Carson Still Split on New Districts

Come Nov. 3, Carson residents will have decided who will be their next mayor and representatives for districts 1 and 3. Whether the district boundaries remain the same come February 2021 remains to be seen. The only thing that is clear is that many Carson residents aren’t happy with the outcome.

“Any resident who wasn’t aware that this was an issue simply has not been engaged,” Sharma Henderson, a resident of the city who once ran for the council seat said. “In terms of them making the final decision, that did kind of come a little quickly, but the writing was already on the wall and it was really just a matter of time.”

Some residents though, feel differently. Some people take the time to follow the council’s moves and the city’s happenings. Some people would like to, but can’t for any of various reasons, such as a lack of time or understanding of where to find the information. Even though the council hosted workshops for two years, many residents didn’t see it coming.

“They could have put more time and energy in informing the residents about how districts are formed,” Shalamar Lane, a Carson resident said. “Most of the people I talk to, they don’t understand how the districts were formed.”

Carson Mayor Albert Robles said that the move has been a long time coming. He refers to the California Voting Rights Act as the reason for the change and says that Carson is one of the best examples for cities that need to alternate from city-wide to district elections.

The California Voting Rights Act, which was enacted in 2001 “prohibits the use of at-large elections in a political subdivision if it would impair the ability of a protected class, as defined, to elect candidates of its choice…”

Robles believed Carson needed to break up into districts with someone from each district representing its constituents on this basis.

Many residents feel that language in the Voting Rights ordinance is the reason why Carson should remain an at-large voting city. Some people say that district voting dilutes the elections and actually impairs the ability of protected classes to elect a candidate of its choice.

But Robles said that district voting does exactly the opposite. He said that having districts enables someone to come up from each district and represent it. He said that each district’s representative would fight for his district and therefore each one would gain the resources that it needs instead of having a council that represents the whole city and having them agree on allotment of resources to certain areas while many remain ignored.

“The residents who are aware of the law, who are aware of the facts and the truth, understand that districting has worked in every other city and will work in the city of Carson,” Robles said. “There are areas of the city that are thirsty for representation, are hungry for a champion to come from their neighborhood, their quadrant. Some people feel all the benefits are reaped from one section of the city and not fairly distributed. With districting, we get the opportunity to fairly distribute and allocate our resources.”

The City Council voted 3 to 2 in favor of moving to districts. The two that voted “No” were Lula Davis-Holmes and Cedrick Hicks. Holmes said that districts divide the city by racial boundaries and that issues will now be broken up into different races advocating for their own solutions rather than the city’s solutions. She also feels that it dilutes the vote, especially for Filipinos and makes it much more difficult for them to gain representation in the city, while giving an advantage to other races.

“I personally feel that it dilutes the Filipino vote,” Holmes said. “It divides the Filipino community in half, two districts. It lent voting power to Latinos by placing them in one district. The city is too small in my opinion to have districts. First of all, when you make a decision of this magnitude, you always go to the people. This decision was made late at night, at the last moment. I told him [Robles] what was going to happen. You guys are being bamboozled. It gives too much power to politicians that can have the majority on a vote when you start talking about dividing up resources. I enjoy serving residents north, east, west and south. I don’t want to be landlocked into just my district.”

The city was split into four districts. As it currently stands, Jawane Hilton represents District 1, Jim Dear represents District 2, Cedrick Hicks represents District 3 and Lula Davis-Holmes represents District 4. The districts seem to be ethnically divided.

“If you look at how the map is drawn, they drew it on a race-based format,” Robert Lesley, a Carson resident said. “That in itself is gerrymandering. You violate the 14th Amendment of the equal protection clause for trying to make sure there’s a consensus for people on how they’re going to vote. You’re going to disenfranchise the people in how you’ve conducted this whole guideline of making this decision. Now people over here can’t vote in this election for a candidate of their choice. It’s disruptive. What I’m saying to you is now you’re putting me in a district that’s going to be subservient to blacks, or subservient to Filipinos or Latinos, then what you’re doing is you’re gerrymandering.”

Even people who agreed with the move to districts harbor the same feelings.

“I’m glad that they decided to move forth with the districts and selected a map,” Henderson said. “However, the map they selected is a gerrymandered map, which is a very manipulative and self-serving choice. This shows that their priority was not to adhere with the spirit of the California Voting Rights Act or to be transparent with residents. Their primary intention was to protect themselves and each of their individual city council seats.”

Robles sees it different though. He said that the city demographer ran a study on the city of Carson and if it should be holding voting city wide or in districts. He said that the demographer told him that Carson is one of the best examples of cities that should be holding district-wide elections because citywide elections racially polarize the voting.

“We hired a demographer,” Robles said. “Our demographer, who has done hundreds of analysis for cities and government entities up and down around the country, specifically looking for racially polarized voting, and he concluded that Carson is amongst the worst he has ever seen in terms of over racially polarized voting. So if we went to court and we fought this because we felt that we had money we could spend and burn, we would lose our own expert. Our own demographer has concluded that we are in violation of the California Voting Rights Act.”

For now, this upcoming election in November will take place according to the districts the city has split into. There is a court case that the council members who voted against the districts filed. The judge is scheduled to make a decision next year in February, but Robles says that the judge isn’t going to touch the case, or make a decision. He asks which judge would want to get in the way of a city who has already made the decision, held an election and has maps drawn out. But if the judge did decide to take action, he or she would most likely redraw the maps. For now, everything remains as is.