The relatively small group of residents who spoke during the first California Citizens Redistricting Commission to be held in Orange County in nearly a decade offered a common suggestion:
Carve out political districts that strengthen the power of the county’s distinct ethnic communities, and then do the same for the county’s beach communities.
But not all of the more than 40 residents who made comments during the online meeting Thursday, July 8, agreed on how those communities should be represented. And their differences highlighted the complexity of the political dilemmas facing the citizen panel, which, over the next few months, will redraw state and federal legislative districts in ways that will shape power in Sacramento and Washington D.C. over the next decade.
“I don’t envy your decision-making in terms of where the lines are drawn on the edges of some of these cities,” Tammy Tran, 40, of Westminster told the commission as she requested more recognition for sprawling Little Saigon.
Once a decade, after the federal government publishes updated census information, California’s Citizens Redistricting Commission must, by law, redraw boundaries for state and federal political districts. Those boundaries will determine the specific voters who will send people to the U.S. House of Representatives, the California State Senate and Assembly, and the State Board of Equalization.
In addition to evenly distributing voters and following other guidelines, the citizen commission also must learn about so-called “communities of interest” across the state and, whenever possible, keep those communities together as they sketch out new districts.
But the definition of communities of interest, and the boundaries of those communities, is far from black and white. That’s where meetings — like the one held Thursday for Orange County, and about 35 similar meetings slated to be held statewide through September — come into play.
“We need the neighborhood and community of interest information from you,” Linda Akutagawa, a member of the state redistricting commission from Huntington Beach, told residents who tuned in to Thursday’s virtual meeting.
Roughly a third of the people who spoke during the meeting asked about political unification of Little Saigon, which is is now spread between three Congressional districts. The not-so-little community of about 200,000 — the largest concentrated Vietnamese population outside Vietnam — is centered in Westminster and Garden Grove but also includes portions of Fountain Valley, Stanton, Midway City and west Santa Ana.
“Instead of dividing those into three congressional districts, please do it as two so at least we have a stronger voice in Congress,” said Hang Hopper of Fountain Valley.
A similar request came from Caroline Nguyen, a program assistant with the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative. Her grassroots group participated in Thursday’s meeting as one of 15 partners in the People’s Redistricting Alliance, launched in February by the progressive Orange County Civic Engagement Table. Multiple members of the group spoke about requests to keep O.C.’s historically disadvantaged communities together, with some providing the commission with written testimony supporting 18 communities of interest, including Asian American, Latino and LGBTQ populations.
“I ask this commission to do a better job than the 2011 commission in how it treats the Hispanic community,” said Mario Rodriguez, a founding member of Hispanic 100, an organization that mentors Hispanic adults in Orange County.
Before the 2011 round of redistricting, for example, Rodriguez said Assembly District 69 included a solid Hispanic community. But Rodriguez and others said lines drawn that year divided the county’s Hispanic voice and diluted the group’s power by carving heavily Latino portions of Tustin and Orange.
Another speaker asked the commission to protect Latino voices by keeping Anaheim Hills in a separate district from other parts of Anaheim. Even though the communities reside in the same city, the demographics in the two communities are distinct, and want different things from lawmakers in Sacramento and Washington. One speaker recalled an era in the not-so-distant past when Anaheim’s City Council was dominated by people from the wealthier foothill area, even as most of the city’s population was less diverse, less advantaged and lived in the “flatlands.”
There was some disagreement over whether all of Orange County’s beach communities should be in a single Congressional district, or if they should remain split between two districts. For now, the northern coastal cities from Seal Beach to Laguna Niguel are in CA-48 and represented by Republican Michelle Steel. But the county’s southern coastal cities are combined with cities in north San Diego County in CA-49, and they are represented by Democrat Mike Levin.
Former Seal Beach Mayor Ellery Deaton asked the commission to put all of the coastal communities into a single district, arguing it will give them a stronger voice to tackle unifying issues such as beach erosion, flood control and tourism.
“If we don’t have a representative who is focused on protecting our beaches, but instead is split among many interests, the resulting dilution to the communities of interest — all of them, whether inland or at the beach — results in not being properly served,” Deaton said.
Peter “PT” Townend, a former world professional surfing champion who advocates for Huntington Beach tourism and wetlands, echoed that request. With the global surfing industry centered in multiple O.C. cities, Townend said it makes sense to him that they have a single representative fighting for their common causes.
“The more people who care about an issue, the greater likelihood that an elected official will respond in a timely manner,” said Jake Schwartzberg, a high school math teacher from San Clemente who also favors clustering the beach communities.
But Livia Beaudin, an environmental attorney based in Oceanside, asked the commission to keep southern Orange County’s beach communities grouped with northern San Diego County’s beach cities, as they now are in CA-49. Beaudin said the areas have distinct shared interests, such as bluff erosion, water quality, planned desalination plants and waste removal at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. She urged that the communities remain in a single congressional district “despite the county border.”
Another resident who spoke in favor of keeping a Congressional district intact even though it crosses counties lines was Susan Pearlson of Brea. She lives in CA-39, which includes portions of Orange, Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties and is represented by Republican Young Kim. While the district’s boundaries might seem nonsensical to some, Pearlson said the areas are strongly united around concerns over the traffic bottleneck at the 57 and 60 freeways, as well as fire danger from the nearby hills, and a shared desire to preserve the open space between them.
The meeting, as was the case with the seven other redistricting hearings already held in other parts of the state, was conducted virtually. Commission spokesman Fredy Ceja said the group hopes to hold hybrid meetings — with people able to appear virtually or in person — as soon as next month.
Attendance at the meetings started out slow, with some leaders fearing burnout from the pandemic and political tension. But Ceja said the commission’s outreach effort around the state is boosting participation, with more people showing up at each meeting.
In addition to testimony heard at hearings, the commission will collect community of interest data into at least mid-September or whenever they finally get data from the Census Bureau. Regular deadlines have been delayed several times due to COVID-19. After that, the commission will actually start drawing new district lines and holding community input meetings on their proposals.
In the meantime, people who want to weigh in on redistricting still have opportunities to be heard. More meetings are scheduled in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Also, people can weigh in via email by using a new online tool — DrawMyCACommunity.org — which lets them sketch out their ideal political districts and make a case for why the state should follow their suggestion.
Residents also can submit testimony by phone, email or letter, with more information at wedrawthelinesca.org/public_comment.
