By a massive margin, Soledad voters reject a five-district electoral map.

About a dozen people gathered on election night, March 5, in support of a different direction for Soledad. They chanted, “No on P / Ansaldo Si,” referring to their dual mission: to vote no on Measure P, thereby repealing a five-district map for future elections that City Council approved in October, and to vote for Fernando Ansaldo in a race for a vacant seat on City Council.

The group was small, but their margins of victory were massive. Early election results showed Ansaldo – a former member of the Soledad Community District Advisory Committee – winning with 65 percent of the vote over competitor Phillip Nickerson, and Measure P defeated with 85 percent of the vote.

“It’s a massive win for the people,” Mayor Anna Velazquez said.

After City Council voted 3-2 to approve the five-district map – with a rotating mayor, rather than a four-district council map and a mayor elected at large – residents quickly organized for a referendum. They created the Soledad Committee for Voting Rights and collected about 1,400 signatures. (As of 12:30am Wednesday, the No on P votes total 680, compared to 117 yes votes.)

Council approved a map drawn by former mayor Fred Ledesma, who was ousted by Velazquez in 2020. She and her political ally on council, Fernando Cabrera, were the two no votes; Velazquez could not seek re-election in 2024, because the approved map put her in Cabrera’s district and his term goes until 2026.

The newly elected Ansaldo shifts the 3-2 political dynamic. He supports the same four-district map as Velazquez and Cabrera. He doesn’t have a political background, but says seeing the same people at council meetings and Velazquez’s 2020 campaign motivated him to be more involved in his community. “We need some better representation, transparent representation, folks that are interested in serving their community,” he says.

Ansaldo, 28, is the youngest person ever elected in Soledad. “I will definitely do my best to represent the millennial generation and also Gen Z. I’m in the middle of both generations,” he says.

The Measure P result is a rejection of the existing district map; City Council will still need to approve a new map.

Monica Andrade, a spokesperson for the committee behind Measure P (and also Cabrera’s wife) says the results were satisfying. “We wanted to make sure that it was clear to the council that this is what we’ve been wanting the whole time,” she says.