New voting districts reshape California’s statehouse and congressional landscape.

How Monterey County is represented in Sacramento and Washington in the 2020s is poised to look much different than the 2010s, after the state commission tasked with redrawing district boundaries unanimously approved stark changes.

In Congress, Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Carmel Valley, is now mostly a coastal candidate after getting drawn out of the Salinas Valley and San Benito County, areas which now adopt Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, as their incumbent in Congress. Panetta, Lofgren and the rest of the U.S. House of Representatives are up for reelection in 2022.

In the State Senate, Sen. John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, sees his coastal constituency expand east to include the Salinas Valley and all of Monterey County’s agriculture industry and San Benito County. Sen. Anna Caballero, D-Salinas, was cut off from the Central Valley and swallowed into Laird’s district, which includes the Monterey Peninsula and Big Sur coast.

Caballero would have been up for reelection in 2022. The Salinas Valley and San Benito County, now in Laird’s District 17, will have to wait until 2024 to cast a vote in a senate race. By then, it will have been six years since voters there participated in electing a state senator, a not uncommon side effect for some in the redistricting process.

The district stays on Laird’s election cycle as opposed to Caballero’s because it maintained its odd number – District 17. If the redistricting commission applied an even number to the district, the election would have been in 2022.

Laird says he does not automatically adopt the Salinas Valley as his constituency between now and 2024. During his term, 2020-24, he was elected to represent the district that elected him. He says the Salinas Valley and San Benito County will not have a representative after Caballero’s term ends in 2022 and the Senate will conduct a process to appoint sitting senators to represent unrepresented regions in the interim.

In order for Caballero to try to remain in the State Senate after 2022, she will have to move to a district with an open seat. Her team says she has had a residence in Merced since 2019, which falls within her existing district that she was drawn out of.

“Sen. Caballero will review her options and assess how she can continue to advance her leadership on behalf of the hardworking families and communities she has represented, and who need elected officials they can count on,” says campaign adviser Ken Smith.

In the state Assembly, Mark Stone, D-Scotts Valley, is out as the Monterey Peninsula’s representative after he was almost entirely drawn out of the Monterey Bay district, an area he has represented since 2012. The Peninsula was placed in a new district that stretches from Capitola down through San Luis Obispo County. The district adopts Assemblymember Jordan Cunningham, R-Templeton, who has already drawn two challengers from the left: Seaside City Councilmember Jon Wizard and Morro Bay City Councilmember Dawn Addis.

The maps will be certified by the California Secretary State on Dec. 27.