I pose this question because in 2021, the city of Santa Clarita – the 3rd largest city in LA County and its last traditional republican stronghold – was sued for violating the CA Voting Rights Act. The CVRA lawsuit alleged that due to electing its City Council on an at-large basis, Santa Clarita“dilutes the votes of Latino citizens, suppresses the ability of their communities to recruit and support candidates for public office, and prevents them from aggregating their votes to elect those candidates in single-member districts.” The result is, the lawsuit continued, that “large geographic areas with minority communities are chronically underrepresented.” In 2022, Santa Clarita agreed to settle the Voting Rights Act lawsuit. It agreed to transition from at-large to district-based City Council elections with one district being a majority-minority district where the majority of the eligible voters in that district are 45% Latino with another 15% being African-American and Asian-American.
The question becomes why did it take the threat of litigation to persuade Santa Clarita’s leadership to become serious inclusion? Did Santa Clarita want inclusive city leadership? My guest today was one of the plaintiffs in the CVRA lawsuit.
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