The city of National City held what was supposed to be a final public hearing on March 21 to complete its transition from at-large elections to district-based elections. However, after deciding how to number the four new districts and deciding which districts will be up for a vote in 2022 or 2024, elected officials announced they will hold one last hearing to finalize that sequence on April 12.
The districting process began back in December 2021 when members of the Asian American and Filipino communities threatened the city with legal action if it did not take steps to adopt district-based voting.
Since then, the city has held public workshops to gather ideas on how districts should be split, gathered map suggestions, and worked alongside external consultant Redistricting Insights to establish four districts that will vote for elected representatives in staggered two-year cycles.
All four new districts have roughly 13,000-14,000 constituents within their boundaries.
“The first by-district elections would occur this November 2022 and it is staff’s recommendation that city council assign districts numbers one through four in a clockwise direction on the final district map,” City Clerk Luz Molina said, although where that clock should visually start was a separate discussion.
During time for public comments, several residents said they wanted a majority-Asian American district to be included in the first voting cycle, including Asian Pacific American Coalition Vice Chair Cynthia Suero-Gabler who requested the city lead the upcoming 2022 election with the newly formed ‘Asian empowerment district’ on the western side of the city.
“The Fil-Am AAPI has been underrepresented in the National City council for decades and the western side has never been represented by a council member who actually resides in that area,” Suero-Gabler said.
Suero-Gabler also called on city council to begin the 2022 election cycle with Mayor Alejandra Sotelo-Solis, Councilman Ron Morrison and Councilwoman Mona Rios all terming out.
Resident Thelma Virata de Castro asked the city to avoid using a random drawing to determine district sequencing, although doing so was approved at the March 15 City Council meeting as a fair way to assign each district either a 2022 or 2024 vote.
Randomizing that starting point would “potentially politically disempower the AAPI and western district” for another two years, she said.
After much discussion, officials voted to use district one along the western shoreline of National City as the starting point for a clockwise enumeration. District Two includes the northern part of the city, District Three the east and District Four includes the southeastern side of the city.
Sotelo-Solis also made a motion to put aside staff recommendation to randomize which two districts will vote in 2022 and which two districts will vote in 2024, and instead choose to begin with district one to the west of the city and district three to the northeastern side.
Morrison disagreed with the idea and said the area now within District Three often produces two and sometimes three city council members, and to deliberately choose which districts should take the first turn at district-based voting would “politicize” the situation.
“I want to keep it entirely out of the political process. The original letter requested having districts and having a district election. Now, there’s also a request of ‘pick me, pick me’ and that was not part of the request and what we were charged with doing. Therefore, I’d go with the staff recommendation which came off the floor at the previous meeting,” Morrison said.
Ultimately, Sotelo-Solis’ motion passed, with Morrison dissenting. District One to the west of the city and three to the northeast of the city will be up for a vote in 2022; district two to the north of the city and district four on the southeast side of the city will be up for a vote in 2024.
Sequencing will be finalized at a special 4 p.m. April 12 meeting along with hearing the ordinance.
