Does the 'lettuce curtain' affect county growth? Analysis of Rancho San Juan vote paints an unexpected picture
By BRIAN BRENNAN
Guest commentary

Monterey County Herald
Posted on April 22, 2007

Lurking beneath the substantive debate over Monterey County's upcoming ballot measures is the implication that land use is a "lettuce curtain" issue — that is, that it pits the interests of a working-class Salinas Valley against those of a golfing-class Monterey Peninsula.

The idea that a great social and economic barrier stretches from Monterey-Salinas Highway to Blanco Road is intuitively plausible. I suspect that one could find more than a little demographic and economic  evidence to back up the intuition. Yet an analysis of Monterey County's most recent land-use ballot measure suggests the county's voting patterns don't necessarily break down along the same lines.

In November 2005, Monterey County voters rejected the construction of 4,000 homes with accompanying shops, schools and other amenities at Rancho San Juan (RSJ), between Prunedale and Salinas. The vote wasn't close — three-quarters of voters were opposed — but some suspected the raw numbers masked a lettuce curtain vote, in which well-heeled and well-housed Peninsula residents used dominating voter turnout to impose an anti-growth agenda, drowning out a Salinas Valley clamoring for new housing.

In an effort to test this proposition, I analyzed the RSJ vote by breaking the county into six voting regions: South County, greater Salinas, North County, Seaside/Marina, Monterey/Pacific Grove and Carmel/Pebble Beach/Big Sur. While those divisions are somewhat arbitrary, they seemed appropriate for identifying systematic differences between Peninsula and Valley voters. Some findings conform to the lettuce curtain predictions: the Carmel/Pebble Beach/Big Sur and Monterey/Pacific Grove regions opposed Rancho San Juan at higher rates than the 75 percent countywide average (77 percent and 79 percent, respectively) and had relatively high turnout (66 percent and 56 percent, compared with a county average of 52 percent). South County voters expressed the most support for the development, but only 48 percent of registered voters  in that region weighed in on the measure. Thus far, the lettuce curtain hypothesis holds up well.

Yet overall, the findings paint an unexpected picture. Perhaps most notably, the opposition to Rancho San Juan was remarkably uniform across the county. The relatively high support for RSJ among South County voters was indeed only relative: Fully 70 percent of that region's voters still rejected the development.

In fact, opposition to RSJ ran higher than 70 percent across all six county regions. Thus, voter preferences in South County and Salinas (where 74 percent opposed RSJ) were not dramatically different from the 79
percent opposition recorded in Monterey and Pacific Grove, where opposition to Rancho San Juan ran highest.

If the votes of those closest to the proposed development deserve more weight, as some argue, those in the backyard of Rancho San Juan made a clear statement. In North County, where the development was to be built, nearly 79 percent of voters opposed Rancho San Juan — a level of opposition well above the 75 percent county average.

(Editor's note: In the November 2005 vote, county residents rejected a plan that called for up to 4,000 homes in the 2,500-acre Rancho San Juan area north of Salinas. In June's all-mail ballot focusing on competing general plans, county voters also will weigh in on the 1,147-home Butterfly Village project within Rancho San Juan.)

Despite what appears to be broad agreement on Rancho San Juan, concern remains that on future measures, higher voter turnout on the Peninsula could overwhelm inland voters. The RSJ vote of 2005 indicates there is some basis for this concern. The Carmel/Pebble Beach/Big Sur region recorded the county's highest turnout (66 percent), while Salinas and South County voted at rates that were below the 52 percent county average (50 percent and 48 percent, respectively).

Yet in the RSJ vote, the greatest cleavage in voter turnout rates was not between the Monterey Peninsula and the Salinas Valley, but within the Peninsula itself. The robust voter turnout in the Carmel/Pebble
Beach/Big Sur region dropped precipitously to the north up Highway 1: to 56 percent in Monterey/Pacific Grove and to a county low of 45 percent in the Seaside/Marina region.

Because of the uniformity of opposition to RSJ in 2005, the results would not have changed appreciably even had turnout been the same across the county's regions. Nonetheless, this voter turnout pattern suggests that, even more than a lettuce curtain, a "cypress curtain" hanging somewhere between Del Monte Forest and Embassy Suites Hotel Monterey Bay could have real consequences for the outcome of future Monterey County ballot measures.

There is much that this analysis does not tell us about public attitudes toward land use in the county, and no past vote will tell us what will happen on Election Day in June. However, for now, the evidence suggests that claims of a fundamental disconnect between the Salinas Valley and the Monterey Peninsula over land-use issues should be viewed with some skepticism. That is good news for those concerned with social divides in our community. There are plenty of real lettuce curtain issues with which to contend. We needn't invent more.

Brian Brennan is a contributing writer for Oxford Analytica and a doctoral student in political science at St. Antony's College, Oxford. He lives in Prunedale.

Results from Monterey County Measure C vote on Rancho
San Juan — November 2005 Region Registered % of total
Ballots % of Turnout Votes Percent Votes Percent
voters registered cast* ballots for for against
against in county cast Carmel/P.B./Big Sur 17,924
11.3% 11,809 14.2% 65.9% 2,456 22.9% 8,274 77.1%
Monterey/P.G. 28,493 18.0% 15,828 19.1% 55.6% 2,969
20.6% 11,446 79.4% North County 16,679 10.5% 9,071
10.9% 54.4% 1,858 21.4% 6,814 78.6% Salinas 56,447
35.6% 28,311 34.1% 50.2% 7,155 26.2% 20,112 73.8%
Seaside/Marina 22,911 14.4% 10,252 12.4% 44.8% 2,400
25.1% 7,147 74.9% South County 16,165 10.2% 7,686 9.3%
47.6% 2,180 29.9% 5,112 70.1% TOTALS 158,618 100.0%
82,957 100.0% 52.3% 19,018 24.4% 58,905 75.6%

*Votes for and against do not equal total ballots cast because of mismarked ballots and other factors.

Source: Monterey County Elections Department Web site