DISTRICTS SHMISTRICTS!
Posted by James Madison on November 16, 2016
Two big cities in Orange County switched to district elections this year due to lawsuits filed by Hispanic activists to force the creation of Hispanic-leaning districts. How’d that work out?
In Anaheim, two districts were designated as “Hispanic” districts. Jordan Brandman beat Hispanic activist Jose Moreno in one of them, and Lucille Kring slaughtered leftwing Arturo Ferreras in the other. The upshot – Anaheim will now have seven Caucasians on its council, and no Hispanics.
In Garden Grove, two districts were also designated as “Hispanic”. In one, 23-year old Kim Bernice Nguyen beat Rickk Montoya, who had been the plaintiff in the districting lawsuit. In the other, white neighborhood activist Stephanie Klopfenstein beat LULAC-favorite Demian Garcia-Monroy. Bottom line: Garden Grove goes from a council of three Vietnamese and two Caucasians, to a council of four Caucasians and three Vietnamese, and still, no Hispanics.
In the meantime, in the cities of Westminster and La Habra, which have no district elections, Sergio Contreras and Rose Espinoza were easily reelected.
Just goes to show, if you have good candidates you can win anywhere, while if you have lousy candidates, you can’t force-feed them to the voters anywhere.
By the way, lawsuits to force district elections may soon be a thing of the past. They are all based on the California Voting Rights Act, which virtually demands that cities create districts by race. When new Trump justices join the Supreme Court, the Court could well rule the California Voting Rights Act to be unconstitutional as an illegal intrusion of race into the line drawing process. Are you paying attention, Fullerton and Costa Mesa????
OC Political 
John lewis said
Small correction. Both Jose Moreno and Denise Barnes are Hispanic.
Kevin said
After the final count Jose Moreno won in Anaheim’s District 3 over Jordan Brandman.
John lewis said
Chris, should this article be deleted due to several obvious mistakes? It dishonors the name of James Madison
Nate said
Sergio Farias won a seat on San Juan Capistrano Council in a latino district and Kim Bernice Nguyen is a Vietnamese Latina, she states that in every article that she is quote in. If you want to include district elections on the school board level, both Walter Muneton and Jeanette Valasquez won seats in latino majority districts this past November. So like John Lewis stated above maybe you should delete this article since district elections have been proven successful in OC and you don’t seem to know how to google people.