Proposition 50 ignores current constitutional requirements to respect county lines and carves up Bay Area communities in order to strengthen Democrats’ stranglehold on California. Thanks to the work of Chris Bowman, a Napa County-based statistician, we now have a better picture of how that gerrymander affects Bay Area Congressional districts.
The most widely publicized example is the new Congressional District 2 in which Marin and portions of Sonoma county are paired with Sisikiyou, Modoc and Shasta counties located in the Northeastern region of California. According to Google maps it would take approximately 6 hours to drive from Sausalito to Alturas – but only if you leave the district and drive through the Sacramento Valley to get there.
But that is just the beginning of the ways in which the voices of Bay Area communities have been weakened by diluting them with voters far outside their region.
In District 1, the remaining portion of Sonoma County, including Cloverdale, Healdsburg, Windsor and Santa Rosa, is included with a district composed of Lassen, Tehama, Glenn, Butte, Plumas and Sierra Counties in the Northeast, Sacramento Valley and Sierra regions of California.
District 4 today is composed mostly of voters in the Bay Area counties of Sonoma, Napa, and Solano along with some additional nearby voters in Lake and Yolo counties. The new District 4 splits up the Bay Area voters and makes them the minority element in a district where voters in Colusa, Sutter, Yuba, Placer, Sacramento and Yolo counties make up over 60% of the voting population.
The current Congressional District 8 is composed exclusively of Bay Area voters in Solano and Contra Costa counties. The new district 8 adds voters outside the region in Yolo, Sacramento and San Joaquin counties.
Finally, Congressional District 9 is currently held by Democrat Josh Harder who faced a competitive challenge in the last cycle from Stockton mayor Kevin Lincoln. The new district slices off Pittsburgh and Antioch from their current Bay Area district and uses those communities to increase the number of Democrats in Harder’s district, which is centered in San Joaquin County.
For more information, please look at the interactive district map located on this page. This map overlays the current Congressional District lines with those contained in Proposition 50. To keep the current lines drawn by the Citizens Redistricting Commission – Vote No on Proposition 50.
