The story of Ernestina Diaz drives home the one storyline hovering above everything in San Diego’s newest City Council district.
She’s lived here for 34 years, since her mother and father immigrated to the United States when she was a young girl. She calls City Heights home, and for a long time owned the piñata store on the corner of 42nd Street and University Avenue where she still helps out.
Diaz has a lot of hopes for her corner of the city.
She can’t vote. But, boy, does she want to.
“I’m studying right now to be a citizen,” she says, “to be able to elect better representatives.”
The city of San Diego’s Redistricting Commission created District 9 last year to provide a second Latino-majority district. And indeed, they did. Latinos account for slightly more than 50 percent of the district’s population. Many, like Diaz, can’t vote or aren’t registered to. They end up making up only about one-quarter of the registered voters in the district.
Meanwhile, in whiter neighborhoods like Kensington, Talmadge and College Area, those numbers are reversed. One Kensington resident told me residents there comprise 4 percent of the population but expect to be one-third of the votes in the primary.
That tension is at the center of both candidates’ campaigns.
Current District 7 Councilwoman Marti Emerald is now looking at a district much different than her current one. Her No. 1 priority: voter registration. She says she and her staff will tutor would-be citizens, something that doesn’t typically fall in the everyday job duties of a council member.
Her challenger, businessman and activist Mateo Camarillo, is only a candidate at all because no other Latino jumped in.
“I’m running because underserved people need representation,” he says.
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