Santa Clara Co. Approves Draft Of Redistricting Map

By Jana Kadah, Bay City News Foundation

SANTA CLARA COUNTY, CA — After hundreds of hours of fierce debate and controversy, Santa Clara County is very close in finalizing its political boundaries.

On Tuesday, the board of supervisors voted 3-2 to advance a variation of the Yellow Map, known as draft 90195, introduced by supervisor Cindy Chavez.

The Yellow Map, which has been considered a controversial option by conservatives, was advanced by a coalition of local civil rights and labor groups.

The Yellow Map, previously known as the Unity Map, went through several variations. At the Tuesday board meeting, supervisors had nine different maps to consider.

Supervisors Otto Lee, Susan Ellenberg and Chavez voted in favor of the 90195 Map. Supervisors Joe Simitian and Mike Wassermann voted against it.

The 90195 Map, like the Yellow Map, creates a "majority-minority" Asian-Pacific Islander district in District 3 and maintains a high Latino influence district in District 2.

It also has a deviation of 4.1 percent which means it has relatively the same amount of people living in each of the county's five districts.

Like all maps before the board, it splits San Jose into each of the five districts because of its high population and large city limits.

However, it removes Los Gatos and Almaden Valley from District 1 and places them in District 5 — which has been highly contested by conservative voices in the county — who accused the map of gerrymandering. They argued it would dilute conservative power in District 1 by removing those areas that tend to vote conservative.

The map was also has also prompted legal questions from opponents because it would exclude two District 1 candidates from running for that district — former San Jose city councilmember Johnny Khamis who represented the Almaden area and Los Gatos Vice Mayor Rob Rennie.

They argued that Chavez should've been barred from voting on the maps because of alleged conflicts of interest because she participated in a fundraiser for District 1 supervisor candidate Morgan Hill Mayor Rich Constantine. They also pointed to her previous employment with the South Bay Labor Council and Working Partnerships USA, which both participated in creating the Yellow Map.

However, Chavez said the 90195 Map was an improvement of the Yellow Map because it reduces population imbalance in districts, provides better representation to historically marginalized communities in county politics and keeps district boarders compact and clear.

The map unites the Evergreen area in southeast San Jose, doesn't split the Willow Glen neighborhood and uses Capitol Expressway and the Guadalupe as natural district boundaries.

Wassermann instead advocated for the EE 2.0 Map which was discarded at the November meeting. However, he said it was worthy of consideration because it had the lowest deviation of any of the maps at 1.2 percent. The state guideline is 10 percent.

The county will post the final map by Friday to give the public three days to review the map before it is formally adopted on Dec. 14.

Supervisors directed county surveyors to prepare a description of the revised supervisorial boundaries and asked County Counsel to report back with a resolution on Dec. 14 regarding redistricting plans.

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