Term limits and small districts.
I’ve watched California go from a Republican state to a super-majority Democrat one. I was close to politics all that time. I finally figured out what happened.
I watched the change in the legislatures as Assemblyman Jesse Unruh took over the Democrat Party from 1961. In those days I was an Assembly Legislative Analyst running the campaign of a San Francisco Assemblyman. Unruh took contributions from all the lobbyists and used the money to elect loyal Democrat legislators. He was later succeeded by Willie Brown who used the same formula to govern the State. Labor money became the backbone of state campaign finance and there was a direct pipeline from union state employees to the Democrat Party. The system became stronger and embedded over time.
Term limits were introduced statewide in the late 90s and in San Francisco for the second time in 2000.
First we got a deep well of funding for the Democrat aspirants, then we got a ladder to a life in politics.
The term limits meant that winning the first step on the ladder offered a series of steps up the ladder as the term-limit law created all the steps on the ladder upward. In San Francisco that meant the first step was a trivial spot on the school board or the City College Board. Then a spot on the Board of Supervisors, then a position in the Assembly followed by a seat in the Senate followed by election to one of the many Statewide offices.
That is what we have today. A home grown political machine. The tiny districts just make it easier for a political nobody to get their first step in office. Tiny districts are often controlled by one or two fictional neighborhood clubs.