Rural California is forgotten, but there's a reason for it | Silva

When the state Democratic Party got together and decided to put Proposition 50 on the ballot, they said they did so to save democracy after what was happening in Texas.

Now I could spend my time here talking about how Texas, in some ways, was a response to what Democrats have been doing in the Northeast for decades. Example: go look at New Hampshire, which reportedly has 31.94% registered Republicans, more than the Democrats (28.14%). Independents lead the state with 39.92% But no district was drawn with a Republican majority, and no Republican was elected to Congress from the state.

How can that happen, you might ask? Well, the answer lies in redistricting, which needs an overhaul nationwide. However, up until Prop. 50, California may have been the only state doing it correctly.

But this is not what this is about; this is about what's happening to rural California, and Proposition 50 is an example of it. The founders knew the difference between direct democracy and a representative republic.

When the founders were putting together the Constitution, there was a debate about the conflicting demands of rural areas and larger cities. Rural states knew they would get overrun by the urban ones, just like we know it now.

So those dolts who put this whole Constitution together came up with a plan, one of which was the Electoral College, to help balance the power needed. Another idea was a Senate based on equal representation by state, and another was a House based purely on population, but even in that, there was equality, as every district is based on an equal population.

Thus, checks and balances existed in both the Electoral College and the legislative branch. (Which, by the way, you folks in the legislative branch have been ceding your power to the executive branch for decades. I don't care who's in the executive seat; it has too much power. Get your house in order, Congress, and forget the party in that seat; rein in the executive branch, and do it yesterday.)

In 1964, the Warren Court issued a decision called Reynolds v. Sims-the alleged one-man, one-vote decision was perhaps the most disastrous decision the country has ever made regarding people living in rural America, denying them control over their lives and an influence on government. The case destroyed the concept of rural representation by making all state representation population-based.

The decision destroyed the balance in the state governments and changed the California State Senate from one based on counties or regions to one based solely on population, permanently shifting the balance of power in this state to Southern California and the Bay Area.

It wasn't long after the Warren decision that we saw its impact in the state Senate. The last time the Republicans held a majority in the state Senate was 1970. In fact, it was the last time Republicans held both houses of the legislature and the Governor's mansion. In fact, since then, the Republicans have been in control of only one house of the legislature, once, in 1994. But that quickly went away.

Instead of having one house of the legislature that represents rural California and its issues, that's all gone, and the only way to change that is to revisit Reynolds v. Sims to address this specific issue.

And even if we did return to the pre-1964 state Senate, it wouldn't guarantee Republicans a majority there. In fact, at the time of the Reynolds v. Sims decision, Democrats held both the Senate and the Assembly. But it would guarantee that each of those rural counties would have a representative who would address their concerns and needs, and together they could form a political bloc to advance those concerns.

Many rural counties, like Tehama County, have concerns about water, agricultural needs, and, most recently, wolves attacking cattle.

So now, back to Prop 50, when it was being placed on the ballot, Assemblyman James Gallagher, now running for Congress to replace the late Doug LaMalfa, said it was an example of state Democrats not caring about Northern California or what the majority of people who live up here really want.

Not a single county that Lamalfa represented voted for Prop 50. Not one. They clearly opposed the new lines. Now, State Senator Mike McGuire, who's running for that seat against Gallagher, recently told the Chico Enterprise-Record Editorial Board that Democrats have forgotten rural America.

Between now and Election Day, and possibly after, Maguire has a chance to prove that he is one of those Democrats who hasn't forgotten rural California and to take his own party to task over it.

But consider this: Both Gallagher and McGuire are right. They're both right because Democrats don't have to care about Northern California or rural America because of Reynolds versus Sims. And people who make up political parties tend to forget about people they don't need to care about - and clearly, the State Democrats have repeatedly demonstrated that they don't care.

And I'm pretty darn sure if Republicans were in the Democrats' shoes, and they didn't have to concern themselves with urban issues, they would ignore them, too.

(Don't believe me? After the recent Supreme Court rulings that banned race-based redistricting, Tennessee Republicans are about to redraw the only Democratic majority district into a Republican one, leaving Tennessee with the same number of Democrats representing its state in Congress as the number of Republicans representing New Hampshire: zero.)

Since California Democrats got rid of the two-thirds budgetary majority needed to pass a budget, they started ignoring Republicans on the budget. Now that they have 75% of all Senate seats and Assembly seats. They completely ignore the GOP, making their presence there nearly irrelevant.

McGuire, who some argue helped draft the new lines to help him run in this district, likes to say that the difference between Texas and California is that California puts redistricting on the ballot for voters to decide.

He's not wrong, but let's cut the theater, shall we?

Everybody knew that once it was on the ballot, it was going to win, purely based on the numbers in Southern California and the Bay Area. The "people" didn't approve Proposition 50; the Democrats in the legislature and their voters in Southern California and the Bay Area made that decision.

This wasn't some brave political gamble that Gov. Newsom and the Democratic leadership put on the ballot; they knew it would win, and the people it hurt the most voted against it, but weren't considered at all. Because the Democrats knew they could just run roughshod over those folks – there was no check on their power, and in this state, there's likely never going to be one.

The exact concerns that led the Founders to create a balance between rural and urban representation were on full display in the Proposition 50 vote, which may never have gotten to the ballot if it weren't for Reynolds v. Sims, as the majority of rural counties and their representatives would have blocked it

Now, from this county's perspective, the time to remember Rural California was back in 2025, when this whole idea was crafted and put on the ballot. Claiming to remember rural California now may well ring a little hollow to most people who live in this county.

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