migration from California’s urban cores as a threat to black voting power. When African-Americans leave California cities, she says, Latinos and Asians with similar political interests usually replace them.
“In Los Angeles, you’ve had coalitions coming together to vote in Tom Bradley (the city’s first black mayor) to now Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa,” says Teasley Linnick, who also notes that blacks who have moved from Los Angeles gained political representation in the city’s outlying areas. For instance, Wilmer Amina Carter, a black woman, has represented the state’s 62nd Assembly District in the Inland Empire region bordering metropolitan Los Angeles, since 2006.
Marqueece Harris-Dawson, president and CEO of Community Coalition, a social and economic advocacy group for South Los Angeles, agrees that black flight from the city will not undercut African-American voting power.
“It’s been happening over a 20-year period,” he says. “It’s not a dramatic change, so it’s not significant enough to curtail African-American political representation.”
In fact, experts say Republicans in California face new challenges underscored by the census count. Three million more Latinos moved into California between 2000 and 2010, resulting in predictions that Republicans may lose ground after new electoral districts are drawn. Analysts say Democrats could gain as many as five seats in the State Legislature, enough to form a supermajority.
The shift to having an independent panel redistrict California communities makes it difficult for Republicans to devise a redistricting strategy, according to Matt Rexroad, a GOP strategist in Sacramento.
“As always, the Republican strategy is to recruit good candidates and make sure their message resonates with voters, just like at any other time,” he says. “Sometimes, it’s worked and, well, sometimes it hasn’t.”
But what effect will black flight from California cities and the surging Latino population have on the GOP statewide? Rexroad says the Republican Party and African-American community typically share interests in redistricting.
“You’ve found Republicans and African-Americans arguing for the same district configurations,” he says. “African-Americans want their votes consolidated to win urban seats.”
This time around, however, some California activists want the black vote less concentrated to exert wider influence, Rexroad says, adding that the enormous growth of the Latino population is not necessarily bad news for Republicans. He notes that in
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