For Latinos, one rung at a time
Two voter-passed reform measures, one giving a citizens committee the power to draw district boundary lines and the other changing the way primary elections are conducted, are expected to shake the political ground under California.
If all goes as voters were promised when they passed propositions 11 and 14, political races will become more competitive and candidates more moderate.
But likely the real shaking will come from a law the Legislature passed in 2002 to bring people long relegated to the bench into the game.
The law is the California Voting Rights Act and it is making "at-large voting" an endangered species.
An example of at-large voting is when a city elects council members through a citywide vote, rather than dividing the city into smaller voting districts. With by-district voting, candidates and voters must live within a district's boundaries.
While an at-large system is not on its face "wrong," in passing the state's Voting Rights Act, legislators made it easier for such voting to be challenged by citizens who believe they are being illegally denied political power. If minority-preferred candidates consistently fail to get elected, or if minorities are unable to influence elections, it is possible a city or school district with at-large voting is violating the law.
TARGETING AT-LARGE VOTING
Like fish in a barrel, at-large jurisdictions are being picked off by minority advocates and civil rights attorneys. And in the end -- even if the legal challenges are settled before going to trial -- cities and school districts are being forced to pay legal awards that sometimes exceed $1 million.
The first challenge came in 2003, when the Hanford Joint Union School District was sued by Latino voters. The challenge was based on the fact that no Latino had served on the at-large elected school board in 20 years, although almost 40 percent of the district's population was Latino. The case was settled with the district's promise to create "trustee area" elections and pay more than $100,000 in legal fees.
Five years later, the battle was moved up the road, with the Madera Unified School District successfully challenged over its at-large voting arrangement. The list of successful challenges has grown. Now just the hint of a lawsuit is prompting cities and school districts to abandon at-large voting.
That's why we are seeing Bakersfield City School District and Kern High School District trustees taking steps to end at-large voting and to create "trustee areas" in time for the 2012 elections.
Why is this such a big deal? Why will this shake up California politics more than other political reforms?
WILL LATINO VOTERS AWAKEN?
It's all about the "sleeping giant" that political pundits keep talking about when they watch California's Latino population grow, overtaking non-Hispanic white populations in some California cities, notably in the Central Valley. California is expected to have a Latino majority by 2025.
According to the Pew Hispanic Center, 50.5 million Latinos were counted living in the U.S. in the 2010 census. This was up from 35.3 million in 2000. Over the same decade, the number of eligible Latino voters increased from 13.2 million in 2000 to 21.3 million in 2010.
Two demographic factors, youth and noncitizenship, account for the difference between population and "eligible voter" numbers. More than one third of Latinos (34.9 percent) are younger than the voting age of 18. It is a share greater than that of any other group. And an additional 22.4 percent are of voting age, but not U.S. citizens.
But from the 13.2-million-strong pool of eligible voters, only 6.6 million voted in the 2010 election.
According to Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll, non-Hispanic whites make up 64 percent of California's registered voters. They are evenly split: 40 percent Republican, 37 percent Democrat and 23 percent "decline to state." Latino Democrats outnumber Latino Republicans 57 percent to 18 percent.
"The Republican Party can no longer count on non-Hispanic whites to give them the pluralities they need," DiCamillo recently told The Sacramento Bee.
But while their numbers are yielding political gains in some parts of the state, they seem to have relatively little political clout in the Central Valley, including Republican-dominated Kern County.
When will local Latino voters and Latino candidates begin flexing the muscle their growing population numbers give them?
The answer: When they begin climbing the political ladder.
And for many politicians, the first rung of the ladder is election to a school board.
FIRST LATINO ELECTED TO COUNCIL
Although the 2010 U.S. census reveals that Bakersfield's population is 45 percent Latino, it appears no person of Latino descent had ever been elected to the City Council in Bakersfield's more than 100-year history until Rudy Salas Jr. won the Ward 1 seat last November.
For many decades, Bakersfield has had by-district, or ward, voting. But Ward 1 has long been considered a "black" ward because of some of its African-American-dominated neighborhoods. In fact, Ward 1 has a large Latino population.
Salas, former state Sen. Dean Florez's field representative and a registered Democrat, said lack of opportunity has resulted in few Latinos being elected to local offices. Republican elected officeholders seldom appoint Latinos, particularly Democratic Latinos, to boards and commissions. As a result, they often lack the political clout, financial backing and experience to successfully compete in at-large voting.
Salas, who grew up in the low-income southeast quadrant of the city, is an exception. He holds a political science and history degree from UCLA. His first job after college was as a White House intern. His years of hands-on political experience made him a well-known, powerhouse candidate in the contest to replace retiring Councilwoman Irma Carson.
Andrae Gonzales, who displaced long-entrenched incumbents on the Bakersfield City School District board last November, is an example of what it takes for a Latino to get elected.
Estimating the district's student population to be about 70 percent Latino, Gonzales said he and his army of volunteers worked for more than a year and spent more than $53,000 to win one of two contested seats on the BCSD board. Retired BCSD teacher Pam Baugher won the other seat, with the pair defeating the late Jerry Tate and Karen DeWalt.
Gonzales is not the first Latino elected to the board. He joined Lillian Tafoya, a popular retired BCSD principal, who was first elected in 1996.
"I was taken aback as to how much it would take to win the seat," said Gonzales during a recent interview. "It is hard for people who are not politically established to campaign in an at-large (school) district race, especially in a huge district that is spread out for 158 square miles and has 64,000 registered voters."
Gonzales, a Democrat and the executive director of a nonprofit organization that assists seniors and disabled people, organized teams of volunteers by ZIP codes and canvassed neighborhoods every weekend for a year. Now as an elected trustee, he is helping oversee the district's conversion from at-large voting to by-trustee area voting.
"This is a step in the right direction. It will make participating in the process easier and less costly," he said. "I hope it will encourage others to participate. You are much more likely to vote if you have a reason to vote, if you are voting for people you believe represent your views and share your interests."