Will Rep. Ami Bera lose Elk Grove — and his seat — through California redistricting?
Rep. Ami Bera easily won his last two elections to the United States House of Representatives by at least 10 percentage points.
But just five years ago, he was in a fight for his political life against Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones after Bera’s father was sentenced to a year in prison for violating campaign finance laws.
Bera would be in a tough spot again if California’s once-a-decade political redistricting commission approves a plan for his seat that looks like the early visualization it released this week.
He would have a district that looks dramatically different from the one he represents now, which stretches from Herald through Elk Grove and Rancho Cordova to Folsom.
The preliminary visualization for his district cuts out most of that. It eliminates Rancho Cordova and everything south, including Elk Grove. It grabs Roseville and Rocklin, keeping Folsom.
And it pushes it north of Sacramento’s congressional district, leaving Bera with few of the same constituents, unless he aims to challenge some of his Democratic colleagues.
Elk Grove would join a district with Stockton and Lodi, which Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Stockton, represents. Rancho Cordova would go to the district held by Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento.
Members of Congress do not have to live in the districts that they represent, leaving room for shuffling.
Andrew Acosta, a Democratic political consultant, said that Bera’s district looks so different that he might consider campaigning in new areas.
“Any good politician prepares for the worst, hopes for the best,” he told The Sacramento Bee.
An editor for The Cook Political Report, which analyzes elections, wrote on Twitter that the proposed district would have voted for President Joe Biden rather than former President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, suggesting that voters would still entertain a Democratic candidate.
Instead of winning by 14 percentage points, Biden would have won by four, the editor, Dave Wasserman, wrote.
Bera has represented Elk Grove’s district since 2013. He won the 2012 election against incumbent Republican Dan Lungren by less than four percentage points. In 2014, Bera beat Republican challenger Doug Ose by less than one percentage point.
In 2016, Bera’s father pleaded guilty to violating campaign finance rules in some of his the congressman’s early elections by donating the maximum amount and reimbursing relatives and friends to contribute too. Bera said he was unaware of his father’s actions and returned illegal funds to the U.S. Treasury.
Bera won the 2016 election by less than three percentage points against Republican Jones.
After Trump took office, Bera won the 2018 and 2020 elections easily.
Preliminary visualizations, released on Wednesday, let viewers for the first time see what California could look like with new legislative districts. Drafts will change multiple times before the end of December, when the nonpartisan commission must send a final map to California’s secretary of state for certification.
Redistricting is the process by which legislative boundaries are redrawn following population shifts shown in the Census. California lost a seat in the U.S. House because of sluggish population growth, dropping its legislative delegation to 52.
The state started using an independent commission to oversee redistricting before the last time maps were redrawn in 2010 to counter alleged gerrymandering in past processes.
Wasserman and Acosta said that these preliminary visualizations should make most California Republicans feel pretty good, since the district lost seems to be a Democratic one in the Los Angeles area and at least one Central Valley district, the one the Rep. Josh Harder, D-Turlock, represents could flip more easily.
Republicans whose districts showed different voter preferences from the 2020 presidential election are held by Reps. Devin Nunes, R-Tulare, and Darrell Issa, R-San Marcos, per Wasserman’s analysis.
Wasserman, Acosta and Paul Mitchell, an expert in redistricting, all cautioned that these maps are far from final. Mitchell likened what the commission does to a Roomba that roves blindly.
“The commission is meant to bump into things, see what works and what doesn’t work,” he told The Bee.
This story was originally published October 30, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
