New district maps ratify California's geographic partisan split

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Old Article, but is still relevant today

New district maps ratify California's geographic partisan split

By Dan Walters

Sacramento Bee - (Published Sept. 18, 2001)

If one looks at a map of last year's presidential vote in California, one is struck by the sharp demarcation line along the  coastal mountain range. With very few exceptions, coastal  California voted for Democrat Al Gore, while inland California favored Republican George W. Bush.

If one examines a map showing recent population growth rates in California counties, one cannot escape its overall similarity to the presidential map. Again, with very few exceptions, California's faster-growing counties are in the inland valleys, while coastal California is adding population more slowly.

The geographic division of political leanings, when coupled with long-term demographic trends, presented a dilemma for the Democratic politicians who were redrawing legislative and congressional districts this year and contributed to final plans that treated Republicans much better than many GOP leaders had initially feared.

New congressional and legislative maps underscore the emerging partisan division of the state. New Republican-leaning districts were created in the Central Valley, which is becoming the new GOP stronghold for the state, and several of the ostensibly Democratic seats in the Valley could move into the Republican column later in the decade, if population and political trends continue. Indeed, the Central Valley could become the only region in the state where the two parties would be in face-to-face legislative contests later in the decade, given the status quo bent of the plans.

The partisan turnaround in the fast-growing Central Valley has been dramatic. Scarcely a generation ago, Democrats enjoyed voter registration advantages in every county, and only a handful of Republicans held legislative seats. One by one, districts turned Republican for a couple of reasons: the shift of conservative "Reagan Democrats" and the suburbanization of the northern San Joaquin Valley and the outskirts of Sacramento.

By the late 1990s, Democrats, who had once held every congressional seat in the Central Valley, found themselves with just three of 10, and two of those were trending Republican. The new redistricting plan preserves the three Democratic seats by drastically redrawing the shakiest two to include every pocket of Democrats in sight. But it also creates a new, Republican-leaning congressional district in
the lower San Joaquin Valley.

One by one, Central Valley counties have been gaining Republican voter pluralities. San Joaquin County moved into the GOP column recently, and Stanislaus and Merced counties are likely to follow soon. Placer County, Northern California's fastest-growing county, has now become the state's most Republican county.

The inland areas of Southern California are also growing rapidly and have been trending toward the GOP, but they didn't gain any new seats in the redistricting. Rather, legislative and congressional districts from slower-growing coastal metropolitan areas were expanded outward.

Republicans are not making any net gains from their new strength in the inland regions because they continue to lose voter registration share and legislative and congressional seats in coastal urban areas. Once-Republican portions of the Los Angeles and San Francisco
Bay areas have become new Democratic strongholds -- the San Gabriel Mountain foothills (Pasadena, Glendale, etc.) and Contra Costa County being two examples. And Republicans have no chance of losing their minority party status in the foreseeable future.

If the Central Valley is to become the state's major partisan political battleground, as seems likely, one uncertain factor is the region's large, but still politically marginal, Latino population. As the region's Latinos become more politically active,as they certainly will, they could retilt it back toward the Democrats. Or, if the Republicans regain their once-respectable share of Latino voters through adroit candidate selection and positioning, they may consolidate their recent gains in the region.

What happens in the Central Valley may be the most important political story of the decade.

The Bee's Dan Walters can be reached at (916) 321-1195 or