In the small city of La Palma, district elections debuted in November with three council candidates all running unopposed.
Incumbents Debbie Baker and Mark Waldman won 100% of the vote, as did newcomer Vikesh Patel.
La Palma voters also passed a ballot measure that extended term limits for members of the City Council. At Tuesday’s council meeting, Measure W, as the initiative is known, was formally adopted into law. It now allows council members to serve three consecutive four-year terms.
Councilman Nitesh Patel, Vikesh’s brother, was unavailable for an interview before the council meeting but emailed TimesOC a statement in support of the reform.
“State law imposed by-district elections reducing the already limited candidate pool, as clearly demonstrated in this year’s city council elections where all three districts were uncontested,” Patel said. “Voters are now empowered to choose whether experienced council members are deserving of an additional term or if they desire a new direction. Ultimately, the power always rests with the voters every four years.”
Robert Carruth, a spokesman for La Palma Residents for Fair Elections, expressed disappointment in the election results, where 58% of La Palma’s voters approved the initiative.
“It wasn’t a grassroots effort,” he said. “Nobody in La Palma was asking to increase term limits, but certain council members wanted it, and this is how they went about doing it. The campaign wasn’t transparent, and it even bordered on being dishonest.”
Carruth pointed to Patel, who was first elected to council in 2018, as someone who could serve up to 20 consecutive years, if reelected, as the new law is phased in without counting any of his previous terms.
La Palma is home to about 15,000 residents, 10,000 of whom are registered voters.
In 2022, attorney Kevin Shenkman sent La Palma a demand letter that claimed the city’s at-large voting system violated the California Voting Rights Act and disenfranchised Latinos, who comprised 19% of the population.
La Palma City Council opted to voluntarily transition to district elections instead of entertaining a costly legal fight.
In November, three of La Palma’s new council districts appeared on the ballot for the first time. All three candidates who ran unopposed won with roughly 1,000 votes each.
Months before the filing deadline, La Palma City Council discussed term limits during a Feb. 6 meeting, when some council members sounded the alarm about district elections drying up a pool of potential candidates.
“It’s hard to be able to find people in certain districts,” Patel said. “This is not us saying, ‘let’s eliminate term limits, let’s change term limits.’”
The council voted unanimously then to hire a consultant for community outreach on the question.
Months later, council members returned with a 4-1 vote in June to put Measure W on the ballot.
With two new council districts yet to go before voters, Carruth said it’s too early to draw conclusions on district elections and any potential impact on competitive council races.
“There won’t be enough data for quite some time,” he said. “If you look back at history, people do run. One data point is not a trend.”
La Palma City Hall and Council Chambers.
(James Carbone)
In recent years, there has been a dearth of candidates in Orange County cities that have recently transitioned to district elections.
Dana Point decided to cancel council elections after three candidates, two of whom were newcomers, were set to run unopposed in their districts. Two incumbent council members ran unopposed in November.
Orange, which is home to 140,000 residents, saw no competitive council races in all three districts up for a vote, nor in its at-large mayoral race.
But Cypress, a city that borders La Palma and settled a lawsuit over district elections for $835,000, had competitive races in each of its council districts this November.
Shenkman, a Malibu-based attorney, claimed that district election reform is no deterrent to democratic participation and called related-arguments in favor of La Palma’s ballot measure “wrong” and “paternalistic.”
“Empirical studies show that more, not less, candidates run when the elections are district based,” Shenkman said. “That makes sense, intuitively. It’s less expensive to run a campaign to a fifth of the electorate in a smaller geographic area, so potential candidates are less deterred by cost.”
Mailers in support of the measure leaned heavily on police and firefighter images in suggesting that a yes vote would help protect public safety. The Yes on Measure W campaign also framed the ballot measure as a fight for local control against Sacramento “special interests.”
Patel and Baker helped fund the campaign, which raised $27,000, according to public records obtained by TimesOC.
The No campaign called Measure W a “power grab,” but only spent roughly $2,800 getting their message out to voters.
With its passage, the ballot measure provides for a four-year absence, after which politicians are eligible for three more consecutive four-year terms.
The law would sunset if the city reverted to an at-large voting system.
“I’m obviously disappointed in the outcome,” Carruth said. “I don’t think there’s any real benefit that will come to La Palma from extending term limits. I think it’ll be the opposite.”