Another Representative You've Never Heard of Retires: Diane Watson CA-33

[Lunar]

Rep. Diane Watson (D-Calif.) will announce her retirement Thursday at a 10 a.m. press conference at her Los Angeles office, several Democratic sources told POLITICO.

Watson, serving in her fourth full term, won a special election to her Los Angeles-area seat in June 2001 after the death of former Rep. Julian Dixon.

The 76-year-old Democrat's future has been the subject of considerable recent speculation, with state Assemblywoman Karen Bass often mentioned as preparing to wage a bid for Watson’s 33rd District seat — possibly with Watson’s support.

Watson’s seat is regarded as solidly Democratic, with Barack Obama winning 87 percent of the vote there in 2008.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32801.html#ixzz0fChMwaNA

Here's the link to save you the effort:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Watson

Age: 76



But the weird thing is that I think I'm going to end up agreeing with redcommander on this district, it's only D+35, so a good Republican candidate could really make this a tossup.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

This is kind of an interesting seat in that it's probably one of the most affluent majority-minority seats in the country. It's not interesting in how it'll vote though obviously.

[Kaine for Senate '18]

OMG DEMOCRATS ARE JUMPING SHIP!  1994!  1994!  1994!!!!!!!!!!!

[Bo]

The Dems should keep this one easily.

[Lunar]

The Dems should keep this one easily.

I tried to post a message with just a few blank spaces from the space bar after yours to demonstrate a point, but unfortunately the forum system rejected it saying "The message body was left empty."  

If only the forum system were more intelligent, it would recognize other empty posts.

[Smash255]

This is kind of an interesting seat in that it's probably one of the most affluent majority-minority seats in the country. It's not interesting in how it'll vote though obviously.

Not as much as you might think.  Just did a quick search of ones on the top of my head (could have looked at many more if I thought about it) and all the ones I looked at are more affluent

MD-4 Edwards
MD-7 Cummings
NY-5 Ackerman
NY-6 Meeks
NY-7 Crowley
NY-17 Engel
CA-9 Lee
CA-10 Pelosi
HI-1 Abercrombie
HI-2 Hirono

That is just a quick look, and Crowley's the only one that is even close, all the others are quite a bit more wealthy

[Torie]

This is kind of an interesting seat in that it's probably one of the most affluent majority-minority seats in the country. It's not interesting in how it'll vote though obviously.

It is a very odd and erose district, and reaches snake like to take in the quite wealthy census tracts in prime Silverlake even that takes in where I bought that house. But I doubt it has even one GOP leaning precinct (the last redoubts for those in more central LA are in Hancock Park, an area this district snakes around). "Prime" Silverlake is filled with Hollywood types (many of them writers, including the lady next door who is a writer for True Blood who has these cool vampire parties) and lawyers, and doctors, with a lot of gays, including the guy a few doors down who ran into my rear view mirror while driving by (the streets are quite narrow).  Going into his beautifully appointed Spanish house with this fantastic pool was interesting. He had three extremely handsome young hunks lounging around to keep him company. All of them (including the 45 year old or so guy who clipped my rear view mirror) had lower body fat percentages than I do,  even now (I am around 16%). It was all muscle baby.

By the way, his rear view mirror was damaged too, but instead of fixing it, he just got a new Beemer.  And so it goes. It's LA!

The district also takes in the upper middle class black neighborhoods in Baldwin Hills and Ladera Heights, which might be the most wealthy black census tracts on the planet, with only some DC adjacent ones potential competitors.

It also takes in some quite poor areas, including the mostly low income Hispanic parts of Hollywood, and some other areas that are a black/Hispanic mix that are also low income. But the vote totals there are lower. Hispanics in this neck of the woods don't vote much, with many not eligible to vote. Other neighborhoods are low income recent immigrant Asian, and they don't vote much either.

[cinyc]

This is kind of an interesting seat in that it's probably one of the most affluent majority-minority seats in the country. It's not interesting in how it'll vote though obviously.

Not as much as you might think.  Just did a quick search of ones on the top of my head (could have looked at many more if I thought about it) and all the ones I looked at are more affluent

MD-4 Edwards
MD-7 Cummings
NY-5 Ackerman
NY-6 Meeks
NY-7 Crowley
NY-17 Engel
CA-9 Lee
CA-10 Pelosi
HI-1 Abercrombie
HI-2 Hirono

That is just a quick look, and Crowley's the only one that is even close, all the others are quite a bit more wealthy

Any wealth in Engel's oddly shaped NY-17 isn't really in the minority areas but in parts of Riverdale, some (but not all) of the Westchester County Hudson River villages and Rockland County.  Few of those areas are minority-majority.  It's also not really much of a minority-majority district - whites make up 48.9% of the population.

NY-5 is 55% white, so it's not really much of a minority majority district (though blacks, Hispanics and Asians combined constitute slightly over 50% of the district).

Many of the NY-6 majority black Queens neighborhoods are solidly suburban middle to upper middle class areas (Cambria Heights, Springfield Gardens, etc).

[Smash255]

This is kind of an interesting seat in that it's probably one of the most affluent majority-minority seats in the country. It's not interesting in how it'll vote though obviously.

Not as much as you might think.  Just did a quick search of ones on the top of my head (could have looked at many more if I thought about it) and all the ones I looked at are more affluent

MD-4 Edwards
MD-7 Cummings
NY-5 Ackerman
NY-6 Meeks
NY-7 Crowley
NY-17 Engel
CA-9 Lee
CA-10 Pelosi
HI-1 Abercrombie
HI-2 Hirono

That is just a quick look, and Crowley's the only one that is even close, all the others are quite a bit more wealthy

Any wealth in Engel's oddly shaped NY-17 isn't really in the minority areas but in parts of Riverdale, some (but not all) of the Westchester County Hudson River villages and Rockland County.  Few of those areas are minority-majority.  It's also not really much of a minority-majority district - whites make up 48.9% of the population.

NY-5 is 55% white, so it's not really much of a minority majority district (though blacks, Hispanics and Asians combined constitute slightly over 50% of the district).

Many of the NY-6 majority black Queens neighborhoods are solidly suburban middle to upper middle class areas (Cambria Heights, Springfield Gardens, etc).

As far as majority minority, I was looking at non-Hispanic white.    NY-5 is 40.5% non-Hispanic white, NY-17 is 38.5% non-Hispanic white.

[patrick1]

FWIW,  NY-06 and affluence should not be just in the same sentence.  It has some of the worst neighborhoods in the city.  Cambria Heights and Springfield Gardens are not Upper Middle Class.  I would use the term- Black Middle Class.  Even these more upwardly mobile neighborhoods (St Albans and S.G.) and SE Queens as a whole have been devastated by foreclosures these past few years.

[Hash]

Safe R

[nclib]

This is kind of an interesting seat in that it's probably one of the most affluent majority-minority seats in the country. It's not interesting in how it'll vote though obviously.

Also interesting that it, along with Becerra's district, were the only 2 majority-minority CD's in California that voted against banning gay marriage.

[Torie]

This is kind of an interesting seat in that it's probably one of the most affluent majority-minority seats in the country. It's not interesting in how it'll vote though obviously.

Also interesting that it, along with Becerra's district, were the only 2 majority-minority CD's in California that voted against banning gay marriage.

Do you know what the Prop 8 percentages were in Watson's CD 33 district?  Silverlake probably voted against prop 8 by 4 to 1 or something I bet. It would be interesting to see how the upper middle class black areas voted.

Oh, here
is a cool precinct map of LA County for Prop 8, and in Ladera Heights and Baldwin Hills it appears that the vote was close. Silverlake of course is dark green. Google is such a cool tool. I found the map in about 30 seconds.

[Smash255]

This is kind of an interesting seat in that it's probably one of the most affluent majority-minority seats in the country. It's not interesting in how it'll vote though obviously.

Also interesting that it, along with Becerra's district, were the only 2 majority-minority CD's in California that voted against banning gay marriage.

Pelosi's district is majority minority.

[nclib]

This is kind of an interesting seat in that it's probably one of the most affluent majority-minority seats in the country. It's not interesting in how it'll vote though obviously.

Also interesting that it, along with Becerra's district, were the only 2 majority-minority CD's in California that voted against banning gay marriage.

Pelosi's district is majority minority.

Perhaps I should have said majority of black + hispanic.

[Sbane]

This is kind of an interesting seat in that it's probably one of the most affluent majority-minority seats in the country. It's not interesting in how it'll vote though obviously.

This district isn't really that affluent. The median income is only 31k though it does take in a lot of upper middle class black neighborhoods. In the bay area you have the 15th district which is majority minority (as long as asians "count" lol) with a median income of 74k and the 16th with a median income of 67k. As for black heavy districts, the 9th is 26% black and has a median income of 44k (and is the poorest district in the bay area).

[Oakvale]

OMG DEMOCRATS ARE JUMPING SHIP!  1994!  1994!  1994!!!!!!!!!!!

NONE SHALL ESCAPE THE BROWNPOCALYPSE.