"Like undermining motherhood and apple pie": why are California Dems in local government embracing eminent domain abuse?

• Author: Welch, Matt
• Position: Democrats

When the Supreme Court ruled in Kelo v. City of New London that local governments could seize your house and sell it to Wal-Mart without running afoul of the United States Constitution, it set off a shudder of public revulsion from New England to South-Central Los Angeles. A whopping 93 percent of Granite State residents in a July University of New Hampshire poll opposed using eminent domain for private development. Newspaper editorial boards, in states both red and blue, roundly condemned the decision, with one notable exception. (See "The Shame of The New York Times," October 2005.) Legislators in more than two dozen states have made at least preliminary noises about restricting the practice, with Alabama first out of the gate with a new law. Many politicians from the Democratic Party--not normally known for championing property rights--understood Kelo as a tool for the rich to screw the poor, and as an affront to Americans' very way of life.

"It's like undermining motherhood and apple pie," Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), a fire-breathing lefty from South-Central Los Angeles, told the San Francisco Chronicle after she cosponsored a successful House amendment blocking the use of federal funds in cities that engage in private-to-private eminent domain transfers. "I mean, people's homes and their land--it's very important, and it should be protected by government, not taken for somebody else's private use."

But while Waters' folksy wisdom matched literally every reaction to Kelo I heard from left-of-center acquaintances in L.A., it did not resonate with her fellow California Democrats who work in the trenches of local governance. For them, eminent domain has become a crucial, regrettably routine shortcut for "redeveloping" run-down areas, speeding up gentrification of hip neighborhoods, and otherwise doling out favors to anyone promising the sales tax revenue on which their municipal governments depend.

In May the Los Angeles City Council approved a $325 million project at the famous intersection of Hollywood and Vine, including a fancy new 296-room W Hotel. The project would displace, among others, the Bernard Luggage store, which has stuck by the neighborhood through thick and mostly thin for the last 55 years. When it was approved, L.A.'s City News Service reports, City Councilman Eric Garcetti "said the city would not use its powers of eminent domain to force property owners to sell, unless the developers were unable to reach a deal with...