Longer Residency Rule Urged for Candidates

When Alex Padilla ran for the Los Angeles City Council seat from the community where he grew up, three of his five opponents had moved into the district just before the election.

They included Raul Godinez, who quit as mayor of San Fernando to move into Los Angeles and run for the 7th District seat in the northeast San Fernando Valley.

Councilman Nick Pacheco, who also won election this year in an East Los Angeles race that featured several candidates who had moved into the 14th District to run, is still upset.

One candidate, labor activist Victor Griego, moved into his brother’s house just before the filing deadline and ran with strong backing from the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

Padilla and Pacheco have joined forces to push for longer periods of residency for candidates for city office.

“It hopefully will eliminate political opportunism,” Pacheco said.

Padilla said that such “carpetbagging” compromises “the true spirit of democracy and representation.”

City law allows council candidates to run for office as long as they have lived in the district for 30 days before filing declarations of intent to seek the office.

Padilla and Pacheco are proposing to direct the city attorney to report on the maximum residency requirements that may be legally imposed on candidates. But opinion about increasing the residency requirement is far from unanimous.

Others say that in this era of term limits, the city should do everything it can to encourage participation in the political process, and longer residency requirements could block viable candidates from running.

“Things that are restrictive are not good for democracy,” said Xandra Kayden, president of the League of Women Voters’ Los Angeles branch. “The more requirements you put on, the more difficult it is to participate in the system.”

The league has not taken a position on the issue, but Kayden thinks voters can decide for themselves whether to support someone who moves into a district to run.

In 1975, the California Supreme Court invalidated a City Charter provision requiring candidates to reside for at least two years in the jurisdiction in which they run for office.

At the time, there were indications that a 30-day residency requirement would be upheld by the courts, so the City Council put it in a charter amendment, which received voter approval.

Assistant City Atty. Tony Alperin said he would have to review the issue to determine whether the city can now legally increase the residency requirement.

“The reason we changed it from two years to 30 days was based on a court decision,” Alperin said. “But we’ll take a look at it again.”

The current charter provision requires a candidate to be a registered voter in the jurisdiction in which he or she is running for at least 30 days from the first day that candidates can file declarations of intent to run. The first date of the filing period is 90 days before the election.

Alperin said the court decision was based on concerns that the two-year residency requirement unreasonably infringed on the ability of people to move freely throughout the state without giving up political rights.

“It has to do with the travel right, the right to move from one place to another and whether placing a residency requirement of two years is reasonable,” Alperin said.

Padilla, noting that it has been nearly a quarter of a century since the court ruling invalidated Los Angeles’ charter provision, said he wants to know whether subsequent court rulings or legislation might allow for a longer residency requirement.

“It hasn’t been revisited since then. Maybe the political time is a little different now,” Padilla said. Asked how long he would like the requirement to be, he said “as long as is legally possible.”

Padilla was forced into a runoff with Corinne Sanchez. Although she moved into the 7th District from less than a mile away and headed a social service agency that had long been active in the district, Padilla easily won the runoff with a campaign claiming that he was the only “home-grown” candidate.

Pacheco used the same tactic in his runoff with Griego, who moved into the 14th District from South Pasadena, a city that had political tensions with the El Sereno section of Los Angeles. Pacheco believes many El Sereno voters resented Griego because he had moved in from South Pasadena, and Pacheco’s campaign highlighted the issue.

“We hammered him on it,” Pacheco said.

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Griego said he was born and raised in Boyle Heights and had only lived in South Pasadena for a few years before moving back into the district to run.

He thinks the proposal to increase the residency requirement is undemocratic.

“It’s unreasonable, especially the way people are prone today to move because of jobs and school,” said Griego, who has since moved back to South Pasadena. “It would discourage people from running for office.”

Godinez also opposes any change. He was born in San Fernando but grew up in what is now the 7th Council District. He moved back into his parents’ house in the district just before the election, but says he has a long history there.

“I don’t think [the proposed change] is necessary,” Godinez said. “It limits your choices. If someone is deemed not to have any roots in a district, the voters will be able to weed those candidates out.”

Padilla said his proposal would make it more likely that candidates have in mind the interests of their district, and not just the interest of their political careers.

“At the center of the current City Charter debate and secession movements are our residents’ desires to make local government responsive to their needs and to foster a sense of local identity and community,” Padilla said.

For Padilla, 26, the issue is one of a community being represented by one of its own.

“The reason I got involved in politics to begin with is I believed in local leadership, local representation, and to me that is consistent with local control,” Padilla said.