"Racism" - Garden Grove settles lawsuit, will move to district elections

Garden Grove Mayor Bao Nguyen
Hispanic Leftists say the "wrong" race won office.

Phony Cries of "Racism"

• Racist Hispanic leftist groups take cities to court because the voters dared to elected councilmen of the wrong race to office.
• The same nonsense happened in Palmdale where the "evil" racist voters dared to elect an African American Councilman instead of a Hispanic.

GARDEN GROVE (Orange County Register)  –  The City Council upended how residents will select its members Friday night, doing away with an independently elected mayor and opting to create five voting districts.

The changes will go into effect in November 2016.

The City Council approved district elections as part of a settlement agreement with Rick Montoya, a former council candidate who argued the at-large system – where the entire city votes for each council seat – violates the California Voting Rights Act and essentially disenfranchises Latino voters.

The city also has to pay $290,000 to Montoya for lawyer’s fees and other litigation costs.

District elections, which are becoming increasingly common throughout California, are viewed by many as a way to give Latinos a more prominent – and, some say, fairer – role in local government.

Garden Grove, which became an incorporated city in 1956, is about one-third white, Latino and Asian, but there is no record of a Latino ever being elected to the council. The current council is a majority Vietnamese-American.

“I believe by-district elections will lead to better representation in our government,” said Montoya, who sued the city in July about a month after several Latino-rights organizations threatened to do the same. “And it will lead to more voices being heard.”

Councilman Chris Phan, however, said he is no fan of district elections and it is still too early to know whether district elections will help Latinos get on the City Council.

Councilman Chris Phan
Hispanic Leftists complain because voters
elected the "wrong" race.

“This basically lowers the bar for council candidates,” he said. “No amount of districting can cure an apathetic voting bloc.”

In past elections, residents voted mayors to two-year terms and council members to four-year terms.

Under the settlement, the city will have five districts with each geographic area voting for one council seat. All five seats will have four-year terms.

The City Council will vote among itself to decide who will be mayor.

In 2016, the seats of Mayor Bao Nguyen, Phan and termed-out Councilman Steve Jones will be open.

But first, the city must undertake a months-long process of hiring a demographer to analyze the city’s ethnic, financial, age and geographic fault lines to create the five districts.

Garden Grove will have a series of community meetings before the council votes on the new maps, said City Attorney Omar Sandoval.

“The electoral record of Latinos has been abysmal in Garden Grove,” said Zeke Hernandez, the president of the Santa Ana chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, which also threatened to sue. “I applaud the City Council for taking this momentous step. I think the city will be better for it.”

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