In a Dec. 18 Capitol Weekly article, capitolweekly.net, Samantha Gallegos describes how political change is sweeping the Inland Empire counties of San Bernardino and Riverside:
CAPITOL WEEKLY – California Republicans face tossups in areas of the state that for years were considered strongholds and easy wins for GOP contenders. The reason: demographics.
“What that they say about history, you know, if you don’t remember it you’re doomed to repeat it,” Rod Pacheco, a former Riverside County district attorney and former member of the state Assembly, where he served as as Republican leader. “The Inland Empire is going through a history lesson.”
The demographic changes have been dramatic. Whites, for example, who were 43.5 percent of the electorate in northwestern Riverside in 2000, will be less than 24 percent in two years.
Voting data expert Paul Mitchell says a recent trend throughout California has been the migration from major cities, like Los Angeles, into places like Riverside-San Bernardino counties.
The nation’s greatest county-to-county population movement in recent years has been from L.A. County to the Inland Empire, the Riverside-San Bernardino areas, according to U.S. Census Bureau data targeting the 2005-2010 American Community Survey.
Nearly 18,000 people migrated from L.A. to Riverside County, and that county saw roughly another 5,000 new residents from San Bernardino. That’s about 23,000 new residents, from just those two counties in five-years. The largest movement of people from one county to another in the entire nation was from L.A. to San Bernardino, an estimated 44,020 people in total.
Many residents, Mitchell said, moved for lifestyle reasons like more affordable housing.
The result: changes in community priorities and electorate preferences for the Inland Empire. But the Riverside area, Pacheco said, has never been committed to voting along party lines.
Read more at capitolweekly.net.
