On Tuesday, the Orange County Board of Supervisors will consider the maps that have been proposed for the Supervisor districts. Numerous proposals have been studied and rejected by the County Redistricting Committee. The results, leave the districts pretty much the way they are today. While it could be logically argued that a district should be drawn that better reflects the Latino community of interest currently represented in the First District (such as Proposal 1), the committee did not make that change.
At the very last minute of this process, First District Supervisor Janet Nguyen argued that the recommended maps did not include all of the Vietnamese “Community of Interest,” and that a portion of the City of Fountain Valley needed to be added to the First District. She argued that the proposed maps did not provide the Vietnamese community with sufficient opportunity for representation on the Board of Supervisors. That argument could not be further from the truth. A truth represented dramatically by the fact that Nguyen has been twice elected to represent a heavily Latino population district.
The fact is that the Vietnames community, as a percentage of the overall County population, does not have the numbers to require a district that disproportionately inflates the electoral power of its community. The elections code states:
“Following each decennial federal census, and using that census as a basis, the board shall adjust the boundaries of any or all of the supervisorial districts of the county so that the districts shall be as nearly equal in population as may be and shall comply with the applicable provisions of Section 1973 of Title 42 of the United States Code, as amended. In establishing the boundaries of the districts the board may give consideration to the following factors: (a) topography, (b) geography, (c) cohesiveness, contiguity, integrity, and compactness of territory, and (d) community of interests of the districts.”
For the Board to carve out more of the Vietnamese community into a district combined with the heavily Latino core of the County further than it already has, will only serve to diminish the electoral capability of the Latino community to have effective representation on the Board. If indeed the goal is to focus on communities of interest, then Proposal #1 of the original submissions accomplishes that task. The addition of a portion of Fountain Valley to the final recommended map from the Redistricting Committee is an overreach of epic proportions. It opens up the maps to significant and justified legal challenge.
The Board of Supervisors, given the maps they have been presented, should approve the recommended map submitted by their Redistricting Committee.
“For the Board to carve out more of the Vietnamese community into a district combined with the heavily Latino core of the County further than it already has, will only serve to diminish the electoral capability of the Latino community to have effective representation on the Board.”
SO, only Latinos can only be effectively represented by a Latino?
By that logic, California Latinos lack “effective representation” in the Governor’s office because Jerry Brown is white.
It is disturbing how the Left has twisted the Voting Rights Act, intended to ensure all Americans could exercise their right to vote regardless of their color or ethnicity, into a mandates to turn legislative districts into ethnic bantustans.
Matt, my issue is that if we are going to apply the community of interest standard to compact the Vietnamese community into a district, then the same standard should be used for Latinos.
Matt,
Where did Chris say that Latinos can only be effectively represented by a Latino. In fact, it is your fellow Republican, Janet Nguyen, who is making the ethnic argument that only a Vietnamese can properly represent the Vietnamese people by demanding Fountain Valley be put in her district. So do you agree with her argument that John Moorlach or his successor would not be able to properly represent the Vietnamese population of Fountain Valley.
Other than a couple of fringe activists, the Latino community of OC was content to keep the boundaries of the 1st Supervisor District roughly the same area, after all Lou Correa was able to win in those boundaries. There was no demand to unite Santa Ana and Anaheim. NOW THOUGH, if the Board is going to go out of their way to create a district for the Asian minority of this county, they better also be ready to create a district that is Latino heavy as well. Equal treatment for each minority, that is the point.
So do you believe if one minority has a district carved out for them, another sizeable minority should as well? Or is one minority more deserving of a district than the other? That seems to be the Board’s thinking, that one is more deserving than the other.
Remember now, when liberals use the color of your skin to determine the lines, they are not racist. Racism can only be applied to conservatives.
Why not let computers pick districts on natural lines. I don’t care what race my representative is, just how they vote.
Nguyen claims to be a conservative but she is playing the liberal race card here. The VRA has long outlived its usefulness and never had much of a place in states like California that didn’t have poll taxes. Unfortunately, if we wanted to redistrict fairly and strictly according to population without regard to ethnicity or political leanings, we would have to find a dozen or so non-partisan committee members that don’t vote. Fat chance on that.
All or a part of Fountain Valley has been in the First District for over three decades before the political decision to cut it out from between Santa Ana and Westminster back in 2001. Returning at least a part of Fountain Valley makes the First District more compact.
If you’ve got a problem with Fountain Valley in the same district as Santa Ana, Westminster and Garden Grove, then you’ve got a problem with Assembly District 72 and Senate District 34 as drawn by the California Citizen’s Redistricting Commission. They came to the same conclusion.
They could have a computer using geographical and population data draw the lines on logical borders. You don’t have to tell the computer what color they are or what political party they are in.
Either way we still end up with the same corrupt political hacks running for the seats. Politics is for those that cant do without someone giving them a handout(payoff) or so it seems.