In addition to the new February 5th California presidential primary, which Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will soon sign, there is the question of what if anything else will be on the ballot. In addition to a possible term limits change, there is also redistricting reform. While prospects remain uncertain, there is progress on a few fronts.

The plan is to take redistricting — after the Census every decade yields new population data — out of the hands of the state Legislature and place it in the hands of an independent commission, however that is defined. All previous attempts have failed, including last year when a bill somehow became mishandled at the last minute in transit from the state Senate to the Assembly. Though Democratic legislative leaders denied it, many in the press and elsewhere suspected that the mishap, or miscommunication, or whatever it was confusingly described as, was intentional, as politicians have long been loathe to give up the power to select their own voters. Notwithstanding their pledge to pass such reform last year as they worked to defeat Schwarzenegger’s ill-starred redistricting initiative of 2005.

This year, once again, it is supposed to be different. It may yet be. While nitty gritty details need to be worked out, the principal issue, at least at this moment, is the nature of the reform. Namely, will it include congressional districts, as well as state legislative and Board of Equalization districts?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn’t want any change to redistricting for Congress, currently done by the Legislature and governor. She clings to the Democrats’ narrow, hard-won majority in the House. While a more competitive redistricting could actually increase Democratic chances for more seats in California, it would also cost Pelosi more campaign money both to win new seats and to hold on to existing seats. A big part of the job of a speaker, who is also a political boss as well as a legislative leader, is raising and allocating money around the country. Further altering the battlefield by placing California seats in question is not viewed as a plus. The word is that Pelosi and her Democratic allies would come in with $10 million to defeat a redistricting initiative that includes Congress.

There is a debate around Schwarzenegger now about what the governor can accept. Can Schwarzenegger live with less reform? That’s being discussed. What about legislative Republicans, whose votes, unless an expensive petition gathering drive is mounted, are actually needed? A redistricting bill requires a two-thirds vote of both houses of the Legislature.

That remains very unclear. However, a ranking legislative Republican source indicated openness to the idea of doing redistricting without the congressional districts, saying: “There is room to talk about it.”

As these considerations unfold, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez is moving forward on the issue. Yesterday he held a meeting with leaders of the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF), which has frequently raised legal objections to various redistricting plans. They were, as Nunez strategist Steve Maviglio, a top aide to former Governor Gray Davis, notes, “The final legal roadblock to redistricting last time.”

The meeting, according to released audio files from participants went well. MALDEF, incidentally, would accept redistricting with congressional districts.

Later this week, Nunez will meet with leaders of the Urban League, also a major “stakeholder,” as he puts it, in the redistricting process. He has also been meeting and consulting with several reform groups, such as the bipartisan Voices of Reform coalition, the League of Women Voters, and Common Cause.

Nunez expects to produce a redistricting reform bill in two weeks. This coincides with the time when he and many Assembly members, roughly 30 from both parties, will go to Washington to lobby members of Congress and various agencies. While this is the first such trip of the Nunez speakership, they were once a regular annual occurrence back in the days of longtime Speaker Willie Brown.

Speaking of the storied, self-proclaimed “Ayatollah of the Legislature,” it was ’80s throwback jersey day yesterday in the California state Senate. There Democratic leader Don Perata did his best Willie Brown impression by locking three moderate Democratic senators out of their offices for hours.

What led to this seemingly strange move? Perata was said to be enforcing discipline on Orange County’s Lou Correa (who Perata went to a lot of trouble electing last fall) and the LA area’s Ron Calderon and Gloria Negrete McLeod. Their grave offense? Attending a fundraiser for the Moderate Caucus last week. Perata and Senate Democrats established a caucus policy — not to be inaccurately confused with a Senate rule, as reported elsewhere in the press and by a few Democrats — that Democratic senators could not belong to caucuses which “vote in blocs.” In other words, which sometimes go against the majority wishes of the Democratic caucus. There is no such policy in the Assembly under the kind and benevolent leadership of the ever calm Nunez.

This was said to be the lightest of the considered punishments, actually, considered in a somewhat lengthy discussion about the three last Friday. “An inconvenience only,” said one source. It’s certainly less drastic than a car bomb. Or killing a senator’s bills. The three are uninvited to today’s Senate Democratic caucus meeting. But their ears will be burning, because they are the topic of discussion.