2020 Census and Redistricting Thread: California

[Pouring Rain and Blairing Music]

The new CA-3 (where I live) is hideous. What was the logic there?

Are you familiar with why Inyo and Mono often get grouped with places that aren’t close as the crow flies?

Yes. That doesn't justify what they did with Folsom and El Dorado County.

And it’s also not explanatory of the map shown. It would make sense if Inyo and Mono were with say District 23 due to the Sierras and how Monitor Pass is closed in the winter.

[Brittain33]

This is interesting. They kept LGBT communities united in districts wherever possible.

https://www.eqca.org/big-wins-lgbtq-redistricting/

[Oryxslayer]

This is interesting. They kept LGBT communities united in districts wherever possible.

https://www.eqca.org/big-wins-lgbtq-redistricting/

I saw that earlier. Some of it does seem claiming victory over decisions others made - for example San Francisco dropped the Excelsior into the peninsula to make the new CA-15 a coalition seat, not to improve LGBTQ interests. But in other areas...well they are a COI just like any other.


On an unrelated note, Lofgren is going to be running in the Hispanic seat, sorting out the issue of the South Bay. But I wonder if any other Dem's will have a go at it, there could be an opening for a DvD battle.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

This is interesting. They kept LGBT communities united in districts wherever possible.

https://www.eqca.org/big-wins-lgbtq-redistricting/

We stan

[omar04]

If Republicans continue improving with the Hispanic vote, couldn't this map have like 20 R's by the end of the decade?

Did California Hispanics even move that far right? Most of these seats are quite overwhelmingly D so I'd think the trend would have to accelerate quite a bit for there to be a double digit gain. Anyway, if that comes to pass the only real way it could have been prevented is via de facto racial gerrymandering, so whatever.

Nope. High density Latino districts voted very strongly Democratic at 79% and low density around 58%. See pages 11 and 12 of the report.

https://latino.ucla.edu/research/latino-voters-in-2020-election/

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

If Republicans continue improving with the Hispanic vote, couldn't this map have like 20 R's by the end of the decade?

Did California Hispanics even move that far right? Most of these seats are quite overwhelmingly D so I'd think the trend would have to accelerate quite a bit for there to be a double digit gain. Anyway, if that comes to pass the only real way it could have been prevented is via de facto racial gerrymandering, so whatever.

As a Californian I can say 20 Rs will never happen at the current rate.

[SevenEleven]

If Republicans continue improving with the Hispanic vote, couldn't this map have like 20 R's by the end of the decade?

Did California Hispanics even move that far right? Most of these seats are quite overwhelmingly D so I'd think the trend would have to accelerate quite a bit for there to be a double digit gain. Anyway, if that comes to pass the only real way it could have been prevented is via de facto racial gerrymandering, so whatever.

As a Californian I can say 20 Rs will never happen at the current rate.

Not only will it never happen, if Hispanics do become a super solid R voting block in some bizarro world, those communities still deserve representation.

[StateBoiler]

This is interesting. They kept LGBT communities united in districts wherever possible.

https://www.eqca.org/big-wins-lgbtq-redistricting/

If LGBT qualifies as a COI, you can create a COI for literally any reason, thereby negating the practical power of the term.

[Oryxslayer]

This is interesting. They kept LGBT communities united in districts wherever possible.

https://www.eqca.org/big-wins-lgbtq-redistricting/

If LGBT qualifies as a COI, you can create a COI for literally any reason, thereby negating the practical power of the term.

I mean the commission literally accepted that the Arizona border and the adjacent towns of a few thousand people are a COI and went out of the way to unite them when possible. We had the case of the horse riding neighborhoods last cycle. Only those inside a group can define it's existence and it's members.

[Brittain33]

This is interesting. They kept LGBT communities united in districts wherever possible.

https://www.eqca.org/big-wins-lgbtq-redistricting/

If LGBT qualifies as a COI, you can create a COI for literally any reason, thereby negating the practical power of the term.

Why do you say that? LGBT exists as a category in discrimination / civil rights law and we have had unique political needs.

[lfromnj]

This is interesting. They kept LGBT communities united in districts wherever possible.

https://www.eqca.org/big-wins-lgbtq-redistricting/

If LGBT qualifies as a COI, you can create a COI for literally any reason, thereby negating the practical power of the term.

Why do you say that? LGBT exists as a category in discrimination / civil rights law and we have had unique political needs.

EQCA clearly just put out a dem gerrymander which was their only goal.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

This is interesting. They kept LGBT communities united in districts wherever possible.

https://www.eqca.org/big-wins-lgbtq-redistricting/

If LGBT qualifies as a COI, you can create a COI for literally any reason, thereby negating the practical power of the term.

Why do you say that? LGBT exists as a category in discrimination / civil rights law and we have had unique political needs.

EQCA clearly just put out a dem gerrymander which was their only goal.

Pfft, this isn’t that strong of a gerrymander. You can easily draw 1-3 republican seats without any really absurd tentacles

[lfromnj]

This is interesting. They kept LGBT communities united in districts wherever possible.

https://www.eqca.org/big-wins-lgbtq-redistricting/

If LGBT qualifies as a COI, you can create a COI for literally any reason, thereby negating the practical power of the term.

Why do you say that? LGBT exists as a category in discrimination / civil rights law and we have had unique political needs.

EQCA clearly just put out a dem gerrymander which was their only goal.

Pfft, this isn’t that strong of a gerrymander. You can easily draw 1-3 republican seats without any really absurd tentacles

https://twitter.com/eqca/status/1470504796943699979

Socal wasn't that bad for the CA GOP, other than the Calvert Palm Springs stuff, and Mike Levin getting the last minute rescue most stuff was ignored from eqca. I wouldn't even call the Levin district a gerrymander per se except for the fact it was last minute changes encouraged by Sadhwani.

[coloradocowboi]

This is interesting. They kept LGBT communities united in districts wherever possible.

https://www.eqca.org/big-wins-lgbtq-redistricting/

If LGBT qualifies as a COI, you can create a COI for literally any reason, thereby negating the practical power of the term.

It was illegal to be gay as recently as 2003 in this country. Since Stonewall, LGBTQ people have constituted our community primarily as a political movement. Just because you don't know any of this or really seem to have any interest in understanding why we are a community of interest doesn't indict the term "community of interest", just your very poor understanding of what that term means...

[Brittain33]

This is interesting. They kept LGBT communities united in districts wherever possible.

https://www.eqca.org/big-wins-lgbtq-redistricting/

If LGBT qualifies as a COI, you can create a COI for literally any reason, thereby negating the practical power of the term.

Why do you say that? LGBT exists as a category in discrimination / civil rights law and we have had unique political needs.

EQCA clearly just put out a dem gerrymander which was their only goal.

I'm not getting into that argument, but I will note you can draw a Dem-favoring map without regard for LGBT communities, or you can factor them in when drawing the lines, and I give them a lot of credit for doing the latter. Otherwise they could have easily been carved up among multiple Dem districts, reducing their clout with reps.

[SevenEleven]

This is interesting. They kept LGBT communities united in districts wherever possible.

https://www.eqca.org/big-wins-lgbtq-redistricting/

If LGBT qualifies as a COI, you can create a COI for literally any reason, thereby negating the practical power of the term.

If LGBT people don't fit your definition of a COI, I'd love to hear what does.

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

This is interesting. They kept LGBT communities united in districts wherever possible.

https://www.eqca.org/big-wins-lgbtq-redistricting/

If LGBT qualifies as a COI, you can create a COI for literally any reason, thereby negating the practical power of the term.

If LGBT people don't fit your definition of a COI, I'd love to hear what does.

Homophobes, presumably.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

This is interesting. They kept LGBT communities united in districts wherever possible.

https://www.eqca.org/big-wins-lgbtq-redistricting/

If LGBT qualifies as a COI, you can create a COI for literally any reason, thereby negating the practical power of the term.

Considering the sort of job the CA Commission has..."keeping LGBT areas together" - i.e. a group that is, at most, 8-9% of the population - strikes me as a significantly lesser need compared to things like compactness, community links (of the non-race-driven variety), municipal integrity, and the needs of other, larger groups such as Blacks, Latinos, etc.

It's also completely unnecessary since LGBT Americans haven't needed "dedicated" districts of any sort to get the sort of advances they've obtained over the past 15 years (and more advances that are in store if/when enough Ds get elected to Congress). And additionally, drawing a sort of district where they would have a strong position in a primary, in terms of raw numbers, is basically impossible.

But I'm not on the CA Commission, so whatever. Not my job. Life goes on.

But if I was? I'm not going to put that high a weight on what these activist groups think. They'd be relevant, sure, but there are more than one or two things that rank higher.

It certainly is unjustifiable to rubber-stamp a Dem gerry on the disingenuous grounds that it was for "LGBT rights" and pushed by an activist group with that sort of agenda. Like, the Dem controlled House passed the Equality Act as it is. I don't think any sort of dedicated district is really necessary - Dems from a wide range from districts voted for it, and constituency and terrain didn't really matter very much on that vote.

[lfromnj]

LGBT cois certainly do exist such as palm springs or areas of SF but to draw an entire map for socal and claim it's an LGBT map is not an LGBT organization it's a Democratic group.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

LGBT cois certainly do exist such as palm springs or areas of SF but to draw an entire map for socal and claim its an LGBT map is not an LGBT organization its a Democratic group.

Or it could be both. Though, to be blunt, it really doesn't matter too much. The group's map matters more than the group itself.

[Brittain33]

LGBT cois certainly do exist such as palm springs or areas of SF but to draw an entire map for socal and claim it's an LGBT map is not an LGBT organization it's a Democratic group.

I don’t see any claim that the commission let LGBT communities be the driving factor in drawing maps nor any evidence they spent tons of time on keeping these communities together. The fact they did it with no one commenting on it until after the maps were passed shows it wasn’t a big time commitment to do.

[lfromnj]

LGBT cois certainly do exist such as palm springs or areas of SF but to draw an entire map for socal and claim it's an LGBT map is not an LGBT organization it's a Democratic group.

I don’t see any claim that the commission let LGBT communities be the driving factor in drawing maps nor any evidence they spent tons of time on keeping these communities together. The fact they did it with no one commenting on it until after the maps were passed shows it wasn’t a big time commitment to do.

Sara Sadhwani certainly wanted eqca to be the driving factor behind the maps if you dropped in on the late meetings. She introduced them too early IMO. Her smartest move was to push the best gerrymander's at the end such as by MALDEF/Levin so the rest of the commission didn't really discuss it.

Atleast EQCA seems a touch more serious than LULAC's Colorado map with 0 hispanic districts.

[Antonio the Sixth]

The Commission map has gone into effect.

[kwabbit]

On the topic of LGBT representation, there are currently 9 LGBT Congresspeople and 2 LGBT Senators. That's about 4% of the Dem caucus currently in each chamber, which is not that low, given that LGBT people are 5-10% of the population. The number of members increases each cycle as well.

It's difficult to make a district materially more LGBT as well, given that a certain percentage of people are going to be LGBT regardless of any other status, so they are more dispersed by default. I guess you could put all the more gay areas together, but changing the map to have districts that are 12% LGBT instead of 8%, especially when this also happens to improve the map significantly for Democrats at the same time, just seems like a gerrymander under the guise of advancing a minority group's representation.

[Brittain33]

On the topic of LGBT representation, there are currently 9 LGBT Congresspeople and 2 LGBT Senators. That's about 4% of the Dem caucus currently in each chamber, which is not that low, given that LGBT people are 5-10% of the population. The number of members increases each cycle as well.

It's difficult to make a district materially more LGBT as well, given that a certain percentage of people are going to be LGBT regardless of any other status, so they are more dispersed by default. I guess you could put all the more gay areas together, but changing the map to have districts that are 12% LGBT instead of 8%, especially when this also happens to improve the map significantly for Democrats at the same time, just seems like a gerrymander under the guise of advancing a minority group's representation.

Sure. But I don't think the goal of keeping the communities intact is about electing an LGBTQ representative, although obviously that's great if it happens. It's about that community having a certain weight in a single district so we can influence primaries and get our phone calls returned by the representative once they're elected. And so that representative can advocate for our parochial and individual issues in the legislature. This matters because I don't think it's possible anywhere in the U.S. for an LGBTQ community to be the majority in a Congressional district, and there are very few legislative districts where it's possible since there just aren't 50+% gay communities outside of a few tiny outliers like Wilton Manors and West Hollywood.