Bay Area Council

A good sign for proponents of a constitutional convention: the main controversy here is not whether to have a convention, but how to choose delegates?

All kinds of ideas are being thrown out, but there is one dividing line: whether elected officials should be permitted to be part of a convention. Panelists have argued for a populist vision, with regular citizens serving as delegates. Some say elected officials should be kept out of the situation. They're conflicted, is one argument. They're the prisoners of special interests, goes another argument.

But the idea of excluding public officials is not popular inside this ballroom. Many of the attendees -- perhaps a majority (It's hard for me to tell) -- are local elected officials who have been vocal in cheering each other.

I'm attempting to blog over a questionable wireless connection from the summit on the California constitutional convention summit today in Sacramento.(Full disclosure: New America is among the sponsors). It's a full house, standing room only in the basement ballroom of the Sheraton.

A quick bit of news: Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, a candidate for governor next year, came out strongly in favor of major changes in the legislature, including eliminating one of the two houses and increasing the number of lawmakers (by more than double).

Also, the Bay Area Council, the business-backed policy organization that's been pushing the idea of a convention, disclosed results of a poll on the idea of a convention. The news: only 3 percent of those surveyed had heard "quite a bit" about the idea. When people were read a description (that didn't include much criticism of the idea and emphasized that voters would get to sign off on whatever a convention recommends), the idea of a convention had modest support.

Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters draws a picture Sunday of the reform landscape in California. He puts Leon Panetta's California Forward as the incrementalist side of the reform movement and the Bay Area Council (which wants a constitutional convention) and the New America Foundation (your blogger's employer, which has been talking about changing the make-up of the legislature) as the big-thinking, "aggressive" side. More on this subject later--after I go out and aggressively hunt big game for dinner.

A tight travel schedule and a misbehaving laptop make this report two days late. But in a speech Thursday night in San Francisco, former Congressman Leon Panetta, a wise man of California politics and leader of the new reform group California Forward, gave something of an endorsement to the idea of  a state constitutional convention.

Panetta was the keynote speaker at a dinner put on by the Bay Area Council, the business-backed policy group that has been pushing the idea of such a convention. JIm Wunderman of the council, in his remarks, made a full-throated case (though he was drowned out by clinking glasses and dinner conversation) that such a convention is needed and called California Forward "a strong, strong partner." He also pooh poohed concerns that interest groups would dominate a convention or that the process would be open to mischief.

I visited yesterday afternoon with Jim Wunderman and othe rstaff and consultants of the Bay Area Council, the San Francisco-based organization that is pushing a state constitutional convention. I'll write at more length later, but the two main things I learned is 1. The process is still early, and even Wunderman, the strongest advocate for this idea, doesn't have a clear idea of how such a convention would be called and how it might work. 2. The convention idea has real momentum. Wunderman has been deluged with expressions of interest from across the political spectrum. And if he and his lawyers (Hanson Bridgett is providing legal advice) can figur eout the mechanics of this quickly and file a measure, he wantsan initiative to call a constitutional convention to appear on next year's special election ballot.

As evidence of that interest, Schwarzenegger gave a shout-out to the convention idea, without specifically endorsing it, in his budget press conference yesterday. Here's the paragraph in question, from the official transcript released by the governor's office:

'All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for their protection, security and benefit, and they have the right to alter or reform it when the public good may require." Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution of California. 

Jim Wunderman of the Bay Area Council suggested last week that California convene a constitutional convention to look at its entire system of government. Joel Fox at Fox & Hounds Daily is skeptical. It certainly is an interesting idea. I could see Gov. Schwarzenegger, who has reached his "throw up his hands" moment, back such a convention. Emails and memos I turned up in reporting for my book, The People's Machine, show that Schwarzenegger's aides and political advisors discussed just such an idea -- albeit not too seriously and not at length -- in 2004.