District’s Boundary Changes Reflect Shifts in Population

SACRAMENTO — The history of the Westside’s 44th Assembly District over the last 80 years provides a road map of California’s shifting population patterns.

As lawmakers have redrawn the boundaries of California’s legislative districts every decade, the district has hopscotched down the state from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

In 1911, the 44th District was represented by a Bay Area Republican. A decade later, at the outset of the Roaring ‘20s, the district had shifted south to San Jose.

In 1931, when lawmakers remapped political boundaries in the middle of the Depression, the 44th was anchored in the state’s agricultural heartland in Fresno County. But in 1941, on the eve of World War II, its boundaries were moved into fast-growing Los Angeles County.

It has remained within the county’s boundaries ever since. At one time, the 44th stretched south to include suburban Long Beach. But since 1982, it has been an exclusively Westside district, encompassing all or parts of Malibu, Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica, Venice, Mar Vista, Palms, Century City, Cheviot Hills, Beverlywood and Rancho Park.