Change to Palm Springs mayor elections would hurt progress

In 2018, Palm Springs changed its election system because it had to.

At the time, Latinos made up roughly a quarter of the city’s population — yet every single member of the City Council was white. Not one Latino held a seat. Just as striking, for more than 80 years, no woman had ever been elected mayor of Palm Springs.

That absence of representation was not incidental. It was structural.

District elections were adopted to correct that imbalance — to ensure that communities across the city had a fair opportunity to elect leaders who reflected them.

And they worked.

Today, Palm Springs has a City Council that more closely reflects the community it serves. Three of the five council seats are now held by Latino representatives. But just as importantly, women — long excluded from the city’s highest office — have finally broken through.

In December 2020, Christy Holstege made history as the first-ever female mayor in Palm Springs’ 82-year history after rotating into the position. That milestone did not come through a citywide election — it came because the system changed.

Two years later, Grace Garner became the first Latina Mayor of Palm Springs. Today, Naomi Soto serves as Mayor after rotating into the role in December 2024.

These milestones are not coincidences. They are the direct result of district elections and a rotation system that opened the door to leadership that had been shut out for decades.
Now, the City is considering a change: keeping the five council districts in place, but adding a directly elected, citywide mayor.

That distinction matters — but so does the history.

Palm Springs has never elected a woman as mayor through a citywide election. Not once. It has also never elected a Latino or Hispanic mayor in a citywide race. The only reason the city has had female and Latina mayors at all is because of the rotation system created under district elections.

Before 2018, citywide elections consistently produced outcomes that failed to reflect the city’s diversity — not just racially, but in terms of gender. Analyses of past elections revealed patterns of racially polarized voting, while the complete absence of women in the mayor’s office for more than eight decades underscored how limited access to power truly was.

District elections disrupted those patterns.
A directly elected mayor risks restoring them.
Citywide races tend to favor candidates with greater financial resources, broader name recognition, and access to long-established political networks — the very dynamics that historically excluded both women and candidates of color from the city’s highest office.

Palm Springs prides itself on being progressive and inclusive. But inclusion is not symbolic — it is structural. It is about whether the system produces leadership that reflects the full diversity of the community.

When reforms finally create pathways for representation, the question becomes whether we protect them — or weaken them.

Keeping district elections while adding a citywide mayor may sound like balance. But history tells us that when Palm Springs relied on citywide voting for its highest office, both women and Latino residents were effectively locked out.

That is not coincidence. That is a pattern.
Palm Springs now stands at a crossroads. The city can continue building on the progress made since 2018 — progress that finally opened the door for women and Latinas to lead — or it can reintroduce a system that has historically concentrated power and limited who could realistically win it.

The structure of our elections matters. It determines not just who runs, but who wins.
If Palm Springs is serious about equity, it must be just as serious about protecting the systems that made equity possible.

Progress should not be diluted.