Ugh, I can’t believe we have to talk about elections again already. Just when we’ve got over the nausea of the 2016 election, we’re already talking about the midterms!
Politics has never been so divisive, it seems, and I’m not just talking about nationally!
The fight over Santa Maria’s City Council got nasty earlier this year when the council approved district-based elections for its four council seats after the threat of a California Voting Rights Act lawsuit from Hector Sanchez, a failed candidate for the council.
The lines have been drawn, and Santa Maria’s first district-based elections happen next year. The two southern districts, District 3 and 4, are up first, and two of Santa Maria’s councilmembers—Jack Boyson and Etta Waterfield, respectively—will have to defend their seats. Waterfield announced her bid for re-election on Nov. 20, seeking a second term. Boyson is yet to announce his plans for 2018.
Plenty of people in Santa Maria are unhappy at the way the change to district-based elections rolled out.
At her State of the City address this year, Mayor Alice Patino said that the city was “forced” into district-based elections, adding that she didn’t “think it fits Santa Maria” and that it “wouldn’t change anything at all.”
Part of the California Voting Rights Act prohibits districts drawn with racial background as a predominant factor, but based on things said during public comments and Patino’s response, race has a lot to do with all this contention over representation in Santa Maria.
“When you have over 70 percent Latino in our community, and three of us on the City Council are, and that’s not enough for some people, and we’re not their kind of Latino? So, here we are with four different districts,” she said.
Waterfield has voiced similar sentiments, and during her announcement that she was running for re-election (see page 5), she referred to the districts as a “box.”
But even those who called for district elections are upset with the process. They say the districts won’t change much either.
Hazel Davalos of CAUSE has advocated for district elections in Santa Maria for years, and she’s upset about the map that the sitting councilmembers chose, arguing that the districts were plotted that way to protect current members’ seats. She said the vote to choose the map drawn by an out-of-town consultant was a “shameless act of cowardice and selfishness” in an opinion piece contributed to the Sun (“City Council didn’t listen to the people,” May 25).
Personally, I think all this arguing comes down to partisan politics, which are undeniably influenced by race, especially these days. City council seats are nonpartisan, of course, but everyone on the Santa Maria City Council is a Republican or conservative. I think that’s what residents like Davalos and other critics are concerned about, that they’re not truly represented if they care about progressive issues.
And when candidates like former City Councilwoman Terri Zuniga, who definitely had more of a focus on social issues, get voted out by a little more than 100 votes in 2016’s last year of the at-large system, there’s no telling who could win re-election or get unseated in Santa Maria come 2018.
The Canary isn’t a Republican or Democrat, in case you were wondering. Send your thoughts to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 23-30, 2017.
