One of the most incisive writers in a subfield of jargon-filled journal articles, a clever creator of experiments to tease apart competing causal explanations, an engaging lecturer in front of an auditorium of undergrads, and the wittiest professor to chat with over drinks at an overseas conference, the chair of my doctoral committee was also an asshole.

These days, I don't dwell much on the six years in which I orbited the black hole of that personality — and yet with Proposition 50 on today's ballot, a relevant story has come back into mind.

As a University of California geography professor, he was uniquely suited to serve on the California Citizens Redistricting Commission, when it was created by voters in 2008. He applied and (if I recall correctly) interviewed as a finalist. His knowledge of spatial statistics, his able command of technical vocabulary, and his disciplinary background all would equipped him well for the role. Although he wasn't successful in joining the commission — perhaps due to coming across as an a-hole? —the commission's independent redistricting process has since served as a success for all Californians.

Whereas in the late 1900s and early 2000s national commentators and political science professors called California a failed state due to structural budget imbalances and legislative gridlock in Sacramento, the state is now on a steadier course. Legislators push and pull — and now succeed to pass major laws — and if they aren't responsive to enough of their constituents, they face primary challengers and can be voted out of office. That's thanks in large part to independent redistricting, which replaced a previous system in which lawmakers of both parties had drawn their own districts primarily to protect their own incumbency. (It's also thanks to important reforms enacted during the second coming of Jerry Brown, as well as to the Bay Area's post-2008 tech boom fueled by ad dollars, consumer cash, petro state sovereign wealth funds, and Masa-san's billions.)

Now, Prop. 50 asks us if we want to potentially give up on that state-level progress to fight Trumpism at the national level.

For proud partisans, it's an easy decision. After almost a year of a national nightmare and too many prominent Democrats playing dead, pushing back politically against the party that controls all three federal branches is a welcome opportunity: Yes. Yes, we can.

So much cash has come into the Yes on 50 campaign that Newsom asked potential donors to stop and instead send their contributions toward other states' efforts.

For skeptics, it may be a harder decision. In a fight against an asshole, what do we lose when we stoop to his level? (The a-hole in this paragraph being Trump.) Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it, as Mark Twain or George Bernard Shaw or ChatGPT or Yogi Berra once said. Will we muck up our state-level governance in service of a nasty national fight that may not be winnable?

Prop. 50 includes a key detail that's worth highlighting: The proposition only affects US Congressional districts, not state-level offices. If Prop. 50 is passed, the existing districts for state senate and state assembly will remain as-is and under the control of the California Citizens Redistricting Commission. It's those offices where we all benefit from an independent body drawing the lines.

The California Citizens Redistricting Commission was actually established in two stages:

• In 2008, voters passed Prop. 11 establishing the commission and giving it control over state-level election boundaries.
• In 2010, voters passed Prop. 20 giving the commission the additional responsibility of setting district boundaries for US Congressional elections.

The temporary changes proposed in the current Prop. 50 would only affect the latter.

This blog doesn't always agree with the one-man editorial board of the Mercury News and East Bay Times, but in this case I do fully agree with his recent opinion piece, particularly when describing the 2010 vote to give the California Citizens Redistricting Commission's the role to define US Congressional districts:

It seemed like a good idea that would set an example for other states to follow.

But it hasn’t worked out that way. For the redistricting after the 2020 census, only eight states, including significantly California, Washington, New York and Michigan, used independent redistricting commissions.

Applied across the nation, the commission process has turned into unilateral political disarmament. Those states that did the right thing now find themselves vulnerable to the GOP’s systematic and partisan manipulation in other states.

Despite that, Proposition 50 would not even abandon the congressional redistricting approved by voters in 2010. Rather it suspends it temporarily to counter the unprecedented Trump-led manipulation by redrawing the state’s congressional lines to increase the number of blue seats. California would return congressional redistricting to the independent commission after the 2030 census.

In an ideal world, Congressional districts would all be defined by independent citizen commissions. But we don't live in an ideal world. Instead of fixing partisan gerrymandering, as he kept hinting over multiple decades that he would, Anthony Kennedy instead took the easy way out and retired from the Supreme Court.

In even an imperfect world, Congressional districts would only be re-drawn when numbers and demographics from decennial Censuses are in hand. But we don't live in even an imperfect world. We live in a world in which Trump is demanding that governors and state legislators gerrymander districts with no new Census data in hand. For what it's worth, we currently live in a world in which the U.S. House of Representatives doesn't even meet to conduct its business anymore.

The other day while walking to Alameda City Hall, I dropped off my ballot with the "yes" box checked for Prop. 50 with equal parts partisan pride and resigned responsibility: an admission that extraordinary measures must be taken in response to Trump's actions in the arena of national politics, but also an appreciation that we're not backtracking on meaningful progress that's been made toward good governance here within California.