Final Drafts of Maps, Direct to your Computer

I live in Ojai (0.00 / 0)

and I'm really liking the 24th Congressional District, the 19th State Senate, and the 37th Assembly. It looks to me that we may be able to replace three Republicans with three Democrats! It looks like Das Williams of the 35th Assembly seat will have to shift and run in the 37th.

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by: SPK @ Thu Jul 28, 2011 at 21:39:27 PM UTC

huge glaring gaffe (0.00 / 0)

Why are the cities of Pleasant Hill and Martinez in Contra Costa County being yanked out of the DeSaulnier Senate district and shoe horned into a hybrid Wolk/Wiggins district?  that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.  Pleasant HIll and Martinez are Easy Bay bedroom communities where people commute by BART to San Francisco and Oakland to work.  Why are they being stuck in a largley rural and agricultural district that stretches to the north of Clearlake?  That  makes absoilutely no sense whatsoever and is just inviting litigation.

The Commission is supposed to keep communities of common interest in the same district and looking at this piece of work you have to question their commitment to that task.  Pleasant Hill and Martinez are separated from the rest of the district by a wide body of water called Suisun Bay and by a million miles in terms of the issues that each side of that channel hold as priorities.

This one needs to go back to the drawing board.

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by: Bob Loblaw @ Thu Jul 28, 2011 at 22:20:29 PM UTC

because they're on the 80/680 commuter corridor (0.00 / 0)

martinez is just a bridge away from benicia and vallejo. the lion's share opt the population of that district are in commuter burbs, the sac delta southeast of 680 and the tomato fields between davis and woodland don't have many people. the communities themselves are quite similar, with the mix of freeway outlet stores and beige cookie-cutter commuter exurbs, packed highways and capitol corridor commuters, mixed in with diverse military towns.

growing up in davis, i played soccer against a lot of teams from pleasant hill/concord/mt. diablo, it's all pretty similar, to be honest. affluent yuppie democrats driving SUVs (used to be minivans) into the city during the week, and up to tahoe on the weekend.

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by: wu ming @ Fri Jul 29, 2011 at 05:18:01 AM UTC

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look at a map (0.00 / 0)

Take a look at a map of California.  There's a huge natural boundary running right through the middle of the state, its called the Sacramento River Delta.  Its widest point is Suisun Bay, where there's over a mile of water plus another half mile of mud flats and tidal marsh.  Its pretty easy to spot.

On one side of that huge natural boundary is the San Ramon Valley where Pleasant Hill happens to be. People who live there (like me) tend to work in that valley or in San Francisco.  BART does not go from here to Solano County for a reason.

I don't care who you played soccer against, or what your opinion is of the "SUV driving yuppies" who live here might be.  THis community could not be any more different than Yolo, Napa or Solano.  

San Diego and Redding are on the I-5 Corridor, should they be in the same district too?

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by: Bob Loblaw @ Fri Jul 29, 2011 at 15:10:05 PM UTC

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there's a 6 lane bridge over that body of water (0.00 / 0)

that connects commuters moving between those cities in a couple of minutes, tops. but i suppose you guys are too fancy to be in the same district as that rabble on the other side of the bridge. GMAFB.

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by: wu ming @ Fri Jul 29, 2011 at 18:54:58 PM UTC

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or, to put it less snarky (0.00 / 0)

because redding and san diego aren't adjacent, and because they are not part of a broader regional commute pattern, or share similar economic challenges (ie. the 80-680 corridor has been one of the major sources of exurb and commuter burn growth in the past two decades, and thus suffers disproportionately from high gas prices and the gas-related housing bubble collapse).

it has been clear since the census that the growth of bay area commuting population eastwards would have an effect on district boundaries, and that some communities that think of themselves as bay area communities would have to get linked more with their neighbors to the direct east. there's no need to take it personally, just because your chunk of commuter suburbia ended up being on the western edge of a commuter exurban district instead of the eastern edge of a commuter suburban district. if it wasn't you, it'd be hercules and richmond, or else the district would have to go even further north, making it far less compact and with less connection between the ends of the district (davis has a lot more interaction with vallejo or martinez than, say, red bluff does).

and quite frankly, the voter's right act doesn't really give a damn about suburban communities of interest, so they're always going to come after racial and ethnic considerations. there has not been centuries of history of drawing district lines to disenfranchise affluent commuter suburbs, after all.  

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by: wu ming @ Fri Jul 29, 2011 at 19:09:04 PM UTC

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I get it (0.00 / 0)

You're competing for annoying jerk of the day. Congratulations, you're a clear front-runner.

The commission's logic in linking Martinez with Napa in the Senate makes as much sense as linking Antioch with Fairfield in the Assembly, or Davis with Yuba City in Congress, i.e., very little.  However, given that we have had Congressional districts straddling the Delta for at least 20 years, such as George Miller's district since '92 and the Tauscher/Garamendi seat for the last 10 years, presumably the commission decided it would work here as well.  It's not the way I would have drawn the lines, but it's likely what we're stuck with.

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by: SolanoVoter @ Sun Jul 31, 2011 at 20:36:06 PM UTC

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The maps are drawn geographic (0.00 / 0)

And I imagine that move was only to equalize population, senate districts are so huge, you must stretch out to balance the deviations.

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by: D-Westlake Village @ Fri Jul 29, 2011 at 16:00:52 PM UTC

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exactly (0.00 / 0)

They ignored the mandate given to them by the voters of CA, including the voters of Pleasant Hill, to keep communities of shared interest intact, in order to solve a math problem.

Pleasant Hill's problem appareantly is that it is not a gay, Asian, African American, Hispanic, or Pacific Islander community so its shared interests don't matter.

It doesn't matter that we share a school districy, a parks district, several transit districts, sanitation, water and other utility districts with our surrounding communities.  It doesn't matter that we read different newspapers and have different TV channels...its a completely different media market.  All that matters is that the math works and that skin color or sexual orientation are the only shared interests that are recognized.

What bullpuuckey.

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by: Bob Loblaw @ Fri Jul 29, 2011 at 17:45:17 PM UTC

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is your objection to the ethnic makeup (0.00 / 0)

of fairfield and vallejo? and what's with the gay comment? i don't know of any legislative district drawn for a gay community of interest, since there's rarely anywhere that reaches a majority in numbers sufficient to elect officials outright. the voting rights act doesn't include sexual orientation as a protected community.

people in solano county read the SF chronicle and watch bay area TV stations. they work in the tri-valleys or the bay area.

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by: wu ming @ Fri Jul 29, 2011 at 19:23:11 PM UTC

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Compactness tends to trump communities of interest (0.00 / 0)

And when districts are drawn compact, not all communities of interest are put together. Everyone can't be pleased in redistricting. There's no need to pull the race card.

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by: D-Westlake Village @ Fri Jul 29, 2011 at 20:49:26 PM UTC

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From an OC perspective (0.00 / 0)

A good workmanlike job, given the complexity of the project.

As a bonus, there appears to be one new swing Assembly district, which includes a big chunk of flat Anaheim, and the cities of Fullerton, Buena Park, Cypress, La Palma, and Stanton. Currently the district of quirky Lincoln-impersonator Chris Norby.

And talk about finding communities of interest.

Little Saigon (in Westminster and Garden Grove) is cleverly joined with Cambodia Town in Long Beach in a Long Beach-dominated Congressional District, finally reuniting these elements of colonial French Indochina.  

OC Progressive is Gus Ayer, former Fountain Valley Council member.  

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by: OC Progressive @ Fri Jul 29, 2011 at 13:09:13 PM UTC

the maps look fairly good to me (0.00 / 0)

the congressional valley district should be an interesting swing one, not entirely unlike vic fazio's old district lines. makes more sense than lumping yolo in with the north coast, anyways. glad to see they ignored stan forbes' idiocy about carving up yolo three ways and lumping davis in with sac. districts with lots of small to medium sized regional interests make it more likely that deals get cut and constituents get looked after than districts with a huge city on one side and a small city lumped in.

i'm still waiting for (someone else to do) some serious data crunching, though, on partisan numbers as well as demographics by district. i suspect that deems will do quite well in 2012, but i don't know socal well enough to say for sure.  

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by: wu ming @ Fri Jul 29, 2011 at 19:28:36 PM UTC

deems=dems, stupid autocorrect n/t (0.00 / 0)

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by: wu ming @ Fri Jul 29, 2011 at 19:29:16 PM UTC

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