National City will explore the pros and cons of becoming a charter city, and if it should pursue doing so.
In a 3-2 vote last week, council members directed the City Attorney’s Office to look into the topic and provide them with a detailed report as early as next month.
The move comes after a May legal opinion concluded that a general-law city like itself does not have the authority to hold primary elections, but that a charter city could. Chula Vista, San Diego and Sacramento are among the charter governments that provide for primaries.
“If the City wishes to hold primary elections, it may seek legislation or become a charter city if voters approve a charter,” Aleks Giragosian wrote in the opinion. He is an attorney with Colantuono, Highsmith and Whatley, a municipal law firm the city hired for $4,000 to investigate the matter.
Giragosian said the city could pursue legislative change to give general-law cities authority to adopt other types of election systems besides a plurality system, where candidates who receive the most votes are elected even if they receive less than 50 percent. Since 2006, seven bills attempting to do so have failed to pass.
The other option, he said, is to become a charter city, which would give National City greater flexibility to establish its own election dates, rules and procedures. In doing so, the city could select one of several systems including, primary, two-round runoff or rank-choice voting.
Councilmember Jose Rodriguez successfully requested in April to hire outside counsel and explore primary voting systems. He has argued that primaries “allow for majority rule…which is something that hasn’t occurred in electoral elections.”
With plurality voting, Rodriguez won in November 2020 a seat on the City Council for the first time with 27 percent of the vote. But during the 2022 mayoral race, he lost against current Mayor Ron Morrison, who earned 37 percent. Rodriguez tallied 36 percent and former Mayor Alejandra Sotelo-Solis got 27 percent. If there were primaries, Rodriguez would have had a stronger chance of winning as the Democratic option against Morrison, an independent.
Some called Rodriguez’s efforts a political stunt to grab the mayoral seat, though he rejected those assertions.
“This proposal is about nothing other than your belief that this is going to help you,” said resident Joan Rincon.
Vice Mayor Luz Molina said primary elections will not result in increased voter participation and only elongate campaigning for well-funded and more experienced residents. She said it would be worth looking into rank-choice voting because she believes it “encourages people to, you know, run an honest, positive campaign.”
Rank-choice voting, also known as instant runoff, is a method that allows voters to select any number of candidates from most to least favored. If their first choice fails to earn a majority, their vote will count toward their second choice, and so on until a winner is declared.
She ultimately voted against exploring adopting a charter. Morrison also voted in opposition. He said Morrison there are reasons why less than 5 percent of cities in California are charter governments.
It “opens up a whole gamut of things,” including having more elections, “which are expensive to a city,” he said.
Randi Castle, a National City resident and member of the Planning Commission, said that if the City Council decides to pursue becoming a charter government, it must ensure that the public is well-informed because it could cost residents “a lot of money” and impact how they vote.
A charter adoption requires proper notice and public hearing, and ultimately approval by a majority of registered voters in an election.
Acknowledging that process, Rodriguez said, “We’re not making the final decision…The voters are the ones that decide.”
He said primary elections would be “the latest iteration of the city being more transparent,” following National City’s switch from at-large elections to a by-district system and a push in 2018 to preserve term limits for the mayor.
The 2018 initiative prevented Morrison from running for mayor again after having served the post from 2006 to 2018.
