Race, Ethnicity, and the Politics of City Redistricting: Minority-Opportunity Districts and the Election of Hispanics and Blacks to City Councils

2. Making the Connection: The Links among System Aptitude, Minority-Opportunity Districts, and the Election of Hispanics and Blacks

C H A P T E R T W O M a k i n g t h e C o n n e c t i o n : T h e L i n k s a m o n g S y s t e m A p t i t u d e , M i n o r i t y O p p o r t u n i t y D i s t r i c t s, a n d t h e E l e c t i o n o f H i s p a n i c s a n d B l a c k s An explanation for the election of Hispanics and blacks to city councils necessarily requires an understanding of the occurrence of minority-opportunity districts. At the most basic level, minority-opportunity districts are wholly dependent upon there being enough minority-group members residing in the city. It is for this reason that we begin our journey with a discussion that takes stock of the perhaps not so obvious, and deceptively simple, relationship between the size of the citywide minority population and the number of districts on a council. S Y S T E M A P T I T U D E A prerequisite to the election of minority candidates to governing bodies usually has been the presence of a substantial minority population of voting-age. The limited population size of municipal single-member districts provides the opportunity to construct districts that substantially encompass communities of interest, especially race-based communities of interest. This has been cited as a major reason that the presence of minority representatives on city and county governing bodies tends to be much greater than it is in Congress or state legislatures (Grofman and Handley 1989a, esp. 268–70).1 7 Within any particular city, the population size of its districts is determined by the number of council seats. Generally the larger the legislative body, the fewer inhabitants within each district. Since most cities contain a relatively small minority population, the choice between a five- and seven-member council, for example, can be quite pivotal to the creation of the first minorityopportunity district. An increase in the number of council seats can lower the district population size to the point where the minority population surpasses the threshold necessary to construct the first minority-opportunity district, which in turn provides the potential to elect a single minority candidate. Alozie and Manganaro (1993) find that an increase in the size of the council does not increase the equity in representation (i.e., more proportional representation); it does, however, increase the likelihood of the presence of at least a single black or Hispanic incumbent. The creation of the first minority-opportunity district is a point of critical juncture because minority presence on the governing body is less likely without a single minority-opportunity district. A city council with dozens of seats may provide the opportunity to elect minority representatives due simply to the fact that it lowers the size of the district poplation, but it also may lessen proportionately the impact of a single minority member’s vote on public policy. It has been argued that the size of the city council may mitigate the racial threat posed by mobilized minorities, especially in cities with a large percentage of minorities. The racial threat literature views racial groups as competing in the political arena for substantive benefits that may come from the election of preferred candidates (see, e.g., Giles 1977; Giles and Evans 1985; Giles and Buckner 1993, 1996; Glaser 1994; Voss 1996; also Dawson, Brown, and Allen 1999, 24–25; Oliver and Mendelberg 2000; Orey 2000). Longoria (1996) finds that whites living in counties with high percentages of minorities are less supportive of the creation of election districts with heavy minority concentrations than whites living in counties with few minorities. By restricting the number of seats on a council, a system may be gerrymandered not by geography but by numbers; small city councils may achieve the same dilutive effects as the use of at-large election formats (Taebel 1978, 147–48; Grofman, Handley, Niemi 1992, 106). The courts have found that even single-member district systems can be dilutive if the districts are extremely populous due to the small number of districted seats on the governing body. In Garza v. Los Angeles Board of Supervisors (1990) the average district size of...