Monday, May 2, 2011

Sacramento Bee: Sacramento County Supervisors Face Redistricting

Redistricting could dilute supervisors' political base

Published: Monday, May. 2, 2011 - 12:00 am | Page 1B
All five Sacramento County supervisors stand to lose some of their political base in this year's redistricting.
While supervisor races are nonpartisan, four of the five Sacramento County supervisors belong to the party with the most registered voters in their districts.

But the political landscape has changed since those districts were put in place in 2002. In four districts, voter registrations for the party of the current supervisor have declined, according to a Bee analysis of data from the secretary of state and county Voter Registration and Elections offices.

In the fifth district, represented by Democrat Don Nottoli, the percentage of registered Democratic voters could go down from current figures. That's because District 5 must shrink due to Elk Grove's strong population growth in the last decade.

"Republicans have been looking heavily at District 5 for some time," said Sacramento County Republican Party Chairwoman Sue Blake. "The problem is that Don Nottoli has been a pretty moderate Democrat."
Changes in the party registration numbers haven't been big – less than 5 percent in each district – and partly mirror larger trends, with fewer people joining the Democrats or the GOP.

County population has grown by 16 percent in the last decade, with some parts attracting more new residents than others. Redistricting is the process of drawing new boundary lines to reflect those changes.
Three supervisorial districts will expand, while two others will contract. Each district should end up with about 282,000 residents.

For some, the changes might not hurt much. Supervisor Jimmie Yee, a Democrat, will likely end up in a district with the county's highest concentration of Democrats. Another Democrat, Phil Serna, will likely get a Democratic-leaning district, too.

But for others, such as Supervisor Susan Peters in District 3, the changes could make a difference.

Peters, a Republican, is already representing a Democratic-leaning district, with 43 percent of voters registered to the party. Republican registration in the district, which includes Arden Arcade and Carmichael, has gone down 3 percent, to 36 percent, since the district was created after the last census.

Peters won a second term in office in 2008 by defeating Democrat Warren Harding in a fairly close race.
Peters and District 4 Supervisor Roberta MacGlashan will be the first supervisors to run in the new districts next year.

Sacramento County Registrar of Voters Jill LaVine's office has drawn five district map proposals, which will be reviewed at 13 community meetings in coming weeks.

Ultimately, the supervisors must approve the new districts but they are not allowed to consider party affiliations in doing so, said LaVine.

The supervisors can consider "communities of interest," she said, which under state law is defined as "a contiguous population which shares common social and economic interests. … "

LaVine will bring the maps, along with community comments, to a workshop for supervisors on July 26. She then expects to go back to the board for final approval of the new districts in August.

MacGlashan and Peters say the board isn't likely to adopt any of the current proposals. Peters said the public's comments on the proposed maps will form her opinion on what boundaries to approve.
MacGlashan said she's already received some objections.

"These are just starting points – I don't think we will adopt any of them as they are," MacGlashan said. "Everyone is going to have a different idea of what we need."

MacGlashan said she would like to continue to represent communities in her current district. She said she objects to losing Antelope and Citrus Heights, and gaining Rancho Cordova, as she would in some proposals.

A Republican, MacGlashan says her objections aren't political. But the communities she wants to keep are predominately Republican, while the one she wants to leave in neighbor Nottoli's district is predominately Democrat.

MacGlashan's supervisorial district is the only one in the county with Republicans holding the lead in party registration – 44 percent as of April 1. That's down four percentage points from when her district was created in 2002.

MacGlashan ran unopposed in her last election. But in her first run for the board in 2002, she was forced into a runoff and narrowly defeated Bob Walters, who had collected the most votes in the primary.

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