It’s a political truism that if you and your neighbors want
attention from politicians, you’d better vote. Don’t vote, and
there’s no reason for anyone in power to worry about you.
It’s a political truism that if you and your neighbors want attention from politicians, you’d better vote. Don’t vote, and there’s no reason for anyone in power to worry about you.
But California is now turning that political truism on its head. Politicians who have never drawn many votes are now among the most powerful in the Legislature, while others who get twice as many votes or more play lesser roles.
It is unquestionably true, as the Public Policy Institute of California reported the other day, that non-whites in this state are not nearly as involved in politics as the Anglo minority, which made up just 46.7 percent of the populace at last counting. But that does not mean nonwhites are without clout. In fact, some possess power far beyond what their voting support might appear to justify.
Latinos account for about 34 percent of all Californians, but just were 12 percent of the electorate in the last general election. Despite that sorry turnout, they now hold 27 percent – 32 – of the 120 seats in Sacramento.
But voting behavior, the policy institute noted, is only part of it. It’s true that whites are more likely to vote than others: about 60 percent of whites vote regularly, while only about half the state’s adult African Americans go to the polls and just 40 percent of Asian Americans.
Disparities, the study found, extend to petition signing, writing elected officials, contributing to campaigns and attending political rallies. In all those fields, whites were far more likely to participate.
But the numbers are most stark and most definite when it comes to voting. When Democrat Fabian Núñez won a seat in the state Assembly from a mostly-Latino district in eastern Los Angeles County in 2002, he drew just 25,246 votes and just under 29,000 total votes were cast in his district. By contrast, Republican Tom Harman of Orange County got 63,392 votes out of more than 102,000 cast in his district.
Yet, Núñez quickly became the Assembly’s speaker, taking over that power center barely a year after his swearing in. Harman, meanwhile, is almost anonymous in Sacramento.
As legislative districts were drawn in 2001, it was clear the Núñez district would be safely Democratic, while no Democrat would ever mount a serious challenge in Harman’s.
In short, except in statewide races, when it comes to power, it doesn’t usually matter how many votes you get in a California general election. What has mattered most is winning a primary election, by however slim a margin, then manifesting a winning personality and convincing agenda in Sacramento.
Núñez did those things; he now enjoys power far out of proportion to the votes he got. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger polled more than 3 million votes last October, but Núñez sits with him these days in all “Big 5” meetings, where the shape of the budget and most other important legislation is actually hashed out.
Is this fair to the Anglo majority in districts like Harman’s, which don’t enjoy nearly as powerful representation?
The answer has to be yes. For even though not nearly as many of them vote, Núñez represents as many persons as Harman or anyone else. Some of them may not be citizens; many may not speak English well, but they have interests, too, and now those interests are factored into all major state decisions.
Don’t worry about the Anglos. Because they do vote in large numbers, no governor or other statewide official will soon forget them.
In fact, the new interest paid to concerns of Latinos and other nonwhites is the product of the district system far more than the result of their slightly increased voter turnouts of the last 10 years.
Commenting on the policy institute report, Harry Pachon, president of the Latino studies-oriented Tomas Rivera Institute, noted that because they participate more, whites often decide “what are legitimate issues and what are not legitimate issues.”
This may be true when it comes to initiative politics, but powerful minority legislative caucuses ensure that nonwhite agendas will also be heard in Sacramento. Those caucuses are probably permanent, if only because nonwhite population is increasing faster than Anglos’, and because court decisions forbid splintering their population centers into many surrounding districts, as was done on the redistricting maps of other eras.
Which means that, yes, it would be good if nonwhites participated more. But no, their rights will almost certainly not be trampled even if they never do more than they’re doing now.
