• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
  • WORLD DEMOCRACY
  • POLITICAL ART
  • more
    • election technology
    • money politics
    • political dissidents
    • THIRD PARTY
      • third party central
      • green party
      • justice party
      • libertarian party
    • voting methods
  • DC INFO
    • author central
    • about
    • advertise with DC
    • contact
    • privacy policy

Democracy Chronicles

No One In Monterey County Is Good Enough To Serve In Legislature

by Joe Mathews - January 9, 2023

FacebookTweetLinkedInPin
No one in Monterey County is good enough to serve in the legislature
Image source

A representative shutout reflects problems with the scale and structure of California democracy.


Monterey County is home to Big Sur, Carmel, a world-class aquarium, the planet’s most beautiful golf course, half of America’s lettuce, and more than 437,000 people.

But Monterey County isn’t home to even one member of the California state legislature.

The county’s lack of representation isn’t just a local story. It challenges the national narrative, advanced by leading Democrats and progressives, that our state is a leader in diversity and representation. It reminds us that Californians are more distant from their elected representatives, and from the ideals of democracy, than other Americans. And it  exposes the failure of California’s highly touted, voter-approved political reforms—like the top-two system of candidates, or our independent redistricting commission—to improve representation.

Because California’s supposedly democratic reforms have left a place as big and important as Monterey County without any state representation from one of its own.

That fact is the result of California’s extreme stinginess in democratic representation. The average American state legislative district has about 100,000 people. But California hasn’t increased the size of its legislature since 1879, when the state had fewer than 1 million people. So, we have by far the most populous legislative districts in the U.S. State Senate districts have nearly 1 million residents each, and Assembly districts have 500,000.

Monterey County has fewer people than that, which opens up the mathematical possibility of not having a single resident in the legislature.

The county, of course, has people who represent it, but they live in neighboring counties.

John Laird of Santa Cruz is the state senator in a massive district that covers not just Monterey County but parts of Santa Clara to the north, and half of San Luis Obispo County to the south.

In the Assembly, a politician from San Luis Obispo County—former Morro Bay city councilmember Dawn Addis—now represents western, coastal Monterey County, including Monterey Bay, which is 103 miles north of her home. Her district actually extends north into Santa Cruz and south to Santa Maria, the Santa Barbara County seat.


California’s supposedly democratic reforms have left a place as big and important as Monterey County without any state representation from one of its own.


The eastern half of Monterey County is represented by the powerful Robert Rivas, who is expected to become Assembly speaker in June. California media routinely identify him as a Democrat from Salinas, where he has set up a district office.

But Rivas is actually a life-long resident of San Benito County. His official bio is a love letter to San Benito County places—he was raised in Paicines (where his grandfather was a farmworker at Almaden Vineyards), attended public schools in San Juan Bautista, and lives with his family in Hollister.

Ironically, the state legislator with the deepest Monterey County ties, Senator Anna Caballero, a former Salinas mayor, doesn’t represent the county. The redistricting commission pushed her district east, into the Central Valley.

California’s much touted independent redistricting commission is not supposed to consider the residences of existing politicians when it draws up districts. But it is supposed to keep together “communities of interest.” Monterey County is surely a community of interest.

Indeed, Monterey County’s exclusion should remind us just how narrow our conception of representation has become.

The redistricting commission’s chief concerns with representation are racial and ethnic—under voting rights laws, it works hard to make sure there are seats likely to elect Black or Latino politicians. But our system doesn’t consider other kinds of representation. We have no provisions to guarantee gender parity, or for adequate representation of Californians of different ages, classes, education levels, or national origins.

Indeed, our system doesn’t even guarantee that you’ll have a representative from the county in which you live. Other, smaller counties in California, mostly in the North State and in the Sierra, are also without a resident representative.

Top of Form

This is why Los Angeles and other scandal-plagued California cities are wasting their time when they seek to improve representation through the creation of local independent redistricting commissions. No redistricting body can overcome the problems of a system with districts that are bigger than even some of our bigger counties.

California needs to reorganize the scale and structure of its legislative maps. It needs a legislature with more districts that are much smaller. At minimum, districts one-tenth as populous as today’s monstrously large ones—say 50,000 people instead of 500,000 for Assembly seats, and 100,000 instead of 1 million for the Senate.

But such a change would be hard to sell because it would increase the size of the legislature 10 times—with 800 people in the Assembly and 400 in the Senate. And even adding more seats wouldn’t guarantee better representation. To achieve gender parity and other forms of representation, the state would need multi-member districts in which Californians vote for party lists of candidates, which would be required to include a 50-50 gender split and candidates from other currently underrepresented demographics.

Like people from Monterey County.


This article appears in Zócalo Public Square.

FacebookTweetLinkedInPin

Filed Under: DC Authors

About Joe Mathews

Joe Mathews writes for Democracy Chronicles from his home in California. He is a columnist and editor at Zócalo Public Square and co-president of the Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy.

Some highlighted Democracy Chronicles topics

Africa American Corruption American Local Elections American State Elections Asia Capitalism and Big Business Celebrity Politics China Democracy Charity Democracy Protests Democrats Dictatorships Education Election History Election Methods Election Security Election Transparency Europe Internet and Democracy Journalism and Free Speech Middle East Minority Voting Rights Money Politics New York City and State Elections Political Artwork Political Dissidents Political Lobbying Redistricting Republicans Russia Socialism and Labor Social Media and Democracy South America Spying and Privacy Supreme Court Third Party Voter Access Voter ID Voter Registration Voter Suppression Voter Turnout Voting Technology Women Voting Rights Worldwide Worldwide Corruption

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Home | DC AUTHORS | No One In Monterey County Is Good Enough To Serve In Legislature

Primary Sidebar

Advertise button

Courts Off The Deep End, Again

By Andrew Straw February 1, 2023

Closing the courts, shutting down dissent, and violating the rights of whistleblowers. These are not the actions of an open, free society.

The Christian Evangelical Church

By Jack Jones January 22, 2023

I am not against Big Business having a voice, just not all the voices, and especially not an impersonator pretending to speak for God.

democracy chronicles newsletter

DC AUTHORS

In America, the Joe-mocracy Rules

By Joe Mathews December 27, 2022

A republic? A democracy? No, our country is an avuncular autocracy run by old guys named joe.

Property Rights, Indiana-Style

By Andrew Straw December 24, 2022

Indiana’s justices have replaced constitutional property rights with ad hominem politics. Replacing them starts with better governors.

To The American Oligarchs: Lay Off Us

By Jack Jones December 21, 2022

No matter how many jobs are ruthlessly pulled out from under us, we are still going to do what it takes to put food on the table.

Indiana’s Irrational Ballot Access System

By Andrew Straw December 4, 2022

Opposing the potential 2024 retention of the Chief Justice Loretta Rush will be key to preventing disability discrimination bad blood in Indiana courts.

Federal Judge Strikes Down Biden’s Loan Forgiveness program

By Jack Jones November 24, 2022

What is unlawful is the Texas federal judge’s decision to strike down President Biden’s loan forgiveness program, not the program itself.

DeSantis Battles Trump in Florida Steel Cage Match

By Steve Schneider November 20, 2022

We take you now to the much-anticipated DeSantis-Trump steel cage match, in which “DeSanctimonious” has promised to “kick Trump’s ass.”

Why Gambling Can’t Really Lose In California

By Joe Mathews November 2, 2022

When state voters approved an expansion of casino gaming, gaming interests assured us that gambling here would be governed by strict limits.

MORE FROM OUR AUTHORS

VISIT OUR POLITICAL ART SECTION:

dc political art

DEMOCRACY CULTURE

Russian Wagner Boss Acknowledges Comparison With Rasputin

Russian Wagner Boss Acknowledges Comparison With Rasputin

January 30, 2023

Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin responded to comparisons [with]…Rasputin who treated the son of the last tsar for haemophilia.

ChatGPT Is Changing Education, AI Experts Say

ChatGPT Is Changing Education, AI Experts Say

January 30, 2023

Newly-launched AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT is changing the internet landscape. It presents several opportunities, including in education.

Girl Scouts Earn Democracy Badge At Workshop In Salina

Girl Scouts Earn Democracy Badge At Workshop In Salina

January 26, 2023

The workshop assisted Girl Scouts in grades K–10 in earning their Democracy Badge through learning activities on democracy.

Study: Media Can Reduce Polarization By Telling Personal Stories

Study: Media Can Reduce Polarization By Telling Personal Stories

January 26, 2023

Sharing personal experiences and pairing them with facts reduces political dehumanization and increases political tolerance.

FEC Hikes Contribution Limits Ahead Of 2024 Election Cycle

Study: 2020 Election Resulted In Increased Anxiety And Depression

January 7, 2023

A review of 2020 Household Pulse Survey data reveals that as an election nears, people in [America] report more depression and anxiety.

MORE CULTURE

VISIT OUR US DEMOCRACY SECTION:

American Democracy