TID's Berryhill taking on Cardoza (CA)

ke Berryhill, a Turlock Irrigation District director and a member of a prominent political family, announced Monday that he is running for Dennis Cardoza's congressional seat.

Cardoza, D-Merced, is up for re-election in 2010. Cardoza's district includes part of Stanislaus County.

Berryhill is a former Ceres Unified School District trustee and has served on the TID board since 1983. His term expires this year and he is not running for re-election.

"Someone needs to step up to the plate and take on Dennis Cardoza," Berryhill said. "He's really had a free ride in the last couple of elections. I feel like the people in our area are not being represented."

His uncle, Clare Berryhill, served in the state Legislature and was California's secretary of food and agriculture under Gov. Deukmejian. His cousins Bill Berryhill, R-Ceres, and Tom Berryhill, R-Modesto, serve in the Assembly.

“It would have been a gain in 2002 under it’s 2000 lines.”

Yup, although had they kept those heavily Hispanic precincts in the CA-11 and still added the Alameda and Contra Costa precincts to the CA-11, Pombo would have lost in 2002, not 2006, and we wouldn’t have a shot at beating McNerney in 2010 (as it is, I think McNerney will lose if we can run a decent candidate).

In Cardoza’s CD, we need a nominee that does relatively well among Hispanic voters (who are, what, 45% of the electorate?). If Berryhill can’t get around 40% of the Hispanic vote it will be very difficult for him to win.

As you may have noticed from my posts on redistricting, I am a firm advocate of packing as many Democrats as possible into one district so as to make adjoining districts comfortably Republican. However, in the case of the Central Valley and other generally conservative areas with many Hispanic residents but relatively few Hispanic voters (because so many Hispanics are non-citizens and because the Hispanic population under 18 is so large), I do not think that packing Democrats into a single district is an optimal strategy due to the fact that you would end up with a heavily Democrat district that casts far fewer votes than its neighbors and you would be “wasting” non-voters in a Democrat district. For example, Costa’s 60%+ Hispanic CA-20 voted for Kerry in 2004 (albeit by only 2.15%), but it only cast 115,619 votes, compared to the 265,687 votes cast in the adjoining CA-22 (which President Bush carried by 37%). While the combined vote of two adjoining districts in which Bush got 48.47% and 67.97%, respectively, would be 58.22% for Bush if both districts had the same number of voters, the combined vote of the low-turnout CA-20 and high-turnout CA-22 was 62.06% for Bush.

Look at the very high Hispanic population in the Nunes, Costa and Cardozo districts, and the relatively high Hispanic population in adjoining CDs (such as McNerney’s and McCarthy’s). By combining low-turnout Hispanic areas with high-turnout, conservative, white Anglo areas, one could create three Central Valley CDs that are 55%-60% Hispanic while giving President Bush 55%-60% of the vote in 2004. One would have to be careful not to include trendy white areas in such districts, since that would only help the Democrats. The areas outside the three Hispanic-majority GOP CDs would be comfortably Republican even though they would have almost all of the liberal white Anglos and blacks in the region, since once can’t draw a Central Valley CD that gave President Bush less than 60% of the vote unless such district has a lot of Hispanics in it (and the adjoining districts, after drawing three Hispanic-majority CDs, would be 20% or less Hispanic).

I would apply the same logic to South and West Texas (I would draw only 2 Democrat CDs in the region, one from parts of San Antonio to the Rio Grande Valley, and the other from Austin to San Antonio), for one of the districts in AZ, and for one of the districts in NM. Non-voters can only help us, and we should reduce as much as possible the number of non-voters placed in Democrat districts. BTW, this strategy works with heavily Hispanic areas, not with heavily black areas; while many heavily black areas have low voter turnout, with blacks voting 90%+ Democrat (as opposed to non-urban Hispanics, who vote 35%-45% Republican)the cost-benefit analysis clearly points to placing heavily black areas in Democrat districts.

Here’s a pretty good rule of thumb: place prisons in the GOP districts, and universities (with low Census population but potentially high number of voters) in Democrat districts.

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