By Richard Riehl / The Riehl World
Photo by skeeze (Pixabay)
According to the city’s 2016 survey, only one in four Carlsbad residents are “very confident” that their city leaders will make the right decisions for them. That’s down from one in three in 2014. Overall, the share of residents who have confidence in city government dropped from 84 percent to 74 percent in the last two years.
The level of satisfaction varies by ZIP Code. North Carlsbad residents (92008 coastal and 92010 inland) were almost twice as likely to lack confidence in city leadership (27% and 36%) than those living in South Carlsbad (92011 coastal: 17 percent and 92009 inland: 15 percent).
It’s a tale of two cities.
According to SANDAG’s 2016 demographic and socioeconomic estimates:
Carlsbad’s median household income is $98,000. Southerners are wealthier, at $115,000 coastal $99,000 inland, compared to Northerners, at $78,000 coastal and $81,000 inland.
The median age of Carlsbad residents is 41. Northerners are younger, at 38 coastal and 40 inland, compared to Southerners, at 44 coastal and 42 inland.
According to the SANDAG report, 20 percent of Carlsbadians identify as Latinos. For Northerners it’s 25 percent coastal (includes the Barrio), and 19 percent inland. For Southerners it’s 18 percent coastal and17 percent inland.
A total of 86,000 residents were telephoned or emailed the survey, producing 1,000 respondents.
In what can only be assumed to be a typographical error, the survey’s methodology appendix reads, “The large majority of residents is white or Caucasian (77 percent).” Only 7.4 percent are listed as “Hispanic or Latino.”
If only 74 Latinos responded to the survey, the report is useless for measuring their community’s level of satisfaction of with city government.
With females representing more than half the population and Latinos one in five it’s hard to explain why Carlsbad has never had a female majority on the Council nor a single Latino councilmember.
The result of at-large elections in Carlsbad has brought the city mostly white male leaders elected by less than half of city voters. The only time Mayor Matt Hall received more than half of the votes was when he ran unopposed in 2014.
Mark Packard has been elected to the Council three times, exceeding 40% of the vote only once.
Michael Schumacher was elected to the Council in 2014 with 42% of the vote.
In 2016 Keith Blackburn won support of only 23 percent of voters, followed by Cori Schumacher, who defeated Lorraine Wood, the Council’s sole female incumbent, 20 percent to 19 percent.
There were four other candidates for the two seats, sharing 36 percent of the votes. Melanie Burkholder withdrew mysteriously from the race at the last minute, before her name could be removed from the ballot. She wound up with 5 percent of those uninformed voters.
And that’s the problem with at-large elections. Only rarely do winning candidates win a simple majority of votes. Election results, either intentionally, or unintentionally, can be influenced by phantom candidates like Burkholder and other hopefuls with very little public recognition. The result is the election of individuals with little constituent support.
According to the city’s website the Council is tentatively scheduled to address the issue of at-large elections at its May 9 meeting. It’s in response to a letter the city received from a law firm claiming Carlsbad’s at-large elections violates the California voting rights act. The letter cites three instances where Latino candidates ran unsuccessfully for City Council, yet received “significant support” from Latino voters.
The city website claims Latinos represent about 13 percent of Carlsbad’s population. That figure comes from the 2010 census. As cited above, SANDAG’s 2016 estimate is 7 points larger.
San Marcos and Vista changed from at-large to district elections last year. Given the experience of other southern California cities, the financial consequences of challenging a voting rights act lawsuit could be in the millions with the strong likelihood that the city would lose.
But the benefits of abandoning at-large elections are substantial, beginning with breaking the hold of a good old boys’ network that serves to bar gender and ethnic diversity from Carlsbad leadership.
Cori Schumacher’s election last year loosened their grip. The political outsider may not have been elected if it were not for her exceptional leadership in the grassroots campaign to defeat Measure A, protecting the Hedionda Lagoon from a billionaire LA developer.
District elections have the potential to change the go-along to get-along politics of our Village by the Sea.
Latest posts by Richard Riehl (see all)
- Carlsbad’s Bogus State of the City Video - August 16, 2017
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For some good entertainment watch the reality TV that is Carlsbad City Council meetings. Most of the Council members are predictable to a fault. While feigning anxiety over tough decisions they invariably vote in favor of any plan that could possibly bring money to the city. While bowing to the greed principle they ignore the pleas of residents to look at the facts. Case in point Caruso’s bogus “Citizen’s” initiative stating in capital letters and bold type” INITIATIVE MEASURE TO BE SUBMITTED DIRECTLY TO THE VOTERS” on every page of the 397 page document. The voters were denied that promise by our own elected (sometimes) officials. Some even admitted to not reading the initiative they were whole-heartedly endorsing. It is time to change the Council. Cut out the cancer and start to heal.
Thanks again Richard. As a resident of south Carlsbad (Rancho La Costa) I can tell you that we rarely go into the village and feel more a part of Encinitas than Carlsbad. Having said that, the Caruso fiasco got my attention and now I am properly engaged and make it a point to keep myself informed about all the shenanigans going on at 1200 CVD. Suffice to say, I would vote for ANYONE before I would vote for Hall, Packard or Michael Schumacher. I might have been out-of-touch with what was going on before in my hometown, but these guys are REALLY out-of-touch with reality (unless it’s the reality created by the money coming from developers, out-of-town real estate people, hotel owners, and tourists).
This article forgets the long term tenure of two women on the City Council and who are still active in politics and serving on the Board of Tri City Hospital. However, they too represent a kind of uniformity in thinking that is ‘good old’ power centered and very much financed by developers and their allies. If you look at the way the recent appointment to the Planning Commission went were a supporter of David Caruso’s voter rejected mall was named with no real discussion, clearly set up by the ‘old boys’ in advance, is an better example of why the city needs districting. Real representative democracy demands it and the League of Women Voters have supported it.
Interesting article. People have no one but themselves to blame if they don’t like their city government. Vote! You did not include what percentage of the residents voted. In many countries, voting rates are around 80%, while in the U.S. a voter turnout of 50% is considered high. Again, people must take some responsibility and vote. An absentee ballot is about as easy as it gets.
Figures I saw suggested that 65% of Carlsbad’s population (107k) are registered to vote. Assuming that everyone who voted in the 2016 council race used both their votes, the 91,097 votes cast were attributed to ~45,550 voters, 65.7% of the registered voters for the city.
Over 65% is good turnout. I think that battle over the Caruso deal got residents more engaged and hopefully this will continue. Encourage everyone you know to vote!
That makes sense that there’s less diversity in Southern Carlsbad. It is basically the ‘burbs (the reason for our decision to chose the Village). 15 years later still very glad to have made that choice. We’re within walking distance to the schools, library, the village and the beach. My bet is that if you put any suburban demographic up against a more urban, you’d find similar differences.
That might be true in a broad sense, but as someone who lives in La Costa, I can tell you there is diversity of opinion. Generalizations are always dangerous. People think and vote as individuals and are willing to listen if you engage them. I found that out by walking many miles collecting signatures to fight Caruso and by speaking with my neighbors who are a pretty diverse group.
Yes, generalizations are dangerous as is a sense of La Costa entitlement. I’m sporting a view of the ocean in my 5 bedroom, immediate access to the freeways and, again, very happy to live in 92008. Compared to the cities we’ve lived in, this is a walk in the park, literally. Looking forward to bringing more culture to this great city.
Not sure what you mean by “La Costa entitlement”. I live in a fairly modest 3 bedroom home and don’t feel entitled to anything other than what I earn as an educator. Maybe I’m the exception, but I do see lots of “entitlement”, mostly coming from the Mayor and incumbents as well as their supporters (the developers). Hopefully most people will agree with this and take back control of OUR city from these people who have felt for years “entitled” to do as they pleased with little regard for most of the other residents.
Perhaps you misunderstood me…I do not live IN La Costa the golf resort, but rather Rancho La Costa, as it says on my SDGE bill.
Mysteriously, a prior comment of mine which was awaiting moderation never showed up here.
That comment was meant to highlight the misrepresentation in the numbers quoted in the article. When two council seats are up for vote, it is (nearly) mathematically impossible for any winning candidate to receive more than 50% of the vote because each voter gets to select two candidates.
The election could have two candidates fully supported by 100% of the voters and each will only have 50% of the votes cast.
Our apologies.
There is no conspiracy to trash your (or anybody else’s) comments. We’ve had to crank up our spam filter to 11 (on a scale of 10) due to some bad hombres. Part of that process means re-educating the algorithms sorting the good from the bad.
We do have high standards for comments, mostly because none of us can stand the name-calling, meanness, and lack of fundamental knowledge about reality in many publications. Your comment clearly didn’t fit into any of those catagories.
Thanks, Doug. I can understand the need to filter out the legitimate spam and genuinely appreciate you taking the time to follow up and clarify.
I’d also add that you’ll get a skewed sampling of 92008 if you lump in the barrio area- this is an outlier to the entire city- which is on average higher density, lower income, with the entire 92008. Minus the barrio, the demographics of 92008 would be very similar to 92011. Similarly, if you lump 92008 in with 92010, which has the lowest priced housing in the 4 zips, and call it the “Northern” portion and juxtapose it to the “Southern” section you’ll lose a lot in demographic interpretation due the packaging.
People need to pay attention to what is going on at 3135 and 3145
Tyler St. Just do a little research and connect the dots and it’s pretty obvious. Just another example of why we need to get rid of Hall and the other incumbents in 2018.