New Orange County supervisor districts will soon be in place for the next decade, creating a first-ever Latino majority district, splitting up inland and coastal south county communities and likely setting up competitive races for at least two of the five board seats next year.
The Board of Supervisors chose a new map Monday, after considering and tweaking more than a dozen proposals and listening to pleas and admonishments from residents and advocacy groups at four separate meetings this month.
The map approved in a 3-2 vote creates a new central county District 2 (Santa Ana plus parts of Anaheim, Garden Grove, Orange and Tustin) with a Latino majority, something voting rights advocates say is warranted as Latinos make up about a third of Orange County residents.
It also divides the previously monolithic south county region into two districts, with inland communities joining Yorba Linda, Anaheim Hills, northern Irvine and a swath of unincorporated communities in District 3, while coastal south county remains in a District 5 that gains Newport Beach and Costa Mesa.
Board Chairman Andrew Do, who represents District 1, and District 3 Supervisor Don Wagner voted against the majority, instead supporting a map that would have split Huntington Beach between two districts and moved Costa Mesa into District 1 – effectively “icing out” District 2 Supervisor Katrina Foley by putting her in a district not up for reelection until 2024.
The redrawn District 5 stretches from Costa Mesa and Newport Beach to the San Diego County line, but it also includes Coto de Caza, Ladera Ranch and Rancho Mission Viejo – the latter two were especially important to District 5 Supervisor Lisa Bartlett to keep in the district.
That also matters to some residents. In an interview last week, Rancho Mission Viejo resident Roger Parsons said Bartlett has represented the area well, but he worried that his and other unincorporated communities could fall through the cracks depending on how boundaries are drawn because they don’t have a mayor or city council to advocate for them.
“I think most people down here in this area sure feel closer to the coastal communities than the inland communities,” he said, noting that Dana Point is about a 12-minute drive from his neighborhood.
Before the vote Monday, Bartlett said she appreciated all the public input in what she described as a “tumultuous deliberative process.”
She thinks the map that was ultimately chosen “really addresses a balanced approach to creating districts that work for everyone,” she said, noting that it splits fewer cities between districts than the other options and adding, “There’s no map that’s going to make everyone 100% happy.”
After looking at numerous iterations of maps originally submitted by the public, the board’s decision Monday was between one basic map and several variations of a second one, but most of the variations were discarded because they didn’t appear to meet legal requirements.
Under state and federal guidelines, an acceptable map must include districts that are compact and try to keep together communities of interest, which could include people with a shared language, cultural heritage or economic concerns, and it can’t dilute anyone’s voting rights based on race.
The map also must minimize how many times it splits cities between districts, and the populations of each district must be relatively balanced – there can’t be a difference of more than 10% between the biggest district and the smallest. The target population was about 638,000 residents per district.
During discussion Monday, Do complained about “constant threats every step of the way” that the board could be sued if it picked a particular map. Without naming them, he called out Democrats (Do is a Republican), saying, “the one party that insists on fairness and being apolitical is the party that I face the most threats from,” and that his own party may “chastise me for coming up with a map that is so balanced it hurts us.”
Supervisor seats are technically nonpartisan and the board isn’t legally allowed to consider how new boundaries would affect political parties, but observers are looking closely at potential impacts. For years, Orange County and the Board of Supervisors were dominated by the GOP, but that has gradually changed along with the population – in 2019 Democrats overtook Republicans as the party with the largest share of OC voters.
In 2018, District 4 Supervisor Doug Chaffee became the first Democrat to sit on the board in 12 years, and the party strengthened its foothold with Foley’s election earlier this year.
Nearly all the residents who spoke Monday supported the map the board eventually chose, with some saying it’s appropriate for Costa Mesa to remain in a district with Newport Beach because the cities share a school district, are partnering on a homeless shelter and share concerns about John Wayne Airport. Others urged the board to keep south county cities together as much as possible, since they have transportation issues and other things in common.
The selection of the new map has big implications for supervisorial elections next year. It creates an open seat in the new District 2, where Santa Ana will be “the big dog,” OC-based political consultant George Urch said after Monday’s meeting.
He’s already heard names of a half dozen potential candidates floated, but “they’re in a little bit of a sprint,” he said. “It’s going to take some time to raise the money you need to win.”
Based on how OC residents voted in November 2020, the new District 2 would be solidly blue. Urch said that could make it “hard for a serious Republican candidate to mount a competitive challenge.”
Santa Ana Mayor Vicente Sarmiento said he’s encouraged that Latino residents of Orange County and his city specifically will have more of a voice in county government.
“This will be an opportunity to have somebody to speak on our behalf directly” to advocate for needed resources to address homelessness (the city and county have struggled to keep unhoused people in several shelters rather than on the streets) and health care in a community especially hard hit by the pandemic, Sarmiento said.
The new district lines also reshuffle who can run for the new District 5 seat; Bartlett, the current supervisor, is termed out next year, but Counsel Leon Page told Foley on Monday she will be able to run as an incumbent.
Besides Foley, several candidates in Newport Beach who had already launched campaigns for the old District 2 will now face south county candidates who have been running for District 5. Chaffee’s seat in District 4 also will be on the ballot in June.
Supervisors still must take a procedural vote in December that will cement the new district boundaries until the next census.
