadily slowed as more people move elsewhere. One critical factor is the high cost of living — particularly exorbitant housing costs, which adults consistently cite as a major problem. Many Californians have shifted to lower-cost areas within the state, but some have chosen to depart: a third of adults told a recent Public Policy Institute of California that housing costs had prompted them to consider relocating beyond state borders.
“It’s largely a story of domestic outmigration, with some slight decline in immigration as well,” said PPIC Senior Fellow Eric McGhee. “The longer-term pattern is typically that better-educated, more wealthy people are coming into the state and blue-collar, poorer people are going out of the state, and that implies that there’s a cost of living thing going on.”
California Republicans immediately seized on those trendlines as evidence of Democratic mismanagement. California Republican Party chair Jessica Millan Patterson, who previously told POLITICO the party had been deeply involved in redistricting in an effort to ensure "our communities are heard and that we get the best possible lines for the next 10 years," said in a statement Monday that the loss of a seat came because "years of failed Democrat policies have taken our state backward."
"Thanks to America’s worst governor, Gavin Newsom, and his Democrat supermajorities, California is the capital of homelessness and poverty, suffocating gas and income tax rates, and the highest number of residents picking up and moving to more affordable and welcoming states," Patterson said in a statement. "Californians will have one less voice to speak for us in Washington, which proves yet again that it’s time for change and real leadership."
The state has undergone dramatic demographic change in recent decades. The shares of Latino and Asian American residents have grown as its white population has declined, reshaping the electorate and yielding an evermore diverse body of elected officials. Redistricting could amplify those trends and increases the risk of primary challenges if incumbents are less matched to their districts.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, said Mindy Romero, who leads the Center for Inclusive Democracy at the University of Southern California. Romero noted that “many communities of color, low-income communities” have felt disconnected from their elected officials and disengaged with politics. A shrinking House delegation could create a trade-off, Romero said, of fewer but more representative seats.
“When you redraw the lines, you open up the possibility of new leadership, of new political alliances, new mobilizing and organizing opportunities in a community,” Romero said. “If those representatives we have after this process is done better represent the overall needs of Californians and reflect the makeup and desires of California communities, you could make a case that better makeup of a slightly smaller number might actually be more impactful in Congress for Californians.”
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