Goodbye Devin … hello Kevin? New House boundaries could get weird for Fresno, Valley
Remember the office in Old Town Clovis that congressman Devin Nunes never visits?
Nunes might soon be turning over the keys to somebody else. Perhaps Kevin McCarthy, his fellow San Joaquin Valley Republican on Capitol Hill.
Nunes would have zero use for a Clovis office if California’s new congressional districts don’t drastically change from the initial visualizations released last week by the state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission.
Besides Clovis, Nunes would no longer represent north Fresno under the proposed boundary lines. Instead, Nunes’ district would expand a little further south while shifting west to include portions of Fresno County (including Kingsburg, Selma, Reedley and Sanger) currently served by Rep. David Valadao.
On the initial map, Nunes’ reconfigured district includes parts of southeast Fresno (Sunnyside, naturally), south Fresno, a portion of downtown Fresno (the boundary runs along Ventura and H streets) and encompasses the entirety of southwest Fresno as far north as Olive and McKinley avenues.
Trading Clovis and north Fresno for south and southwest Fresno? No wonder Nunes’ district would tilt from a place where voters favored Donald Trump by 5 percentage points in last year’s election to one where Joe Biden won by 3%, according to political analyst Dave Wasserman.
If the proposed boundaries hold firm, Nunes may need every dollar in his vast campaign war chest to secure a 10th term. And perhaps his strongest potential challenger in 2022 won’t be Phil Arballo, Eric Garcia or Lourin Hubbard, but some other Democrat who has yet to emerge.
The new map, if adopted, looks awfully good for Latino candidates (who would make up 55.8 percent of the district’s population) with strong Fresno ties. Just sayin’. Multiple Fresno City Council members come to mind.
If Nunes no longer represents north Fresno and Clovis, who will? It’s a two-part answer.
More Fresno voters for Costa
Eight-term Democrat Jim Costa’s already Fresno-heavy district would grow to encompass the entirety of northwest Fresno west of Fresno Street. McCarthy, meanwhile, would see his Bakersfield-heavy district expand to include not only northeast Fresno and Clovis but a large swath of eastern Fresno and Madera counties currently represented by Republican Tom McClintock.
As opposed to Nunes’ situation, McCarthy’s proposed new district looks to be in safe Republican hands. Likewise, Costa should be pleased to pick up more Fresno voters while losing some GOP-leaning territory to Valadao.
(There is an excellent mapping tool, displaying current boundaries and the new initial ones side by side, embedded in the online version of this column.)
A reminder: Nothing about this process is finalized, and the boundary maps for California’s congressional districts for the next decade may undergo numerous revisions between now and when they must be approved before Christmas.
Political consultant Paul Mitchell compared the process undertaken by the California Citizens Redistricting Commission to a household cleaning robot that makes its way around the room and reveals potential conflicts.
“It’s like a ‘redistricting Roomba,’ “ Mitchell told Gillian Brassil, McClatchy’s correspondent in Washington, D.C. “The commission is meant to bump into things, see what works and what doesn’t work.”
California’s House delegation dipped from 52 to 51 members as a result of the 2020 census (a Los Angeles-area district appears to be the casualty), so the boundary lines were assuredly not going to stay the same.
GOP swap in north Fresno, Clovis?
It’s been nearly three decades since northwest Fresno voters were represented by a Democrat in the House of Representatives. Before Nunes’ boundaries expanded as a result of the last redistricting process in 2011, they were in a district long held (since 1995) by Republican George Radanovich.
While northeast Fresno and Clovis voters are long-accustomed to GOP representation, the potential switch from Nunes to McCarthy is an interesting one, if only because McCarthy could emerge as the next speaker of the House should Republicans regain control, and could use his political heft to funnel more federal dollars in the Valley’s direction.
Which is something Nunes, despite his own senior standing in the Republican party, never seemed to care about. Who has time for that when there are fake cows and journalists to sue?
Even though the initial boundary maps certainly freshen up local congressional races that were long stale, they’re far from the complete reconfiguration I’d hoped for.
Oh, well. Anything that carves Nunes out of north Fresno and Clovis must be viewed as a positive — and perhaps south Fresno is where the Tulare Republican finally meets his match.
Can you picture Nunes opening an office in southwest Fresno? Me neither.
