Yolo County Supervisor and Meridian Pacific Principal Matt Rexroad was kind enough to visit Fresno today and educate our Lincoln Club and other interested community members as to the vagaries and vicissitudes of redistricting and the agonizing process taking place in Sacramento these days with the new Redistricting Commission. I learned quite a bit today. Reapportionment is not the same as redistricting. Skin color and ethnic identity is what this entire drill is about. The assumption that people of a certain color must have a district to elect someone that has a similiar identity is patently assinine, but it is the law. I don’t know why we must assume that ethnic groups think differently because of the way they look but the Commission is consumed with this issue.
The Central Valley is a quandry – we’ve got two Congressional seats that could easily be drawn to produce a more competitive outcome at election time, Cardoza and Costa, but due to statistical torture, the strengthening of these seats to the GOP direction is not likely. Rexroad provided us with great data and analysis throughout his very good presentation.
Locally, we look great, with a conservative majority on the Fresno City Council and Fresno County Board of Supervisors, we’ve now put the remapping issue on the front burner and caused our friends in these positions to do more than just rubber stamp the new districts, but really and truly study them.
The 50 of us or so who where at the lunch thoroughly enjoyed our good friend Matt Rexroad, and came away much more informed in the process. We don’t have very high hopes for the California Commission, but locally, things are looking good.