How Democrats Fooled California’s Redistricting Commission

[minionofmidas]

Minor issue, but what is there in desert San Diego besides Indian Reservations and in desert Riverside besides the Chuckwalla Pen? I'd like to see both placed in the 53rd if possible. (And Blythe might go into the 41st I guess.)

[minionofmidas]

Presumably from where you have an SB district pick up a piece of LA County, no?

[minionofmidas]

Presumably from where you have an SB district pick up a piece of LA County, no?

No, that cut is into Westlake Village along Hwy 101, a long way from the north LA County CD. As I said, I don't like any of the cuts for the north LA County CD, other than into Kern County. Those cuts represent far less of a community of interest, and cutting into the city of LA to pick up a few people would just be awful.

Right, there's a CD and the San Gabriel wilderness in between. Silly me. Still true "net", of course, but there'd have to be some shift through the 28th given where the road link is. How many people does your 29th have within the city of LA - since it seems it has a portion of the Valley?

[minionofmidas]

Watsonville would be a better fit for that Salinas district, but I guess it's too many people and would end up split? Also not happy about the 14th/15th arrangement, but something's got to give  - the 12th southern and 16th western perimeter look perfect to me, so it's either this or a trichop of San Jose. I'd maybe have to see what that would look like. (California is a bitch to load, and I don't know enough about LA to dare argue with you two there, so I'm not bothering loading it at all.)

[minionofmidas]

You seem to have a trapped precinct in East San Jose.

[minionofmidas]

Anyhoo, one can't get to anywhere near 50% HCVAP for CA-17 (they are farm workers to a substantial degree), no matter how much you just trash the map to try to get there, ignoring every other factor.

I have 3 maps below, one my existing lines for CA-17, one that does an extra county chop, and ups the Hispanic percentage by about 3 points, and then finally, the cf  Hispanic max pack version excrescence going where no man has gone before. Which would you pick, Mike?  

The second, I think. -_- Though my name is not Mike.

[minionofmidas]

I still stand by this comment, of course:

Also not happy about the 14th/15th arrangement, but something's got to give  - the 12th southern and 16th western perimeter look perfect to me, so it's either this or a trichop of San Jose. I'd maybe have to see what that would look like.

[minionofmidas]

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It isn't Mike, trust me. I drained the swamp dry. Nothing is left. The CVAP for this little VRA monster I bet is closer to something like 40%, maybe a tad higher - no more. You don't really think the courts would require this VRA monster to actually be drawn do you?

There would also be the question whether the most hispanic sections of San Jose are any sort of CoI with Watsonville and the Salinas Valley, as opposed to other parts of that I believe fairly integrated city.

[minionofmidas]

I took a peek at MALDEF's version for that area and they claim 45% HCVAP. Their map is pretty similar to mine, so I'm guessing I have about the same.

Here's the legal problem I see. SCOTUS said that you have to meet the Gingles test to claim a section 2 violation. That includes a majority minority in a compact area and racially polarized voting. In Bartlett they said that a majority meant a voting age majority of a single group. They punted on the citizen question. I see a door left open for a voting age majority in the area, yet a sub 50% amount in a specific district as long as the single group had the opportunity to elect a candidate of choice. The Dems made this type of case in their IL legislative map, and they prevailed in court last month. But you're the lawyer, so you tell me if a court would go there in CA.

I don't see these conditions met in the area. I'd content myself with drawing a (not VRA-mandated) "Hispanic influence" district... but even that does mean you don't let Watsonville lie just outside it without very very good reason.

[minionofmidas]

Chopping down to Monterey is butt-ugly, and I'd avoid it if I could. Seems like Morgan Hill (which, hilariously, is not named for a hill named for a guy whose surname was Morgan, but instead is named for a guy whose first name was Morgan and whose surname was Hill ) is much more of a common suburb these days, and is just 34% Hispanic (versus 58% in Gilroy and 82% in Watsonville), so I suppose I prefer the arrangement that puts it in the 16th.

Seems I wasn't too clear by what I meant by trichop of San Jose. Oh well. If noone else can even see my issue with the 14th as drawn, then it probably isn't that important. Consider that objection withdrawn.

[minionofmidas]

Much better, I think. This is an area where not drawing two Hispanic-electing districts again is going to be considered illegal. And yes, drawing them does require quite a bit of seeming erosity. The communities of interest are clear anyways.

Agree with sbane on Antioch.

What would it look like to get Redding in the second and that district's southwestern parts into the first instead? Sounds like that might be better, but also might not, depending on just how far you need to go. (Or you go into the populated parts of Yolo again and redraw the 7th, 5th, 3rd and 4th as a result. That is also an option.)

Santa Barbara and western Ventura is nowhere to be seen in your screens. Is the district line the county line all the way through?

Little as I know about the finer points of LA County geography, that 33rd is butt ugly. What would be the consequences of exchanging its northwestern part with the southern part of the 35th?

I remain deeply unconvinced of the whole SD map. If it's fine with muon and sbane then it shall stand, of course, but to me the pairing of SD's Hispanic southern suburbs with Imperial, while better than all the alternatives, is bad enough and the Hispanic parts of central SD don't belong in the district unless that were necessary to make a solid HCVAP majority district. Which I'm quite confident it is not, Bob Filner's race notwithstanding. I'd put Coronado and the rest of Chula Vista and the empty parts of SD County in there instead, probably desert Riverside (and its huge penitentiary...) as well even though that is an additional county split. And yeah, I'm aware this has partisan consequences.

Everything else, I'd vote to approve right now as a backbench commission member from the Democratic pool.

I tried loading California an hour ago to resolve those questions of mine... it froze on me.

[minionofmidas]

Coachella and (only to an extent) Indio do fit, but I'm not convinced of anything further west. I'd really need the app to load here.

[minionofmidas]

Thank you for your comments Gentlemen.

1. CA-33 is an Hispanic CD (61% Hispanic), and has to drawn that way to get that Hispanic percentage.

There is of course the question whether black vs latino block voting is anywhere as prevalent as white vs latino block voting in the Central Valley - where it is very much an issue, and no, there is no question that it should take prevalence over county lines (if necessary, and as long as you're staying in the Valley).
The 2007 by-election in the current 37th was won by the Black candidate over the initially favored Hispanic candidate (talking of the primary of course) thanks in part to low turnout... but the relevant bit is she wasn't challenged again. Richardson's two primary challengers in 2008 not only were both jokes that didn't get any votes, but were also both Black as well. (Yeah, I dug back into the thread to see that the 35th is a Black Pack.)

I notice you only comment on Muon's map, not on my suggestion.

[minionofmidas]

What suggestion of yours did I fail to comment upon Lewis?  I didn't mean to ignore you. 

You edited that post while I was replying to it. Not that your reply on that point is particularly helpful.

Why is it a big no-no that the Napa Valley be in the same CD as the areas to its immediate east? I don't get it. Obviously getting the district go all the way to say Yuba City would be a lot worse than drawing Redding into it (this is from the point of view of Yuba City or Redding, really) - hence the question of how far it would have to go. I guess I could probably answer that myself without the DRA... and yeah, the big northern district, with Napa and Lake placed with Solano, might also be an alternative.

[minionofmidas]

Having looked it up, Shasta County is not all that much smaller than Yolo, and obviously Solano also needs to pick up population. So, you know what? I drop that objection.

[minionofmidas]

It deserves study. 

It's been studied. That's what we were trying to get through to you all along. Any other setup - except possibly upping the Hispanic percentage by splitting up Modesto as well - is DOA.

Can this excrescence be described an hewing together "compact" communities of interest?

Quite. Honestly so, even.

[minionofmidas]

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Incredible what a difference in appearance one precinct can make sometimes. This is entirely superficial, but using the more southerly connector precinct looks so much worse.

[minionofmidas]

I'm not sure that Yolo fully counts as Central Valley for these considerations. And Torie poached it for a North Bay district, which really was functionally the same thing as what happened in 2000 but made for a nicer-looking map. (He also shifted all the Sacramento area districts westwards compared to the current map, as a consequence of using Redding - of using all of Redding, that is - which also enabled him to use the Solano-Napa county line. I don't know if this was the process by which he arrived at the map, but that is one purely rational reasonable way in which I might have come to draw the same map that he did.)
The counties to the north, especially without the areas in between on paths that people actually use, are a different matter.

[minionofmidas]

That district is an eyesore.

So, can we get this discussion back on track? A California map that the Commission might have drawn, if we were the Commissioners. I'm not signing off on Torie's map until my concerns regarding CA-33/37 and San Diego are adressed, or it's been proven to me they cannot be. If the map is fine with muon and sbane, I consider myself outvoted. I have no further objections to anywhere else, and am ready to help outvote anybody who raises objections anywhere else.

[minionofmidas]

Yah, I meant 35.

[minionofmidas]

I thought the issue in SD was whether or not to link to Imperial (correct me if I'm wrong Lewis).

My issue is/was with which nearby nonwhite areas I want included in the National City - Imperial district and which ones not, actually (as it can't take all of them), and with the character of the 53rd which in its current form is at least arguably a minority influence district. Two things are happening here -
one is an old pet peeve of mine carried over from the last map that the desert parts of Riverside, and definitely Coachella town and I guess Indio as well though it seems to be changing to the suburban, ought to have been in the Imperial district from the start. (And Blythe in the High Desert district really - though it's barely majority Hispanic now, one of the many things I've finally looked at just now, as well as once again failing to get Calif. to work for me.) It helps that a huge part of the Riverside high desert's population is a prison, of course. Such places belong in the low turnout neighboring district, if available. Basically none of these people are represented at all at current - they don't share much interest with the areas they're paired with. (The Hispanic minorities that exist in those areas never crossed my mind, really. Certainly I wasn't aware that there's a serious issue with Perris.) And because of my Native American fetish, I can't help of thinking of those little reservations that dot desert San Diego. Though I think they're outnumbered by the Whites in the area no matter how widely you define the eastern suburbs (which I certainly don't want the district to impede on.) That last is a very minor point though.

-and the other was my impression, which after studying maps and all was only to, shall we say a clearly under 50% degree, correct, that Torie's map there was more aimed at whitewashing the 53rd (and, I suspected, trying hard to put it into play) than at improving Hispanic chances in the 51st. But actually, while he made the boundary there more erose in SD, it's not by all that much - the current district extends further north than I recollected. (The 51st's prong down the eastern edge of the 53rd's SD portion is new, though, and I suppose grabs some Whites.) And Coronado - I vaguely thought so but wasn't sure - and Imperial Beach - I never would have guessed. Actually, I didn't even know it was mostly White, or that Coronado is so unHispanic - were in the 51st til now. (So why did Torie move Imperial Beach in now? Reducing erosity? Ran out of easily grabbable Hispanic sections of downtown SD? No, this is not a rhetorical question, just a mix of a real question and, well, just a musing.)
Yes, I knew the 51st' current retiring Congressman is actually White. No, I didn't know nearly enough about his primary challenges, and might have been less certain then. (Fascinating. Though the conclusions they offer are rather mixed. Fun fact: in the 2006 grudgematch against Juan Vargas, Filner easily won Imperial, the county providing a sizable portion of his margin of victory, despite the spoiler third man in the race Danny Ramirez being from Calexico. But in 2008, when Ramirez was the only challenger, Filner crushed him in SD but actually lost Imperial. Juan Vargas is the early front runner for the seat now that Filner is running for mayor of SD, and appears to be an individual that should be kept as far from any legislative body as possible, though that's neither here nor there.)
It should be pointed out here that the 51st is 58.odd% Hispanic VAP as is, so probably not far off majority CVAP and definitely plurality CVAP by a comfortable margin, and actually needs to lose population, not gain. It needs to lose right about as much as the 53rd needs to gain, actually, 40oddK people. And the 53rd is not majority White total population now, though it was in 2000 and Torie's version seems to be, and is actually not so far off ceasing to be majority White in VAP, where Torie drove it all the way back up to 60%. A lot of the action in that respect must be on the borders with the other SD CD's, actually. I haven't looked at the Commission's maps of the area since just after they were created, but I remember being not impressed either.
So what I felt should happen, but knew I would need the app to see if it's really possible, is add those heavily Hispanic areas that exist outside the rural parts of the district (and Coachella is 97% Hispanic. There's really no excuse whatsoever for leaving it lie just outside a VRA district one part of it it has clear ties to), and whatever of the southern suburbs it can absorb - not Coronado, as I know now - and retreat as far as possible out of the central sections of SD, and create a still safely Hispanic 51st and an unequivocally minority influence, under 50% Anglo VAP, 53rd. And if that means Susan Davis safe forever and some other Hispanic than Vargas taking over from Filner, so much the better.

Meh. This whole post is an erose mess. And while I was typing five new replies have been posted.

[minionofmidas]

You are going to cut an "Hispanic" CD down from 61.9% HVAP (close to if not at 50.0% HCVAP) to 54% HVAP? And cut the black CD to 38.9% BVAP down from 44.6% BVAP (percentages destined as to the blacks to continue to decline over time)? I don't think so. And get a bodyguard sbane, because Maxine Waters will be looking for you.

To hug and kiss him. As, in practice, he preserved the additional Black opportunity CD you're gutting. (In favor of a Hispanic, of course, which makes the whole thing's VRA merits much more complicated.) No one (no Black politician) wants a 40%+ Black CD in California. They didn't want anything of the kind when they could pretty much draw their own district 10 years ago, anyway.

[minionofmidas]

The obsession with Imperial Beach is just strange - really.  

I added all those words there just to make it clear I'm not obsessed with it in any way. I'm obsessed with Coachella and with downtown SD, actually. I wanna have my cake and eat it too, or have it shown that it can't be done.

[minionofmidas]

Why are we arguing over this black v brown thing again?  It doesn't mean a damn from a partisan standpoint.

Because the district is ugly. Unequivocally unnecessarily ugly if the issue can be solved without diluting the Hispanic CD too far, unnecessarily from the point of view of its Black neighbor district no matter what. Certainly not for partisan reasons.

I still don't understand your issue with downtown San Diego. What partisan objective are you after in San Diego, just so I know what it is to reject.

Probably none, though I'm not entirely certain of that.

You are not getting Coachella - period.

Why not?

I recognize it would probably require wrenches to all of outer SoCal... is that the only reason?

[minionofmidas]

You are not getting Coachella because 1) the Commission didn't do it

'kay then, I suggest we're tossing the entirety of your map on the strength of that argument.