For years now, the northern San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys have together comprised a unique bastion in Los Angeles County, a county where as of last year’s general election Democrats outnumbered Republicans by nearly 3 to 1.
It’s a politically different scenario in the northern slice of the county, where a deep split between parties is evident every two years, in nail-biting congressional elections and guaranteed 50-50 polling.
Amid the vast region’s sea of deep Democratic blue, the area — which includes such communities as Lancaster, Palmdale and Quartz Hill — has been a clear shade of political purple in an area where candidates of both stripes battle it out in brutal, high-profile campaigns for Congress.
But in a matter of months, that could change.
In a historic moment, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s affirmation on Thursday, Aug. 14, that he intends to redraw the state’s political lines mid-decade would — if approved by voters in a November special election — aim to offset Texas’ leaders efforts to redraw its own lines to maintain a majority of GOP seats in the House of Representatives in the midterm elections.
The announcement marked the first instance in which any state beyond Texas is formally jumping into the mid-decade redistricting fight, shifting into gear a national standoff that more states could join.
While the proposed new maps have yet to be released — the governor promised to release them in a few days — it was clear L.A. County would become even bluer.
That puts District 27 in the spotlight — well, BACK in the spotlight. The played in the national storyline for years, dubbed crucial by both sides to securing the advantage in the House. The county’s lone swing district is Republicans’ last local hope for a fight for Congress under the current maps. It seems certain that the district, which has swapped back and forth between parties for years, would be drawn for the Democrats by the governor’s cartographers.
And there’s speculation that the redraw — which would play out in the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections — would also create a new district around the Southeast L.A., grabbing a piece of the San Gabriel Valley. It would potentially open the door to a whole group of political leaders eager to be another Democrat from the region to go to Congress.
For Democrats, a defiant stance on Thursday was a new front in a push against President Donald Trump’s loyalists to maintain power in the House.
Trump has pushed for a Republican-led effort in Texas to craft a new district map that would help them send five more Republicans to Washington.
Lone Star State lawmakers are considering it.
For L.A. County Republicans, Newsom’s announcement of the new maps was seen as more of the same for a county where they’ve long held the minority.
Newsom was blunt.
“You have the power to declare that you support a system that is not rigged,” Newsom said on Thursday at the Democracy Center, in L.A.’s Little Tokyo, flanked by an array of local leaders.
“We’re giving the people of this state the power to save democracy.”
Newsom’s action — backed by defiant critiques of Trump — was a rallying cry among local Democrats, and it echoed all the way to Santa Clarita, where Christy Smith heard it loud and clear.
Smith knows a thing or two about political purple, and vying for office in a congressional district where victory was snagged by razor-thin margins.
Her multiple epic campaign battles with Republican Mike Garcia were the thing of national headlines, as the two vied for Congress in years that spanned the Trump and Biden eras. (As of Thursday evening, Garcia had not responded to calls for comment for this report.)
The potential for a smoother Democratic path over multiple election cycles comes after years of grassroots mobilizing, she said Thursday.
Last November’s election of George Whitesides was the culmination of that effort, she said, adding that while the mobilizing will continue, if new maps get the nod from voters, Whitesides’ “chances are fantastic” for at least another term.
“But I think they were good anyway,” she said.
In recent years, until now, that kind of optimism might have been more reserved in a district where, far from the 3-to-1 ratio in the county at large, Democrats outnumber Republicans only 185,933 to 141,978, according to the California Secretary of State’s office.
And by the history, one could understand a more reserved approach to being a representative in the area, by members of both parties, given the slim margins of victory in recent races and the back-and-forth swings between parties.
Cue the history.
Garcia, a GOP political newcomer at the time, had barely won the 25th District seat in 2020, beating Smith by the slimmest of slim 333 votes for a seat left open by Democrat Katie Hill, who resigned from Congress in 2019 amid a personal scandal.
Hill had ousted longtime Republican representative Steve Knight in 2018, a reflection of the changing political dynamics of the area.
Garcia won again over Smith in 2022, an early test for what had become a newly reconfigured district.
All the while, the candidates battled in the shadow of national issues such as personal autonomy, religious beliefs and the future of democracy.
Garcia played up his Navy jet fighter past and Smith her liberal approach but with homegrown public service roots.
Trump himself, still in his first term, injected himself into the 2020 race, endorsing Garcia even as he alleged the election was rigged.
Notable, too: Hillary Clinton endorsed Smith in 2020.
The reconfiguration of then Garcia’s seat came in 2021, when the Citizen’s Redistricting Commission took a swath of Simi Valley — known as a base of GOP support for Garcia — out of his then-25th District.
But Garcia, who under the 2021 redistricting, ended up representing the newly formed 27th District, would take a huge hit in a district where it was already close — indeed among the closest in the nation.
Hobbled without his Simi Valley GOP base, Garcia would forge on. By last year, the district’s battleground status would remain, as Democrat Whitesides challenged Garcia for the seat, which represents parts of northern L.A. County, including the high desert communities of Lancaster, Palmdale and Santa Clarita.
But Whitesides — a political newcomer who was NASA’s former chief of staff — would prevail in yet another polarized race, winning 51.3% to Garcia’s 48.7%.
Whitesides, backed by millions of dollars in spending from Democratic groups, offered a contrast to Smith’s own blame focused on her party when she lost in 2022. Lamenting little help on media platforms, nor from Democratic Party committees and political action groups, she said her campaign had no chance of winning.
By last year, Garcia had a record that Whitesides and supporters hit hard, including repeated salvos on the Republican’s anti-abortion views.
Pundits say the new maps will likely force the area to lose its competitive status, especially if maps are drawn connecting, for example, Santa Clarita, with, say Santa Monica, or other scenarios where communities without much in common get bound together.
“It would be completely uncompetitive,” said Matt Rexroad, a GOP political consultant.
Moreover, the incumbent’s — in this case, Whitesides — “voting pattern would change because he’s not in a competitive district anymore. I promise you. George Whitesides would love this idea.”
The potential blue-ing of what is now the 27th District reflects the gravity of Newsom’s announcement.
It’s one example that would reflect a massive shift toward partisan congressional maps after years of the non-partisan citizens commission.
“California hasn’t had partisan congressional maps drawn in recent modern history,” said Michael Trujillo, a Democratic strategist raised in the San Fernando Valley. “What was happening before the independent redistricting commission was you’d have ‘status quo’ maps, where legislators were drawing maps protecting incumbents. Then, fast forward … and the redistricting commission was as non-political as can be, looking at communities of interest and population shifts” to draw boundaries, he said.
Out of that came the Santa Clarita area, which became one of a cluster of key swing districts in the state, Trujillo said.
Until, potentially, now.
“To now take a partisan pen in the modern day, with the technology we have today,” Trujillo said, “it us much easier to draw a Democratic safe seat then it’s very been. It’s the first time California has been able to act in such a partisan way.”
While the county at large will only get more blue, some observers are hearing buzz that they will also spur at least another seat in L.A. County.
Trujillo noted this week that Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis had been making overtures on a possible run for a potential new district in the southeastern swath of L.A., where there’s overlap with parts of her current district that includes pockets of the San Gabriel Valley.
Solis could not be reached on Thursday.
The district would be a revived — or “zombie” seat that went away in the last redistricting, only to come back to life.
Other pundits said that if that seat were to come back to life, other congressional hopefuls in the area would likely be interested, including Assemblymembers Lisa Calderon, D-Whittier, Blanca Rubio, D-West Covina, or her sister, Susan, a state senator.
Jack Pitney, Professor of American Politics Claremont McKenna College, noted the deep blow to competition that the redrawing would deal.
“Gerrymandering reduces competition” and that’s problematic,” he said.
But in an area where Democrats dominate, it’s not exactly a surprise, said Roxanne Roxanne Hoge, chair of the LA GOP.
“We were already fighting with one hand behind our backs,” she said by phone on Thursday.
She would add in an emailed statement reacting to Newsom’s announcement:
“The entire effort is corrupt, and making any particular district more or less blue is beside the point. California’s 27th congressional district is filled with hard-working people who deserve a representative who’s elected by the people, not selected by politicians redrawing maps in secret without their input.”
Smith, meanwhile, now serves as executive director of Emerge California, a nonprofit that seeks to train and recruit more women in to the legislature. She’s confident her community in northern L.A County will absorb the change.
“I think none of us saw coming the willful destruction of liberal democratic norms under this president,” she said on Thursday, echoing themes from Newsom and others earlier in the day.
“California cannot let that go unchecked.”
But, she added, even in a community known for its split electorate, she believes the debate will ultimately play out fairly.
“The community is very civically minded, with a big lean toward fairness,” she said.
The debate over redistricting is yet fully to be on the radar screen. But it’s coming, she said.
“I think you’ll see the conversation ramping up now that the governor has made his announcement,” she said.
“It’s going to be an interesting ride,” Smith declared. “Get the popcorn ready.”