he recently led the members -- >> i am alan leventhal i want to thank everyone for coming. i am hoping my colleagues will be here. congressman blom. i had the good fortune of working with rod when i decided to work with common cause and others to take the leadership on. we worked on amicus briefs. he was on the last one which was the amicus brief on the gill versus whitford case. i will get to that. it was really on the arizona case. i was elected to the california state legislation and november november 1998. i arrived in early 1999 to sacramento. i went to the process in the 2001 redistricting in california. i will tell you that i am a democrat. california in 2001 like today is overwhelmingly democratic. our leadership have the control over the drawing of the boundaries. that was the background. i found in 2001 when i went through that redistricting, a terribly offensive process. it was not only so bad in the public hearings, but late at night when the boundaries were being drawn, we would sit late at night and those drawing the maps would say what do you need? can you gi