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Live Blogging From Fullerton City Council’s District Elections Map Decision

June 7, 2016 //
9
All four maps overlay district elections

Greg Sebourn overlaid the boundaries of all four maps before supporting the one that cut his own neighborhood in half.

 

Matthew Leslie
9:09. Following over an hour of public comment, the council are speaking one by one about which map to adopt.

Greg Sebourn offered an insightful comparison between all four of the district maps. He supports Map  8A.

Jan Flory resented people for implying that she and other council members are in the pockets of the bar owners. She supports Map 8A.

Bruce Whitaker is offering thoughtful comments, appreciates Map 10A, and likes Map 11. Could support, 2B, 11, or 8A.

Doug Chaffee sympathizes with the bar owners because he thinks they’ve been unfairly maligned; downtown is a “city within a city.” Says Map 10A is the one he would pick, but he doesn’t think it would pass. Says that 2B wouldn’t pass in the elections. Says 8A has the best chance of passing. Wants to tweak it, wants to fix the weird split in the northeast (see my earlier story). Says he isn’t running again. Says that just to get it done, he will support 8A.

Jennifer Fitzgerald says we meet in the downtown. Cites political parties participating from outside of the city. Says the council agreed to a process, not a guaranteed outcome. Cites a bunch of statistics about Asians getting elected to provide cover for the fact that 8A is the only one with no  majority Asian Citizen Voting Age Population. Says 8A keeps us unified in purpose but necessarily divided communities of interest. Cites Pasadena model. Supports 8A, says it has the best chance of passing. Moves to select 8A.

Passed unanimously. All members of the Fulleron City Council just sold out Fullerton’s downtown residents. None deserves re-election.

Vote against District Elections in November and let the district mapping process go to a judge instead.

Categories 2016 Elections, Bruce Whitaker, District Elections, Doug Chaffee, Downtown Fullerton, Fullerton City Council, Greg Sebourn, Jan Flory, Jennifer Fitzgerald, Uncategorized

No Asian Majority for Jennifer Fitzgerald’s District in Bar Owners’ Gerrymandered Map 8A

June 6, 2016 //
0
Amerige-Heights-8A

Follow Mayor Jennifer Fitzgerald’s lucky star to find her in the middle of a district that is somehow not majority Asian American.

In our previous story, the Rag noted that the awful Map # 8A is the only one of the final four District Elections Maps that manages to create a district in the Amerige Heights area that is not majority Asian. It’s quite an accomplishment, given the largely Korean-American population of Amerige Heights and the surrounding area, but somehow the bar owners, or whoever actually drew this map, came out with a district, numbered 1 on their map, that is less than half Asian. The entire reason for establishing district maps in the first place was to settle a lawsuit brought on behalf of Asian and Latino voters, who claimed they were not represented on the council under the current at-large system of electing council members.

The other three maps all have an Asian majority in the Northwest region of the city because they don’t include gratuitous finger of land trickling into the downtown area eastward. Map # 8A, proffered by the downtown bar owners to split up Downtown Fullerton’s voting residents in order to preserve their party-town, also lessens the chances of an Asian-American member being elected to the Fullerton City Council. Conveniently enough, this district is where Mayor Jennifer Fitzgerald lives. She, like Council member Greg Sebourn, will have the opportunity on June 7 to vote for a map that gerrymanders their own homes into districts that increase the likelihood of their own re-elections. Is this what the plaintiffs had in mind when they sued the city to create a fairer system of elections?

On June 7 Mayor Fitzgerald and her fellow council members may claim that they are being objective when they vote for a final district elections map to put before the voters in November, but some of them have already compromised the process by discussing the locations of their own residences while deliberating the issue. Giving the terrible Map # 8A any serious consideration at all is enough to make voters question the motives of city council members. The credibility of all members of the Fullerton City Council will depends on who they listen to on June 7. This map should be crumpled up and tossed into the recycle bin.

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Categories 2016 Elections, District Elections, Downtown Fullerton, Fullerton City Council, Greg Sebourn, Jennifer Fitzgerald, Uncategorized

A District of One’s Own: Bar Owners’ Map # 8 Carves Out a Space For Greg Sebourn

June 6, 2016 //
3

Matthew Leslie

Map 8A Berlin Wall

Can you follow this border without getting dizzy?

Aside from somehow managing to not come up with a majority of Asian Citizen Aged Voter Population in its District 1, containing the largely Korean-American Amerige Heights, one of the most remarkable things about the bar owners’ Map 8 (and it’s now updated version 8A, below) is the quirky little isthmus of territory that juts westward from its District 3, on the East side, into its District 2, to the West. Take a look at the map above.

The entire map is so gerrymandered to achieve the pointless goal of connecting all districts to Downtown Fullerton that one might easily miss the finer points of its corrupt design. One of these mildly subtle features is the inclusion of about half of a neighborhood just north of Rolling Hills Drive into the Cal State Fullerton eastern District 3. Why is there a curved line here, instead of a straight line that follows St. College Blvd. to the city’s border?

Berlin-Wall-in-Fullerton-copy

Like Fullerton’s own Berlin Wall, needlessly dividing a neighborhood.

With so many other eccentric boundaries lines in place in Map # 8A, one more might not seem out of place, unless one considers that Councilmember Greg Sebourn lives just above Rolling Hills Dr., just east of the line that cleaves his neighborhood in two. This curious residential division places his house in a different district than that of his fellow council member, Doug Chaffee, against whom he will have to run for city council once again in 2018, should they both decide to seek new terms in office. During the May 17 meeting of the Fullerton City Council, Mr. Chaffee even made light of the possibility that he and Mr. Sebourn might end up in the same elections district, joking that the two of them could just endorse one another. (Of course, it is entirely inappropriate, to say the least, for members of the city council to even bring up the subject of their own residences while considering which map to adopt for district elections, but more about that subject later…)

Map # 8A won’t have either of them worrying, as It provides a cozy little niche that keeps Mr. Sebourn not only away from Mr. Chaffee’s district, but also separates him from anyone else in the vast and wealthy Golden Hills/Raymond Hills region, District 2 in this map, that has spawned so many other past and current members of the Fullerton City Council. This egregious example of gerrymandering is just one reason to vote against Map # 8A, which is being championed almost exclusively by bar owners, whose map would rob the residents of the greater downtown area of a collective voice by dividing their district five ways. Mr. Sebourn should stand up for residents of the city he represents, and not be tempted by the geographic morsel offered up for his support of what is easily the worst map up for consideration on June 7.

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Categories 2016 Elections, District Elections, Doug Chaffee, Downtown Fullerton, Fullerton City Council, Greg Sebourn, Uncategorized
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