Sacramento sliced in half under proposed California voting boundaries for 2022 election

A bipartisan commission that draws California’s legislative maps every 10 years released a set of voting boundaries on Wednesday that would slice midtown Sacramento into two congressional seats and stretch a Sacramento County Assembly district all the way to Lake Tahoe.

The California Citizens Redistricting Commission has spent months drawing up visualizations for what new Assembly, state Senate and Congressional districts could look like in 2022. In recent days, commissioners have scrapped weeks of work and unveiled a series of maps that look quite different than originally anticipated.

California’s Sixth Congressional District, which Democratic Rep. Doris Matsui has represented for around 15 years, currently expands north to include the Sacramento airport, Natomas and the North Highlands. The district covers all of midtown and spans south to stop short at Elk Grove.

In the draft district, Natomas and the airport are out, as is half of the Sacramento’s grid. Instead, the new sixth district starts at the southern half of midtown and sweeps south to not only pick up Elk Grove, but the East Bay’s city of Antioch.

Then there’s the 8th Assembly District, which encompasses Citrus Heights and swings south past Rancho Cordova. The new map would start at Rancho Cordova and head northeast to end at Lake Tahoe.

The drafts aren’t final, and public input will be considered for the next several weeks before an end-of-December deadline.

Despite the likely changes, those in the Sacramento region who have to start running campaigns to defend incumbents are castigating the maps as nonsensical. They argue the lines undercut the capital city’s importance and leave behind certain communities.

“From a Sacramento perspective it definitely appears and feels like the entire region was treated as an afterthought,” said consultant Andrew Acosta. “People are looking at this saying Sacramento hasn’t gained any clout and in fact it’s losing some because it’s split in half.”

Acosta consults for incumbent Democratic Assemblyman Ken Cooley, whose district could now include the Tahoe area. Assembly members are reelected every two years.

Acosta isn’t yet opining on how the draft Assembly district changes things for Cooley, but he called the maps in general a “head scratcher.”

“Why would Rancho Cordova be moved to Lake Tahoe?” Acosta said. “The district is dramatically different to the district he currently represents.”

Roger Salazar, who consults for Matsui, had similar questions. Politically, the district favors a candidate like Matsui, Salazar said.

But the proposed map not only hacks the city in half, but Salazar said it also divides with neighborhoods with shared interests. Salazar said he is worried how the current drawings divide Black and LGBTQ communities on the grid and in Florin and Rosemont.

“The bigger concern was that you have a strong community of interest and the strong desire for the people in Sacramento to keep it whole. And not only does it not do that, but it splits it right down the middle,” Salazar said. “It’s just a strange thing to have them do ... It dilutes Sacramento’s power and voice in D.C. when you have a city like this split right down the middle.”

The potential lines would also overlap with Democratic Rep. John Garamendi’s current district, as well as Democrat Ami Bera’s, raising more questions on how things will shake out in the region during next year’s election cycle.

The proposed Sacramento-area Senate District 6 wouldn’t change much. The proposed lines would drop West Sacramento and blanket more of the northern suburbs, but still include Elk Grove. The Senate seat will be open next year after the Democratic incumbent Sen. Richard Pan terms out.

Other draft Assembly seats in the region have changed, but it’s unclear how much they’d affect both Republican and Democratic incumbents.

The commission now has until Dec. 23 to display its final maps and, four days later, submit them to the Secretary of State’s office.

“These are not intended to be final maps and we strongly encourage Californians to continue weighing in until we get it right,” Commission Chair Trena Turner said in a Wednesday statement.

This story was originally published November 12, 2021 at 10:34 AM.