A Tale of Two District 1s

The rest of the story…

I’ve found that many people don’t know their Congressional district number — because it’s not important. Their counties take care of providing the proper ballot. I barely knew my district number before I decided to run for Congress. In fact, I didn’t realize that Santa Rosa had been moved from District 4 to District 1 until I started the process.

The main point here is that the Old District 1 and the New District 1 have only about 44% of constituents in common. They are completely different districts in every meaningful sense.

Prop 50 allowed AB 604 to chop up the old District 1 into three pieces. The “upper chunk” was blended with most of the coastal District 2, the “middle chunk” mixed with parts of the old Districts 2, 3, and 4 (mainly adding Santa Rosa through Healdsburg), and a small bottom slice stuffed into the new District 4. Read on for details.

Geography — how the boundaries shifted

And yes, the new District 3 really is that contorted.

Ballotpedia has very nice full AB 604 statewide maps if you want to see the big picture.

Partisan strength, before and after

The effect of AB 604 on the “New District 1” is unmistakable, and it makes it next to impossible for a Republican to win against a Democrat — as intended. Just as it was effectively impossible for a Democrat to win in the Old District 1.

Shuffled Constituents

This table summarizes what happened with the 15 counties related to “District 1”, both the Old and New, and shows their overall partisan leanings in the PVI¹ column.

The first 4 counties “Stayed” in “District 1”, which just means that when we look at the Old District 1 and the New District 1 (entirely different districts) these 4 appear in both. This is 330,000 people out of 760,000 in the whole district, about 44%.

The next 6 “Left” the Old District 1, and were merged into New Districts 2 and 4.

The final 5 are the ones that “Joined” the New District 1, coming from Old Districts 2, 3, and 4. The big slice of Sonoma County is the main point of the shuffle, adding enough Democratic voters to bring the New District 1 up to about D+10.

And that’s how the sausage is made. Sorry you had to see that.

1. These are estimated Partisan Voting Index values, based on the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections. They are not official Cook PVI, mainly because Cook doesn’t generally publish county values. ↩︎
2. About 64,000 of Yuba County’s 81,575 (78%) were in the Old District 1, with remainder in District 3. ↩︎
3. About 277,000 of Sonoma County’s 486,000 residents (57%) joined the New District 1. ↩︎
4. About 64,000 of Mendocino County’s 91,601 residents (70%) joined the New District 1. ↩︎
5. About 61,000 of Lake County’s 68,400 residents (90%) joined the New District 1. ↩︎

Two Races for “District 1”

Doug LaMalfa’s passing on January 6 meant we would need a Special Election to fill his First District seat in Congress. Governor Newsom issued the required proclamation and declared the Special Election to be combined with the June 2 regular primary. This made sense, since by law the Special had to be somewhere between May 19 and June 9 anyway.

Under normal circumstances this would be straightforward, because the Special and Regular elections would be for the same District, with the same number and the same boundaries. But with AB 604 and Prop 50, we have the following tangle across 15 counties:

1. Voters in Butte, Glenn, Lassen, and Tehama counties will see the Special Primary for their Old District 1, and the Regular Top-two Primary for their New District 1.
2. Voters in Modoc, Shasta, and Siskiyou counties will see the Special Primary for their Old District 1, and a Regular Top-two Primary for their New District 2.
3. Voters in Colusa, Sutter, and (most of) Yuba counties will see the Special Primary for their Old District 1, and a Regular Top-two Primary for their New District 4.
4. Voters in Plumas and Sierra counties will see just the Regular Top-two Primary for their New District 1.
5. Voters in Lake, Mendocino, and Sonoma counties will see just the Regular Top-two Primary for their New District, numbers 1, 2, and 4, depending on where they live.

This has led the three main partisan candidates (Audrey Denney, Mike McGuire, and James Gallagher) to run in both the Special Primary (Old District 1) and Regular Primary (New District 1), even though it doesn’t make a lot of sense logically. I can’t say I blame them, since politics as a rule has little to do with logic, and this situation is a mess. McGuire doesn’t even live in the Old District 1. (Fun fact! In California you don’t have to live in a Congressional District to run for the seat. You just have to live anywhere in California. At least Mike lives near the Old District 1.)

I find it interesting that no candidates from the New Districts 2 or 4 are running in the Old District 1 Special Primary, even though they may live in the Old District 1. I attribute this to the lack of “Two District 1s” on their ballots. Simpler for them.

Given the R+12 leaning of the Old District 1, Gallagher is almost sure to win the Special Election. He even has a good chance of winning it outright on June 2, avoiding the August runoff. Conversely, given the D+10 leaning of the New District 1, Gallagher has even less of a chance of winning in the New District 1 than I do, and I’m not spending hundreds of thousands of dollars.

From what I’ve seen, none of these partisan candidates is making an effort to explain any of this, and, once again, I don’t blame them. For what they’re doing (traditional campaigning), explaining the mess has no upside. For me, well, it’s what I do, and is exactly in line with my campaign. But let me be clear: I have no illusions that more than a small fraction of voters will read any of this. That’s a general point that you can be sure I’ll expand upon elsewhere. If you made it to the end here, thank you and congratulations!