Thread: ESCONDIDO: Latinos, labor union sue city over elections

ESCONDIDO: Latinos, labor union sue city over elections

ESCONDIDO: Latinos, labor union sue city over electionsBy DAVID GARRICK dgarrick@nctimes.comNorth County Times | Posted: Tuesday, December 20, 2011 8:00 pm

Seeking to increase the political power of Latinos in Escondido, five city residents and a labor union filed a lawsuit Wednesday demanding that the city immediately switch from at-large elections to having City Council members elected by smaller geographic districts.

The suit, filed in Vista Superior Court by a group of San Francisco attorneys, says allowing each council member to be elected citywide violates state and federal voting rights laws by making it extremely difficult for Latinos to win.

The suit says Escondido should help Latinos get elected by creating one or two districts in the center of the city, the area with the largest concentration of Latino residents.

"This at-large system discriminates against Latino voters and impairs their ability to participate in the political process, to elect candidates of their choice and to influence the outcome of elections," attorney James Finberg said during a Wednesday morning City Hall press conference announcing the suit.

Finberg is part of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, a coalition of attorneys that has successfully forced several cities and school districts to adopt geographic districts in recent years, but he said the coalition was not formally involved in the Escondido case.

The suit follows through on a Dec. 7 threat made during a council meeting by Finberg and the state's Building and Construction Trades Council.

City leaders vowed that night, and again on Wednesday, to fight any such lawsuits despite the cost to taxpayers. Modesto, a city in Central California, spent nearly $3 million fighting a similar lawsuit and was still forced to adopt districts.

And leaders of the Escondido Union High School District recently decided to create geographic voting districts based on the threat of lawsuits.

However, Mayor Sam Abed said Wednesday that Escondido was in a strong position to successfully defend itself, primarily because Latina Olga Diaz was elected to the council in 2008.

While Escondido's population is 49 percent Latino, about 20 percent of the city's registered voters ---- 10,619 out of 53,781 ---- are Latino, according to an estimate by the registrar of voters office. Population analysts attribute the disparity to a greater percentage of Latinos being too young to vote than other ethnic groups, and to adult Latinos being less likely to become registered voters.

"Latinos are one-fifth of the voters and they have one council member out of five," said Abed, referring to Diaz. "I see our council as an accurate representation of the community."

Two Latinos since 1888
But the lawsuit points out that Diaz is only the second Latino elected to the council in Escondido's 123-year history, and it contends that such consistent lack of representation has hurt the city's Latino community for decades.

The suit says that when Latinos and whites are compared in Escondido, Latinos have higher poverty rates, are much less likely to have college degrees and are less likely to have health insurance.

In addition, the suit says Escondido's council has pursued anti-Latino policies in recent years. Those include a failed attempt in 2006 to prohibit landlords from renting to illegal immigrants, a day-labor ordinance proposed in 2008 but never adopted, and an abandoned effort to restrict parking in inner-city neighborhoods where many Latino families share houses and apartments.

"The conduct of the city has been so outrageous for the last five or six years that we have to do something," said Bill Flores, a longtime advocate for local Latinos. He was among roughly 60 people who attended Wednesday's press conference to show support for the lawsuit.

Flores said he was pleased that someone with adequate resources, the Building and Construction Trades Council, had stepped in to fight the council's recent policies.

Union vs. city
The union, which says it represents 300,000 construction workers across the state and roughly 1,500 in Escondido, has never before sued a city over voting or elections. But Bob Balgenorth, the union's statewide president, said Wednesday that Escondido's policies in recent years had frustrated the union.

"If you look at what this city has done against Latinos, it just seemed like the ideal place to make a stand," he said. between the city and the union has escalated this fall because the city is pursuing a "charter city" amendment that would exempt the city from a state requirement to pay union wages for construction work.

The five residents who are plaintiffs in the suit are members of the union. They are Demetrio Gomez, Oscar Gomez, Mateo Salvidar, Samuel Salvidar and Giovanni Campos.

Demetrio Gomez, who has lived in Escondido since the late 1960s, said at Wednesday's press conference that the city's council members have no concept of the Latino experience, nor any understanding of the issues Latinos struggle with.

"The council does not address the concerns of Escondido's Latino citizens," he said.
But Abed said the city has spent far more money in recent decades on Latino neighborhoods than other parts of the city, adding parks and infrastructure such as streetlights and sidewalks.

And he said Latinos would fare worse with districts, because council members would focus only on projects benefiting their geographic area, which would divide the city's financial resources more evenly.
Finberg, the lead attorney on the suit, said he hopes to resolve the case quickly enough to have districts in place for the November 2012 election. He said he might ask for a summary judgment, which would forgo a trial and force a judge to rule based on opinions from experts.

That would expedite the process and limit the city's financial risk by reducing the attorney fees for the case. The California Voting Rights Act of 2001 forces the losing side in legal cases to pay the attorney fees of the winning side. That allowed the Modesto case to cost that city nearly $3 million, but that case involved both a trial and an appeal.

Escondido would be the first city in North County to adopt geographic voting districts.
In 2003, the Justice Department investigated whether Vista's at-large system undermined minority representation and voter turnout, but dropped the case.

San Diego is the only city of the 18 in this county with such districts. Only about 30 of California's 482 cities elect council members by district, according to the League of California Cities.
Call staff writer David Garrick at 760-740-5468




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REGION: Registrar says Latino voter registration lagging far behind population

By EDWARD SIFUENTES esifuentes@nctimes.com North County Times
Posted: Thursday, December 22, 2011 5:30 am
Percent of San Diego County voters who are Latino by city





As part of an effort to increase minority voter participation in the county, the San Diego County Registrar of Voters recently began issuing reports on the number of Latino and other minority registered voters in the region.

According to the registrar's most recent report, Latinos made up about 17 percent of the county's 1.4 million registered voters. The agency began producing the reports, which also include Filipino and Vietnamese voters, about six months ago, said Deborah Seiler, the county's registrar of voters.

"The numbers are useful when we're talking to our community groups and encouraging them to register," Seiler said.

The data provides a revealing snapshot of Latino registered voters because there has been relatively little information about one of the fastest-growing segments of the county's population. It shows that while Latinos may have increased in numbers, they do not appear to be growing significantly as a share of the region's voting public.

In 2010, the Latino population was nearly a third of the county's 3 million people, up from about 27 percent in 2000, according to the U.S. Census.

There are an estimated 247,435 registered Latino voters, according to the Registrar of Voters' report issued Nov. 1. The registrar reached that estimate through three pieces of information: voters' requests for Spanish voting material, voter's place of birth, and by analyzing the surnames of registered voters and matching them against a list of Spanish surnames, Seiler said.

In 2002, Latino registered voters were estimated to make up about 15 percent, or roughly 201,000, of the county's 1.3 million voters, according to an analysis done by a Republican marketing consultant at the time, Richard Babcock Amador.

The relatively low registration figures may help explain another aspect of local politics: Just a handful of Latinos have been elected to serve on city councils and school boards in the county.

On Wednesday, five Latino residents and the state's Building and Construction Trades Council sued Escondido, saying the city violated state and federal voting rights laws. The suit demands that the city end at-large elections and begin electing City Council members by geographic districts to help more Latinos get elected.

In 123 years, Escondido has elected two Latinos to the City Council.

Latinos make up nearly half ---- 49 percent ---- of the city's 144,000 residents, according to the 2010 Census. However, Latinos made up only 20 percent ---- 10,619 ---- of the city's 53,871 voters, according to the Registrar of Voters' report.

Part of the reason for the discrepancy is that Latinos tend to be younger than other voters, and many are immigrants, both legal and illegal, who are ineligible to vote, according to Latino population analysts.

Because of the increase in the county's minority population, people are becoming more interested in the demographic makeup of the electorate, said Raul Furlong, president of Datamar Inc., an El Cajon-based polling and electoral data company.

"It's become more of an issue within the communities to know what the composition of voters is," Furlong said.

According to the Registrar of Voters, the city of San Diego has the largest number of registered Latino voters in the county: 102,111. Oceanside has the largest concentration in North County: 12,768.
Most Latino voters in the county are registered Democrats ---- 119,767, compared with 54,138 Republicans and 63,611 declined-to-state voters.

There are an estimated 41,641 Filipino registered voters and 16,299 Vietnamese registered voters, according to the Registrar of Voters' analysis.

Call staff writer Edward Sifuentes at 760-740-3511.




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