Save Newport Real News in Newport Beach
Whew. What an election! I think we can all agree, that was more than we had bargained for, right?
All the money spent on signs, slick mailers, commercials, and other materials to “get the word out” was absolutely overwhelming. Did you read it all? I did– but suspect I’m the exception to the rule!
Most cities vote one of two ways:
1) City-wide elections where top vote receivers become members of council, representing the city as a whole, or
2) District-based elections, with each district directly electing their own member of council.
Here in Newport, we have a strange hybrid of both: We mandate that candidates must live within certain residential district boundaries, however we allow the entire city to vote on them. Why does this matter? Well, sometimes people get elected to represent areas when those very same areas voted for someone else to represent them: In this election, it appears that CdM voted for Toerge and the rest of the city voted for Peotter. Peotter now represents CdM. In a prior election, Steve Rosansky was elected to represent the Peninsula area– but not by the Peninsula area residents themselves. While we’ve lucked out in the past– the future may not be so forgiving.
Of course, the biggest problem that city-wide district-elections create is the necessity of money. Lots of it. We have 7 districts in Newport Beach with a population of around 85,000. To “get the message out” to a population that large, you need a bundle. Duffy raised over $200,000 to run his campaign, while Dixon raised over $85k before the election cycle even began. Peotter raised a ton of money himself– AND dropped in six figures of his own money to compete. Now, nothing against ANY of our newly elected council people, and I am very glad they won, but do we really want a situation in which we need to have 6-figure, city-wide battles simply to run a campaign for a single district? Do we want a situation where money is what dictates winners– and whose money is it, anyway?
I’d like to propose a change to district-based elections, rather than city-wide elections. Each district contains only about 4,000 people who regularly voter– a small enough amount that a single person can knock on at least a quarter of those doors, and meet the rest through community events. This would significantly reduce the amount of money needed to run for office, and would allow locals to really know their own representative, while largely taking special interests out of the equation. Our representatives would therefore be keen on giving their own district personalized attention. It also prevents the rest of the city from out-voting the locals in any particular district.
It is my opinion that each district of Newport should be electing their own representatives– representatives who know their own local issues intimately, and who know their own constituents personally. This would require a ballot initiative– and I think we can do it– but first, I’d like to ask the public: What do you think?
