Less divisiveness, more productive debate and the end of the road for political kingmakers are all promised by a group pushing to bring district elections to Chico.
Following a failed bid to blunt students perceived political influence by moving elections to summer vacation, a new group has emerged with another prescription to heal Chico’s body politic: district elections.
The group, co-led by former Chico News & Review editor Bob Speer, says city council meetings are too acrimonious and polarized, while behind-the-scenes political leaders pull most of the strings.
“The way the elections are held are not conducive any longer to creating the kind of good government that we want to have in Chico,” Speer said.
Speer’s solution: carve Chico into six city council districts and scrap the citywide election of council members. Speer and members of his group Districts for Chico, say if the council doesn’t approve the new system, they’ll push a citywide referendum.
Speer said his plan would blunt powerbrokers that assemble slates of candidates for factions. Speer said some council members favor the proposal, but declined to name them.
Not everyone immediately got behind the idea.
“The whole thing’s a sham — Chico’s too small for district elections,” said Karl Ory,” a former Chico mayor who said the system works well in cities such as Sacramento and Los Angeles. He said the districts would end up with too few voters and lead to parochialism. He called claims that the plan will boost minority representation disingenuous.
One of those unnamed kingmakers, Democratic Party political operative Bob Mulholland, intimated that Speer’s backers are powered by sour grapes.
“It’s interesting that the steering committee is full of people who ran for council and didn’t win and now want to rig the system,” Mulholland said.
Three members of the group’s steering committee unsuccessfully sought seats on the council. Dave Kelley is among them. He said even the political players aren’t sure who would benefit.
“One thought it would be great for the conservatives, and the other one thought it could be great for liberals,” Kelley said. “They had their own reasons why.”
Raph Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at the California State University Los Angeles, said that district elections are generally used to solve issues where minority communities are underrepresented. He doubted that district elections would much alter the political tone.
“Predictions of doom and the predictions that everything will be great are probably both really overstated,” Sonenshein said.