Latinos hold almost half of all elected positions in Fresno County. Here’s how they made gains
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Esther Padilla stood out on the Fresno City Council in the early 1990s, when she was the first and only Latina to win a seat leading what was then an increasingly diverse city.
It took 24 years for another Latina, Esmeralda Soria, to repeat Padilla’s accomplishment.
But Soria, who was the City Council’s first Latina president, is serving in a far different era for Latino leaders in the central San Joaquin Valley.
Padilla’s generation fought for and sued for laws that would empower minorities to win elected office at every level of California government.
Now, Soria’s generation has far more political power, with Latinos holding a majority on the city council, a significant share of the state Legislature and nearly half of all local elected positions in Fresno County — a change some say is due to increased voter participation and a transition to district elections that made it easier for first-time candidates to win office.
“Our population has changed over quite a few decades and the political representation has been slow to reflect that change,” said Juan Arambula, a former Independent Assemblyman from Fresno. “But everybody needs to be represented and it’s natural that the people who are elected reflect the communities they serve.”
The changes are evident in a Fresno Bee analysis of who holds power in Fresno County’s city councils, school boards and Board of Supervisors. Some positions, such as the Board of Supervisors, remain mostly white. But others, especially city councils, are as diverse as the communities they serve.
That representation matters, Soria said, because it determines how taxpayer money is spent and what services local governments prioritize. Today, Latinos make up 48% of the county’s elected leaders, while the Fresno City Council, made up of seven representatives, consists of four Latinos and three white council members.
Soria said she was “shocked” when she learned she was only the second Latina to represent Fresno residents, adding she was inspired by Padilla’s advocacy for children, migrant workers and underserved neighborhoods.
“I was kind of in shock that we hadn’t had other Latinas run,” Soria said. “But (Padilla’s) track record on the council and what she fought for was just a reminder of why it was important to have a woman and a Latina in the room.”
What does diversity in Fresno County look like?
The 1990s emboldened a new generation of young Latinos to vote, run for office and show up in droves to protest Proposition 187, a 1994 ballot initiative that would have excluded undocumented immigrants from public benefits and schools.
Since then, Latinos — as Fresno County’s largest minority — have made significant strides in attaining leadership positions in both school board and city council seats, outnumbering white representatives. But other minorities such as Asian Americans and African Americans are underrepresented in elected office.
Of about 250 elected officials in Fresno County, 48% are Latino, while 46% are white. African Americans and Asian Americans each represented about 3%. Fewer than five representatives identified as bi-racial.
An analysis by The Bee shows Latinos hold about 40% of the seats on school boards and 62% of the seats on city councils, though they are not proportionally represented on the Board of Supervisors. Overall, the makeup on the county’s city councils is predominantly Latino, but mostly male, while the makeup on its school boards is mainly white and male.
There are about 80 city council members across the county and about 170 school board members.
According to recent census data, white people in Fresno County represent 28.6% of the population, while Latinos comprise 53.8%. Asian Americans accounted for 11% and African Americans accounted for 5.8%.
Latino lawmakers represent 27 seats in the Legislature, making up about a fifth of its 120 officeholders. That’s up from six in 1990.
Many Latino lawmakers serving today say they felt mobilized to become civically engaged or run for office after former Gov. Pete Wilson endorsed Prop. 187, called the “Save Our State Initiative,” in 1994.
Wilson described it as an effort to ration taxpayer dollars for citizens. “We cannot educate every child from here to Tierra del Fuego,” Wilson said at the time.
Last year, members of the Latino caucus released a video on the initiative’s 25th anniversary directed at the former Republican governor.
“Gov. Wilson, 25 years ago this month, you spread fear about Latinos and immigrants in an attempt to secure a future for yourself and your party,” Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, a member of the Legislative Latino Caucus, says in the video. “Instead, you ignited a movement.”
Why representation matters
Boosting diversity in elected offices gives minorities and underrepresented groups the opportunity to elect a leader who reflects their community’s values, said Lisa Bryant, a political science professor at Fresno State.
She said when there is a lack of representation, oftentimes an elected official can become a “token” representative for people outside of his or her district.
“Token representatives end up doing more labor to represent people outside their district when they are the sole sort of minority person,” Bryant said. “So it’s very important to have people that look and have similar background experiences because it allows citizens and residents to feel more comfortable reaching out to those public officials.”
Bryant said the surge in Latino representation in Fresno County could be linked to the switch from at-large to district elections, a shift that accelerated after former Gov. Gray Davis signed the California Voting Rights Act.
The 2002 law allows minorities to press for changes in election formats to give them a better shot at winning office. The law calls for local governments to adopt district elections instead of at-large or citywide races if minorities believe they are disenfranchised.
An at-large election system means council members are elected to represent the entire city. With district elections, the city is sliced into areas and a representative is elected from each. Several cities in Fresno County, including Clovis, continue to operate with an at-large system.
District elections lower barriers to winning office because they effectively mean candidates have to persuade fewer voters to cast ballots for them. They also prevent neighborhoods with historically high voter turnout, such as in Fresno where the bulk of the electorate is mainly white and concentrated in the city’s affluent north, from dominating a council or school board.
About 130 of California’s roughly 450 cities adopted district elections after the California Voting Rights Act went into effect. Many school districts also switched to districts because of the law.
In Fresno County, Selma and Kingsburg are two recent examples.
In Selma, just 20 minutes south of Fresno, the switch to district elections in 2019 drew controversy when the town was split about the number of districts the city should have.
This year, residents will vote for an at-large mayor under four districts. Previously, the mayor was not elected and instead chosen through a yearly rotation among its council members. Residents also will be voting to repeal the new system in favor of creating a five-district map, which would potentially mean the mayor position could go back to a rotating cycle.
Selma Mayor Louis Franco said the at-large mayor could disadvantage minority voters, many of whom are poor and Latino. He said an expensive race to elect an at-large mayor could deter someone from running if they can’t afford to finance their campaign.
“What is important is actual representation for our neighborhoods and making the financing reasonable for anybody who wants to be on the council,” Franco said.
Councilwoman Jewel Hurtado, 21, became one of the youngest female council members to join the Kingsburg City Council. She said the city’s switch to district elections in 2018 gave her the opportunity to represent a side of town that was heavily Latino. She was the first to run for the seat after the city switched to districts and won, beating the white incumbent Staci Smith.
“I was a huge supporter of districts because it gave me the opportunity to represent a side of town that didn’t get as much attention,” she said.
But if the city hadn’t moved to districts, Hurtado said she probably wouldn’t have ran, thinking she “didn’t have a chance.”
“Districts did definitely give me an upper hand,” she added.
District elections and voter participation
Still, district elections alone will not help bring more diversity, Bryant said.
“When we talk about elected leadership and representation, we often think about the people sitting in those seats and if they represent the population at large, but really, are those people registered, are they turning out to vote and does leadership reflect what we see in the voter registration?” Bryant said.
Fresno County is home to a diverse population, including the state’s largest Hmong community, which continues to be underrepresented across all elected positions. Bryant said cultural differences and a language barrier are contributing factors that influence why some immigrant communities are not as civically engaged.
“In order to get a more diverse slate of candidates filling positions, you need to get a more diverse pool of registered voters,” she said.
Arambula, who first ran for a seat on the Fresno Unified School Board in 1987, said the same had been true for the Latino community.
“If someone doesn’t see that voting makes a difference to them and their families, then there’s less interest in participating,” he said.
And, although studies show a shift in district elections has increased minority representation in local government, the gains are not uniform.
Modesto, for instance, in 2008 became the test case for the California Voting Rights Act when its city council fought and lost a lawsuit from Latino residents demanding district elections. The city adopted district elections and paid $3 million to settle the case.
Today, its seven-member council has the same number of Latino leaders as it had when it was sued: One.
A 2016 study by the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College noted “it is likely, but far from guaranteed” that changing a city’s election system will increase the number of Latinos in public offices.
Another 2019 study by researchers from UC Riverside found underrepresented groups gained seats after their communities adopted district elections. Cities that switch to by-district elections see racial representation increase by an average 10% over the next election cycle, the study says.
Despite gains, Latinos still face barriers
Soria’s rise in local politics didn’t come easily.
On the campaign trail, Soria said she received pushback from her opponents, who questioned how qualified she was for the job —despite having two college degrees.
“The sad part was that they didn’t question my counterparts because there were some council members sitting on the dais that didn’t even have a bachelor’s degree,” she said. “ I have a bachelor’s from the No. 1 public university, UC Berkeley, and then I even went to law school at UC Davis and people still question my ability to be able to represent and lead.”
Soria, who was 33 when she was elected, said being young, a woman and a person of color were used against her to undermine her credibility. Those factors, in addition to the financial and time-consuming demands that it takes to run a campaign, she added, make many women think twice about running for office.
“Women have to think about it a lot longer and a lot harder before jumping into it,” Soria said. “But if we weren’t in those places where decisions are being made, many times, our perspective would get overlooked and policies would hurt us more than help us.”
Arambula said he experienced similar barriers when he first ran for office in 1987. At the time, Fresno Unified was operating under an at-large system. While door knocking in Fresno’s affluent north, Arambula made a passionate plea to a white resident to get his vote. He cited his education and multiple degrees, having attended Harvard, Stanford and UC Berkeley, as well as his experience as an attorney.
But while walking away, he heard the resident call him “some damn Mexican.”
“There’s a racial fear of ‘those people’ gaining control,” Aramabula said. “My only hope is that as time goes on, then fear will dissipate, and that the general climate will be more accepting of minority candidates.”
Kim Bojórquez of The Sacramento Bee Capitol Bureau contributed to this report.
How we reported this story
The Fresno Bee compiled this data by analyzing public official’s biographies featured on school board, county and city websites.
Public offices and public officials were contacted by email or phone to disclose their board or council’s racial representation.
While not all offices responded to our requests, some public officials self-disclosed their race or ethnicity and the race or ethnicity of others who identified similarly in their region.
This story was originally published October 9, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Latinos hold almost half of all elected positions in Fresno County. Here’s how they made gains."
CORRECTION: This story initially incorrectly reported the racial breakdown by percentage of Fresno County. It has been corrected to reflect that Latinos represent 53.8% of Fresno County, while white people make up about 28.6% of the population, Asian Americans account for 11%, and Black people about 5.8%.