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Gerrymandering 101: A How-to Manual for Back Room Dealing

David Tabb Berkeley
Tuesday October 16, 2001

Editor: 

The Oct. 2 action by Berkeley Councilmembers Kriss Worthington, Linda Maio, Dona Spring, Maudelle Shirek and Margaret Breland to draw new council district boundary lines presents a classic how-to manual in the art of Back Room Dealing. It’s Gerrymandering 101 as follows: 

1) Proclaim yourselves champions of open government and letting the sun shine into all city decisions so that you can act otherwise. 

2) Meet privately behind closed doors with four members of the City Council of the same political persuasion. Be sure this closed-door group is all the same politically. After all, your purpose is to extend your power, not build consensus.  

3) Hammer out a proposal that gives your group the biggest political advantage, ignoring public comment from other groups, like the students, even though you have said you are their friend. Remember, your political purpose comes first. 

4) Keep your proposal a secret by not releasing it until just before the council votes. Show it to a few political friends who are not on the council so they can speak in favor of it. Show it ahead of time to the person who will provide the necessary fifth vote so she won’t have to ask many questions. Don’t show it to the other councilmembers until well after the meeting has started. Certainly don’t show it to the public! 

5) When your proposal is distributed, be sure that it does not come with annoying facts or numbers like those that you insisted be attached to all the other proposals people have been discussing for weeks. 

6) Be sure the motion to approve this new proposal cannot be understood by anyone including Councilmembers and staff. This is best accomplished by including in the motion only census block numbers, not street names. Since no one knows their census block numbers, they won’t be able to figure out how the proposal affects them. 

7) When you approve the proposal, repeatedly say it “meets all criteria,” even if you present no evidence that it does. Claim how wonderful it is. Saying it is the best proposal helps deceive people.  

8) Claim loudly you have student interests at heart by spreading their influence over two Council districts rather than one. Never admit you have reduced District 7’s 18-24 year old registered voters to 45 percent and achieved only 50 percent in District 8: neither percentage being even close to the 55 percent students currently hold in District 7. 

9) Assert that Councilmember Worthington represents students. Ignore comments by current students that they want one of their peers as their representative. 

10) Ignore pesky homeowner neighborhoods in District 8 that are now being pitted against students. They don’t vote for you anyway. 

11) Claim a student should sit on the Council, even though it is likely the door on such a reform has been closed due to the fact you have significantly increased tensions between student and homeowner interests. 

12) When other Councilmembers lodge objections, dismiss them as “sour grapes.”  

But why am I surprised. Kriss Worthington, along with his Assistants, David Blake and Becky O’Malley have been practicing the technique for years. I tell my students at San Francisco State University that in Berkeley we call this style of politics “citizen participation”and deny its existence, while in Chicago it is admitted and referred to as machine politics.  

 

David Tabb 

Berkeley