Rosemont Moving Congressional Districts in 2012

Congresswoman Doris Matsui (D-Sacramento) will no longer represent Rosemont as . Rosemont will now be in District 7, an area including parts of unincorporated areas of Sacramento County, Elk Grove and Folsom.

“Every 10 years the new Census numbers come out and districts need to be equalized for population,” said Wesley Hussey, a California State University, Sacramento, government professor who was a finalist on the California Citizens Redistricting Commission. “For congressional districts I’ve been pretty impressed with the map collectively.”

Matsui said she will run in the new District 6, which will cover the cities of Sacramento and West Sacramento.

“It has been my pleasure to represent the Rosemont area since 2005, and I look forward to continuing to represent its residents in Congress through 2012,” Matsui said in an email. “Although the new congressional district maps created by the independent Citizens Redistricting Commission no longer [have] Rosemont in the district I will seek reelection in, I am committed to continuing to serve the needs of the Sacramento region as a whole.”

Hussey called the future District 7 a very complicated district because it has the suburban character of east Sacramento County where Democrats and Republicans are neck and neck.

“It’s a district that barely voted for Obama and Brown for governor, and has the same number of Republicans and Democrats,” Hussey said.

Election likely to be Lungren-Bera rematch in new district

Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Gold River) said he will run in District 7 in the next congressional election, most likely against Elk Grove resident Dr. Ami Bera, who was unsuccessful in his run against Lungren for District 3 in 2010.

“I represent 80 percent of that district now,” Lungren said. “So I feel very good about it because these are the people I represented for the last eight years, and these are their issues I worked on.”

Bera said he will run against Lungren again because Lungren “has been absent” to the people in his district.

“[Lungren] has done nothing to rebuild our regional economy,” Bera said. “While he has been in Washington, D.C., playing politics, life has gotten rough for people who live here.”

Although no other incumbent representatives have declared plans to run in the district, the race will be more competitive for Lungren this time around, Hussey said, and the election could go either way very easily.

Lungren said he views the upcoming election as an opportunity to present his credentials to the district, and that he hopes Bera will deal with the issues instead of personal attacks.

“I haven’t had the privilege of representing Rosemont before, but I think the people of Rosemont will think we do as good a job as any congressional office running in the district,” Lungren said. “This is well within Sacramento County, so I don’t think we’ll have any difficulty whatsoever dealing with issues of particular concern to Rosemont.”

Lungren doesn’t see an issue of a “learning curve” being caused by changing districts because of the similarities in population base and economy to his existing district, as opposed to Amador and Alpine counties, which are very different in those aspects.

“I still got 14 or 15 months as the congressman from the Third Congressional District and hope people would pay attention to what the job was they elected me to do, other than what the job is going to be.”

Both Lungren and Bera said their main focus for the future District 7 are unemployment and rebuilding the economy. Lungren said these issues would be reflected primarily on how he would vote on issues and programs.

“First and foremost, the people in the district and Sacramento County have been extremely hard hit … and we’ve got to get people working again,” Bera said.

Bera’s other goals are strengthening the public education system and universal healthcare.

Hussey said the redistricting that will now make Rosemont a part of this race will change things dramatically next year.

“We’ll see in the 2012 elections a very different political landscaping because of redistricting at the state and congressional level,” Hussey said.