The upcoming special election won’t change how Long Beach is (not) represented in Congress
By Dave Wielenga

ILLUSTRATION by LUKE MCGARRY

The way the 18 candidates in the 37th congressional district special election are kissing up to Long Beach voters (you should have heard a bunch of them trying to out-homegrown each other last week during the Beer & Politics forum at Gallagher’s Pub), it’s as if the city had its own seat in the House of Representatives. Not quite.

Long Beach hasn’t had a congressional district to call its own since 2001, when state legislators chopped up the city and parceled it out to districts based in Huntington Beach, Carson and Lakewood. The electoral surgery was self-serving, a bipartisan deal cut so incumbents would be re-elected. They were.

Orange County right wingnut Republican Dana Rohrabacher is serving his 10th term, his third since the 46th district was contorted through a Long Beach coastal corridor that includes about 20 percent of the city—significantly, the parts that pass through Long Beach State, the Los Cerritos Wetlands, Belmont Shore and the Port of Long Beach. Almost everywhere else was lumped in the 37th district of the late Juanita Millender-McDonald, a liberal Democrat from south-central Los Angeles who never faced serious opposition after taking office in a 1996 special election when predecessor Walter Tucker of Compton went to prison for corruption. And a snippet of northern Long Beach was saved for Lakewood’s 39th district, where Democrat Linda T. Sanchez—little sister of Santa Ana powerhouse Loretta—has been mounting her own dynasty in three elections since 2002.

Meanwhile, the citizens of the fifth-largest city in California have been deprived of the advocacy and influence—to say nothing of simple name recognition, a reminder to Congress and the country that Long Beach is actually a place with interests to be considered—which comes with having a single representative accountable to their common interests.

“The politicians who carved up Long Beach into three congressional districts were wrong and they did a great disservice to the city,” says fifth district city councilwoman Gerrie Schipske. “Long Beach deserves its own congressional district with contiguous borders so that we can have the appropriate clout we need and deserve in Congress.”

Schipske was one of the first illustrations of redistricting’s new reality. She lost a 2002 race against Rohrabacher and his Orange County Republican power base in an election that the Democratic Party and its PACs basically conceded—offering no funding and soliciting no endorsements.

Perhaps it’s encouraging, then, that the frontrunners for the 37th district’s June 26 special election—state senator Jenny Oropeza and assemblywoman Laura Richardson—are former members of the Long Beach City Council. But listening to the candidates discuss the city’s most-important matters at the Beer & Politics forum—itself a homegrown monthly event sponsored by the Junior Chamber of Commerce—was mostly frustrating.

Many minutes were given to speaking about the Port of Long Beach, the city’s great economic engine, which is also a prolific source of pollution and a potential target for terrorism. Unfortunately, the Port of Long Beach isn’t in the 37th district—it’s in Rohrabacher territory. Rohrabacher is also Long Beach’s go-to guy for solutions related to the preservation or development of the Los Cerritos wetlands, the contamination of local beaches—just revealed to be the worst in the state—and the direction of the city’s waterfront tourist economy.

Even more unfortunate, Rohrabacher’s interest in Long Beach issues was reported thusly in Schipske’s account of a March meeting with him in Washington: “Regarding: LA River dredging; Los Cerritos Wetlands; breakwater study and the interoperability radio communications. Congressman Rohrabacher reminded the City Councilmembers that he only represents 12% of Long Beach so we shouldn’t expect him to be ‘carrying our water.’”

Maybe that’s just as well. Rohrabacher has been long known as a friend of sleazy lobbyist Jack Abramoff and the Taliban, and most recently distinguished himself by publicly berating scientists at a hearing on global warming, where he hypothesized that warming trends could have been caused by “dinosaur flatulence.”

At the same time, whoever wins the 37th district seat will have more to worry about than Long Beach. The district also includes all of Carson, Compton and Signal Hill, as well as parts of Watts, Wilmington and Willowbrook. Significantly, Richardson officially kicked off her campaign Saturday with a rally in Carson, surrounded by Los Angeles-based politicians.

“It might be easier if we had more of the city in one district,” allows Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster. “When you are trying to get something done, you’d always like to be able to have your elected official—Congressperson So-and-So from Long Beach. It would also be helpful to the extent that you’d get recognition of the city higher on the scale. But you work with what you’ve got.”

State Senator Alan Lowenthal of Long Beach has reintroduced a state constitutional amendment—SCA 10—that would remove the legislature’s ability to draw political boundaries. The task would go to a commission whose members would be nominated by a panel of judges and confirmed by legislative leaders. To become law, SCA 10 must earn a two-thirds majority in the legislature, then approval by voters.

Obviously, that’s not going to happen by June 26.

“Maybe by 2011,” says Lowenthal, whose proposal has been defeated twice before. “Hopefully.”