California voters are in for quite a surprise when they head to the polls in 2012: competitive congressional elections and possibly unfamiliar names on the ballot.A new electoral map drawn up by a panel of ordinary citizens and criticized as creating too many districts for minority representation has dramatically changed California's political landscape. Members of Congress who've held their seats for years are now scrambling to figure out their political futures.
"We're going to have more competitive elections in November than this state has seen, probably in two decades," political expert Allen Hoffenblum told Fox News.
Hoffenblum says if the result of previous redistricting was that it protected incumbents, the error with the citizens' map is that it is heavily skewed to racial demographics.
"We went from a political gerrymand to a racial gerrymand. That the commission became overly conscious of drawing seats on race. The Latino seats, the black seats, the Asian seats. And in the process of creating these districts based on race they divided counties, they divided cities and split cities."
Republican Rep. David Dreier has held his southern California seat for more than 30 years. It now skews heavily toward the area's Latino population that's not part of his natural political base.
The most competitive races figure to be ones in which multiple incumbents will face off against each other. Depending on how the races develop that scenario could play out in half-a-dozen districts across the Golden State. Longtime incumbent Democratic Reps. Brad Sherman and Howard Berman are now in the same district north of Los Angeles. Republican Reps. Ed Royce and Gary Miller could also face off in the new 39th District.
Since there is no residency requirement beyond living in the state, lawmakers have some flexibility when it comes to where they live and what districts they try to represent. Some lawmakers have already declared their 2012 intentions. Many others have not.
"The process was open and transparent. And it yielded maps that didn't care about incumbents and didn't care about where people sat in the past," California political analyst Matt Klink said. "They're new lines. New districts. It's going to create a lot chaos at the state level and the federal level for the California representatives."
The shake-up started as a reaction to the redistricting of seats following the 2000 Census. Critics said the politicians who led that effort drew districts that protected their jobs.
The numbers suggest that's exactly what happened.
In the last five election cycles with 265 congressional races, only one California incumbent representative --Republican Richard Pombo in 2006 -- lost a race for reelection.
Could be good. Lord knows California could do with a huge political mix up. This might be the thing which breaks the current political stranglehold on the state. Also I may get a Unicorn that poops diamonds and farts rainbows for my birthday. (That wasn't a cynical statement, was it?)