After years of controversy around reforming Santa Maria’s local elections, we’ve made progress, but we have a long way to go for fair representation and true democracy in our community.
The story began in 2014, when local community organizations concerned about accountability at City Hall began a grassroots effort to put a district elections initiative on the ballot. By creating four neighborhood districts that each elected its own representative, we could spread fair representation more evenly throughout the city, create more accessible city councilmembers with their ears closer to the community, and reduce the cost of running for office to reduce the influence of wealthy donors and powerful interests.
While some of these goals finally seem within sight, others have been blocked by the continuous refusal of our City Council to listen to their own community in order to protect their own political interests.
Our coalition, called “A Voice for Every Neighborhood,” mobilized countless volunteers to collect more than 5,000 signatures, every day for months, door-to-door throughout the city and at churches, little leagues, and grocery stores. We were obstructed by City Hall every step of the way, including the ultimate denial of the petition due to minor technicalities of how the petition was formatted.
In 2017, to settle a looming lawsuit under the California Voting Rights Act, the City Council agreed to transition to district elections. To draw the maps, they hired an outside consultant who has left a trail of controversy in their wake from Orange County to Kern County, and has a reputation among voting rights advocates as a mapmaker skilled in the art of gerrymandering.
As the city conducted its public input process, dozens of Santa Maria residents submitted maps and spoke during public hearings. Nearly all who participated in the process supported the commonsense solution of drawing the lines at Broadway and Main, adjusting at the edges to ensure every district had equal population. Of course, this is how most Santa Marians see our city.
The general shape of districts preferred by virtually every single Santa Maria resident who participated in the process would have created two open districts in the city’s long under-represented Westside neighborhoods, mainly populated by working-class immigrant families. But because our current council is heavily concentrated in the city’s two most affluent neighborhoods, with Etta Waterfield and Mike Cordero next to the hospital and Jack Boysen and Michael Moats next to the country club, this would have forced the current City Council members living just blocks away from each other into competitive races in future elections. But who had the power to decide on the map? The current City Council—politicians choosing their voters instead of voters choosing their politicians.
Under the California Elections Code, cities that draw district maps are supposed to follow “communities of interest,” drawing lines according to real neighborhoods that use the same parks, schools, churches, shopping centers, and share similar demographics like income, age, and ethnicity.
Michael Moats, the lone voice of reason, urged the council to think of the greater good and not engage in selfish gerrymandering. After all, the decisions made here would lay the foundation for the representation of Santa Maria’s neighborhoods for generations to come, far more important than any politician’s short-term political career. Yet the other councilmembers openly displayed their intent to carve out safe seats for themselves where they could win future elections without real competition.
At the final public hearing, with the options narrowed down to three maps, every single speaker supported a map submitted by a local community member named Sally Macias. Yet in a stunning and shameless act of cowardice and selfishness, the council majority instead chose a map drawn by the out-of-town consultant, which had no support from a single Santa Maria resident whose name didn’t begin with “councilmember.” Unable to even invent an excuse for this gerrymandering during the discussion, their only stated reason for choosing this map was “continuity of governance”—code for securing their own re-elections.
Santa Maria’s new district map robs the low-income Latino neighborhoods of the Westside of fair representation. It carves out the apartments around the Fairpark and Minami Park, some of the poorest parts of the city, and awkwardly stitches them in with the wealthy neighborhoods near Orcutt to create a district for Jack Boysen. And it arbitrarily cuts through the heart of Northwest Santa Maria, with the heavily Latino neighborhoods along North Broadway sticking a foot out across the freeway to just barely scoop up Mike Cordero.
Maps that combine low-income immigrant neighborhoods with affluent neighborhoods in the same district hurt the voting rights of underrepresented communities. In a real election, the wealthier neighborhood will almost always drown out the voice of the poorer neighborhood. The candidates will mostly come from that side of the district, spend their time knocking doors on that side, raise their money from that side, and listen to the constituents on that side. This is clear from the statistical analysis of the districts.
The fair map supported by the community had two districts on the city’s Westside where Latinos made up a majority not just in population, but of the actual voters who turned out to the polls in the 2012 and 2016 elections. However, in both the 2012 and 2016 elections, the City Council’s chosen map only has one district where Latinos made up the majority of voters who turned out to the polls. The entire purpose of district elections is to create the possibility for marginalized communities to determine their own representation. By lumping low-income immigrant neighborhoods with low voter turnout into a district with affluent well-represented neighborhoods where City Council members currently live, the city has intentionally disenfranchised its most voiceless residents.
We’re deeply grateful to the countless Santa Maria residents who gave their time and energy to participate in a months-long public input process that was only later revealed to be a sham. Our message to you is that the fight for accountable government, fair representation, and grassroots democracy in Santa Maria is far from over. The voters will remember the shameless behavior of those who attempted to rig future elections in their favor. And redistricting after the 2020 Census is just around the corner. Who knows what the council will look like then?
Hazel Davalos is the community organizing director for the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE) and is a resident of Santa Maria. Send your thoughts to letters@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in May 25 – Jun 1, 2017.