Norwalk loses representation; Trustees focus on city lines
Norwalk voters south of Firestone Blvd. saw their voting power diluted as Cerritos College compacted many of them into a single district.
By Brian Maquena
March 2, 2022
CERRITOS COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT, CALIF. — Much of Norwalk lost electoral representation under a redistricting map approved by the Cerritos College Board of Trustees.
“If a district has more people, those people are particularly less represented,” said Doug Johnson, president of the National Demographics Corporation, which has helped local governments draw redistricting maps for more than 40 years.
Click here for an interactive map of the new Cerritos College District boundaries.
Johnson made the comment regarding population parity in district-electoral maps at a Lakewood City Council districting meeting last year.
Federal law requires that election maps keep districts, such as those represented by the Cerritos College trustees, at a relatively equal size. Redistricting Partners, the contractor hired by Cerritos College to draw the map, told the board of trustees that none of the college’s seven trustee districts could be more than 10 percent larger than the smallest trustee district.
The new election map for Cerritos Community College District met that 10 percent threshold— barely.
Under the new map, adopted Feb. 26 by the board of trustees, most of the City of Norwalk was compacted into trustee District 6, represented by Trustee Sandra Salazar. While that kept much of Norwalk unified as a community of interest, it also ensured that residents had the power of their votes diluted.
District 6 voters now live in a district that is 9.3 percent larger than Districts 1 and 3, which respectively comprise half of Downey and most of Bellflower. As a result, an individual’s voting power in Districts 1 and 3 is somewhat greater than that of voters in District 6, which comprises most of Norwalk.
Much of the responsibility for this outcome falls on the shoulders of District 6 Trustee Sandra Salazar, who mysteriously refused to stand for or against an issue effecting her constituents’ voter power. However, it was District 7 Trustee Zurich Lewis who insisted on drawing the map based on city boundaries rather than focusing on population parity or school district boundaries.
Such a focus on city boundaries came as a result of the election maps proposed by the city’s contractor, which has only been in the business of drawing such maps for 10 years. At the January 12 special meeting to discuss redistricting, the contractor proposed three maps: one based off of the college’s existing and oft-criticized boundaries; and, two others based off of school district and city boundaries.
“It is a relic of a bygone era of many different things that does not represent our community and our board today,” said Lewis at the January 12 meeting, regarding the contractor’s proposed map based on the college’s old election map.
Many have criticized Cerritos College’s old election map as being gerrymandered to protect the then-incumbents who were forced to adopt a district-based election map due to a lawsuit. The City of Lakewood experienced a similar situation, both in regards to a lawsuit forcing the adoption of district elections and accusations of gerrymandering.
At the January 12 board meeting, Lewis went onto voice his opinion against drawing maps based on school districts, saying much of those were based off of when southeast Los Angeles County had ranches, thus making the maps not necessarily representatives of today’s communities.
Vice President Shin Liu at the Jan. 12 meeting also noted that the proposed map based off of school districts divided the cities of Cerritos and Artesia, thus chopping up the ABC Unified School District areas.
East Lakewood gets consolidated as community of interest (old gerrymandering defeated?)
One of the best things about Lewis’ push for city boundaries to be the guiding principle behind the new map is that East Lakewood, where Lakewood’s poorest neighborhoods are located, no longer are mindlessly chopped up and put into the Cerritos-dominated, trustee District 6.
The area between Norwalk-Pioneer boulevards (east-west) and Del Amo Boulevard and Centralia Street (north-south) is one of the region’s poorest. It was due to Lewis’ efforts that this east Lakewood neighborhood and another bordering Gridley Park were consolidated into the mostly Lakewoood-Hawaiian Gardens trustee District 4.
The Gateway Populist will do research to see if the reason for this part of east Lakewood being formerly put into trustee District 6 was done to give population parity to a Cerritos-dominated trustee district.
Trustee Lewis got pushback from some but not District 6, Norwalk trustee
At the Feb. 9 trustee meeting, the board settled on adopting a variation of the map centered on city boundaries. At this time, Lewis pushed for a chunk of Norwalk to be pushed out of his District 7, representing La Mirada, Santa Fe Springs and parts of Norwalk, and into District 6.
Lewis then went onto to ask if the section of northern Bellflower in District 2, which is majority-Downey, could be pushed into the Bellflower-majority District 3. Lewis was told by the college’s contractor that this would make District 6 more than 10 percent larger than the smallest district, thus violating the law.
The contractor also noted that northern Bellflower was part of Downey Unified School District.
Trustee Marisa Perez, who represents majority-Lakewood District 4, said that she wanted to keep northern Bellflower in District 2 to keep the school district together. Another trustee agreed with Perez. While Lewis objected to how Downey Unified School District lines were drawn, he agreed that the college’s boundaries for District 2 and 3 based off of the boundary for Downey Unified made sense.
Perez also pushed back when Lewis tried to get a southern portion of Bellflower out of her district and into trustee District 3.
“That’s my community,” said Perez in response to Lewis’ proposal. “It is where I live in. It is where I raised my family. ... That’s a community of interest. It’s around Mayfair High School. It’s around Lindstrom [Elementary School].”
“I think we really need to defer to the trustees who are very familiar with their areas,” Perez added.
“That’s what we’re doing,” Lewis responded as he relented.
However, the District 6 trustee, Salazar, did not vocally make an opinion on Lewis’ proposal for her district, despite the overpopulation of her district and the effect it would have on her voters.
Some of the trustees did not physically attend the redistricting meeting. Salazar, who was the trustee to first push for Covid-19 vaccine mandates at Cerritos College, was attending the meeting online.
The Gateway Populist is reaching out to the board to get clarification as to Salazar’s whereabouts when Lewis asked for her opinion on compacting Norwalk into District 6.
Despite trustee District 6’s population being noticeably greater, it was not illegal nor was it necessarily unethical. And, in fact, Lewis did request at the January 12 meeting that the contractor look into combining Downey-dominated districts with Norwalk.
“It’s not something that I’m married to, but I want to explore these options to see if other trustees may want to…considering they represent certain constituents there in Norwalk and rather than having the Downey districts be all severely underpopulated, we can have a little more equal representation across the district and our trustee areas,” Lewis said at the January 9 meeting.
As one of the contractor’s presenters indicated to the board on January 9, redistricting comes down to what the elected representatives think is best. Obviously, Lewis believed that having lines based on city boundaries did more good than harm.
It is unclear what Salazar’s opinion was on the issue, though.
“Redistricting is more of an art than a science, even though we are talking about data,” said presenter Sophia Garcia for Redistricting Partners.