Dave To Yakima’s Left: ‘Fighting The ACLU Doesn’t Make Me A Racist’

I thought I finally got the ACLU case out of my system this morning and actually felt a weight come off after my detailed, fact-ladened on-air rant.  Then spinning the dial on social media I saw an article on the KIMA Action News Facebook page in which a person by the name of Luis Rodriguez called me a racist.

So for Luis and anybody else who missed the show, here's my take and my motivation for my position on the case, the appeal and the U.S. Supreme Court decision. But first, here's how Luis responded to a thread about the Yakima City Council's decision to drop the appeal: "I wish I could see Dave Ettl's poor sad racist face.****"

Luis, my face IS poor. It’s more disappointed than sad, but it is NOT a racist face. The ACLU misrepresented the story of Yakima City Council elections history and many folks such as yourself bought it without understanding or investigating because it fit the beliefs you already have. Don’t take my word for it, it’s all online at the auditor’s office for you or anyone else to see.

I said the ACLU is a super-liberal organization trying to change the system so like-minded liberals can win elections in a conservative city -- perhaps as a launch pad for higher office. It is just a convenience that the liberals are Hispanics, giving the ACLU's arguments the sense of legitimacy and maybe even providing a legal angle to get done judicially what has yet to be done at the ballot box. The liberal time may come for Yakima, but let it come fair and square -- that was my position when this whole thing started.

I don’t care who wins a seat on the City Council as long as they earn it fair and square.  The ACLU said Yakima’s voting system caused a long-standing suffocating, diluting effect on Latino votes. How else, they said, could there be 41 percent  Hispanics with not one being elected in 40 years? That was the claim. They also said Yakima’s system was -- though not intentionally -- allowing of Latinos to win in their district primaries, only to lose in the General Elections, where Anglo votes overwhelmed them. The ACLU said because of those factors, the city needed to change to seven districts.

But what’s the truth? Look it up. The records go back to 1974, and from 1974 to 1991 not one Latino ran for office. Seventeen years, not one Hispanic candidate. Then in 1991, two people ran in the same race,  Patty Gonzales and Pablo Mendoza ran against Lynn Buchanan, a guy who had already served 12 years on the council! Nobody, Anglo or Hispanic, beats that kind of incumbency …he had 298 votes in the primary, Gonzales had 86 and Mendoza got 48. Neither Hispanic candidate won the primary and they "went on to lose in the General Election" as the ACLU maintained was the election system norm. They didn’t win the primary and combined, they got only half of Buchanan’s total. But that’s not how the history of Yakima “suffocating votes” was portrayed.

Eight more years went by and NO Hispanic candidates stepped forward…so that’s ONE race in 25 years! How can a Hispanic win if a Hispanic NEVER runs?

In 1999 Michael Campos ran against a four-year incumbent John Puccinelli -- who was about to become the mayor. Puccinelli won with 61 percent. Again, that’s a challenge no candidate could expect to win. Why did Hispanics run only twice in 25 years, and only against super-strong and popular incumbents? Who is advising those campaigns? That's not a faulty system suffocating the vote.

TEN more years go by without any Hispanic candidates running for the Yakima City Council.

So from 1974 to 2009 -- that’s 35 YEARS -- Hispanics ran in only two race. And when they ran, they challenged established popular incumbents and lost, like any other candidate would have lost. And that’s it. That’s the TRUE history for 35 years -- with no longstanding suffocation or dilution of votes because there weren’t any votes. Hispanics CHOSE not to run. And there wasn’t a single time, as alleged by the ACLU, when a Hispanic ran, won the primary and then got beat in the General Election. Not ONCE.

So how does pointing out the verifiable FACTS make me a racist, Luis? Check them for yourself at the auditor’s website.

Things changed a little in 2009. I ran against Sonia Rodriguez, and former Yakima school superintendent Ben Soria ran against Bill Lover…both were at-large races. Bill Lover was a well known, four-year ultraconservative incumbent, and Ben was seen as a LIBERAL education challenger. In Yakima politics, it’s left vs. right not brown vs. white.

Case in point: Four years earlier in that same District 3, one-term incumbent and former Mayor Paul George sought a second term and won in the primary against, Lover 49.6 percent to 35 percent, but ultimately lost to Lover in the General Election. Why? Paul George isn’t Hispanic, so why didn’t the rest of the city support him against newcomer Lover? Because Paul George was a proud and proven liberal and acted like one. He was active in Democratic politics and eventually would become the head of the Yakima Democratic Party. Liberal philosophy is the measure for defeat, NOT RACE, in conservative Yakima, Washington.

Why did I beat Sonia Rodriguez in 2009? She was an appointed one-year incumbent and she did an OK job. How could I win? It was very close, but in the end she too was known to be a liberal lawyer and a Democratic precinct committee leader, while I was known as a 30-year broadcaster/community supporter and conservative. Again, it wasn’t white voting against brown in CONSERVATIVE Yakima, it was conservative defeating liberal -- regardless of race. How does pointing this out make me a racist? The 60/40 Republican/Democrat ratio in the city electorate might be changing, but it hadn't changed in 2009.

Four years later in 2013 Bill Lover had two opponents: Enrique Jevons -- a Hispanic conservative -- and Carol Folsom-Hill, a well known liberal. Who did Hispanic voters support? The ACLU said minorities always voted as a block to support their fellow minorities … so did Jevons get the full support of all Hispanic voters? No -- he got just 13.2 percent of their votes. Folsom-Hill? Yes, she received 35.3 percent. Hispanic voters didn’t support a highly qualified Hispanic candidate. Why not? Because he was a conservative!  Again, philosophy was more important than race, but you can’t get the mileage out of calling someone a conservative as you can by calling them a racist. So, exactly the opposite of what the ACLU said was happening was happening in Yakima! Minorities weren’t always voting for minorities, but liberals certainly were voting for liberals in a conservative-majority city.

It was even worse in 2011 in District 2. An open seat was up for grabs as Mayor Dave Edler stepped down. If ever there was a good chance, this was is it! Three candidates ran in the primary. Sarah Bristol got 937 votes, Bob Marcley got 433 and Rogelio Montes got only 283 or 16.8 percent.  So, did the white votes crush the Hispanic votes and finally make the case for the ACLU? Check the auditor’s office and see for yourself. Of the more than 2,000 Hispanic surname ballots sent out in District 2, only about 200 were returned!  That's 10 percent. Nobody BOTHERED to vote! That wasn’t Yakima’s system suffocating the vote, the vote suffocated itself! The state voter turnout rate was around 30 percent. If 30 percent of Yakima's Hispanic voters would have turned in the ballots they got in the mail, Montes would have at least made it to the General Election. Instead, he lost -- not based on the system, but on lack of participation in that system -- so he went to the ACLU to try to change the system! And the lawsuit began.

So, if you don’t campaign well and your protected minority block doesn’t vote, how do you expect to win? In today’s world, you file a lawsuit to seek an unfair advantage over the system where lack of reasonable participation isn’t a liability. You say my time and effort represents racism?

I say I work against seeking unfair advantage, not against race.

Unfortunately, ALL of these facts were ignored and the judge (just a coincidence, I’m sure, but an Obama appointee), took the ACLU arguments 100 percent and ruled that none of the facts matter … IF…and the whole point of ALL of this is the “IF” ...  “IF”  the Hispanic population were large enough and compact enough so that an election demographer could draw a voting district consisting of approximately 13,000 people, and of those 13,000 who were eligible to vote, at least 51 percent were Hispanic.  “IF” that could be done, then NONE of those other facts mattered. It would be an unintentional but automatic violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and a change would have to be made. Intent was removed from the act in 1982. So, the questions were asked -- where did people live, when did they move there and can the lines be legally drawn?

The ACLU’s answer was yes, as long as they don’t have to worry about trying to create “electoral equality” (which they didn’t). Electoral equality creates districts based on equalizing the numbers of voting-age citizens in each district so everybody’s vote essentially counts the same -- a clear measure of fairness that is supposed to be guaranteed by the 14^th Amendment’s “equal protection” clause.

SO then the argument on appeal came down to … what is a fair and constitutional way to draw districts? Do we use total people or total citizen voting age people? Using total people -- which is how things have historically been done -- today creates some districts with far fewer voters, compared to other comparable districts due to the nation's large and growing undocumented immigrant population.  My argument: That isn’t  fair or constitutional.

EXAMPLE: If Luis lived in Yakima's new District 7 and I lived in District 1, and EVERYBODY who could vote did, I would need about 2,501 votes to win a seat on the council while Luis would need about 5,001, TWICE as many. Seem fair to you, Luis?  Twice the work, twice the expense to campaign and his constituents' vote is worth half of mine? That’s not equal protection. That’s not fair and it’s the very kind of inequity that triggered the passing of the Voting Rights Act in the first place in 1965!

So the case in concept goes to the U.S. Supreme Court by way of a Texas case dealing with the same issues. Our appeal is put on hold, awaiting the outcome.

So what does the high court do?  It said it's not really the court's business, it wouldn’t get involved in any state’s districting system discussion -- beyond unanimously saying that  “any system” a state wants to use to draw up its districts is cool by them. So, yes -- total population is as constitutional as any other system -- as is citizen voting age population or any other system ( in advance of it being challenged in court)

Unbelievable! But then the court has made its fair share of unbelievable rulings over the years! (It just so happens Washington state currently uses “total population” – to draw its districts which benefits liberals, so Washington state government is run by liberals. That, too, is fact)

The decision mattered to Yakima because if electoral equality/voter balance had to be considered in drawing district lines, it couldn't have been done. There wouldn’t even have been a Voting Rights Act violation because -- believe it or not -- Yakima’s Hispanic population isn’t  compact enough to be able to draw a 13,000-person district with a minority/majority population if you had to keep the seven districts' voter populations equal.   So the case would have gone away, the $1.8 million ACLU bill would have gone away and the new guaranteed seats the judge created would be changed so that all candidates would have to compete equally …just as they have had an opportunity to do for the past 40 years.

So when I hear about beating bigotry and cheering a "win" in the case I am disappointed.  There is nothing to celebrate except liberals getting over on the system.

I don’t know what it’s like to be Hispanic in Yakima. I don’t know how unfair life is or has been, how unfair treatment is or any of that. There may be lots of anger and resentment  over injustices of all kinds, and in lots of circumstances in the past -- and all of that is wrong. But I do know this: The Yakima City Council election history has NOT been racially unfair, has NOT suffocated votes and has not limited opportunity … the opportunity sat basically unused for 40 years. That’s not racism, it’s the results of conservative vs. liberal, left vs right, not brown vs white. Equal opportunity, not equal outcome.

Case In Point: Carmen Mendez ran in District 3, which is an Anglo majority district … she won, with a better message that appealed to more people. With hard work and a history of involvement in the city, she ran a better campaign and beat an Anglo candidate. The system works if you work the system. But why do that if you can sue and game the system?

The Hispanic population might be 41 percent of the city total, but they only represent about 20 percent of the voting-age population and too many of them don’t register -- and of those who do, too many don’t bother to mail in their ballots. Those FACTS don’t make me a racist, but they do keep Hispanic candidates from having a fair chance at being elected.

From day one I said the charges were unfair because you have to run in order to win, and the true history shows that Hispanics have not. Now the Hispanic community is getting there in Yakima and elsewhere and local Hispanic candidates would have taken their fair and proper place in government sooner than later -- by full and focused participation. But now they don’t have to. A federal judge has handed over the keys to Districts 1 and 2.  Hispanics may cheer the new advantage and the uninformed may think some major wrongs have somehow been righted but that’s simply not true.

So we have an  ACLU/federal judge-created district system in which minority candidates in District 1 and 2 have a fraction of the electoral burden that other candidates have. Last fall 400-plus votes is all it took to be elected to represent a city of 93,000 when 1,500 to 2,000 votes were needed to win seats in Districts 5,6 and 7.

The total number of winning votes in ALL seven districts under the new system added up was 7,790. For perspective, when Sonia Rodriguez lost in 2009, she EARNED 8,338 votes for herself. The new system is somehow better? The new system provides a distinct advantage for Hispanics. The voting record FACTS show the old system did NOT present an unfair obstacle to Hispanics. Are we now better or more united as a community? Maybe that depends on your politics, bias, racism?

Aren’t we always best when everybody has the SAME fair shot …when effort and energy win without having to change the game?

SO Luis, my poor, non-racist face IS disappointed -- not because Yakima now has Latina council members, but because the fairness of the process has been seriously altered. I can’t make up for past injustices, but the council election process was never one of them. So the victory cheers ring a little hollow. I would feel better if everybody had the knowledge of the election facts that you now have and I encourage you to check them for yourself.

Sincerely, Dave Ettl