Did Capitola’s Alexander Pedersen violate politician residency laws? It’s far from clear, experts say

As Capitola’s city council prepares to vote Thursday on how to fill Alexander Pedersen’s vacant seat, concerns around the former councilmember’s living situation are raising new questions about what the official residency rules are for local elected officials.

Pedersen’s abrupt resignation from the Capitola City Council earlier this month followed a flurry of allegations that he had violated state laws by continuing to serve on the council after buying a house in Santa Cruz and living at a rental property in Capitola. Several citizens urged the Santa Cruz County District Attorney’s Office and Capitola City Council to investigate him.

But legal experts and other observers say state law on residency rules for elected officials is confusing at best and frustratingly vague at worst. 

“It’s a very uncomfortable position to be in a spot where people are making allegations against a councilmember who serves as my boss,” said Capitola City Manager Jamie Goldstein. “When you look at the law, it’s difficult to understand exactly what’s required.”

State laws say that a person is eligible for a city council seat only if they are a resident of the district they are serving in. However, California’s election code defines someone’s residence as their “domicile” — a permanent home they plan to live in indefinitely. That’s different from a residence, which the state broadly defines as a “place in which the person’s habitation is fixed for some period of time, but wherein he or she does not have the intention of remaining.” Under state law, voters — and by extension elected officials — can have more than one residence, but only one legal domicile for political purposes.

In Pedersen’s case, he was living in a rental property in Capitola from the time he was first elected to the city council in 2022 until earlier this year. Then, in February, he and his wife purchased a home in Santa Cruz. Some Capitola citizens took issue with this, saying that he no longer met residency requirements set by the state, and thus should be investigated and censured.

Katrina Rogers, a chief inspector with the Santa Cruz County District Attorney’s Office, told Lookout that anyone holding elected office must immediately vacate their seat if they move outside of the jurisdiction where they are serving, but declined to comment on whether Pedersen broke the rules in his case. 

Rogers told Lookout that the DA’s office did not open an investigation, instead referring concerned citizens to the California attorney general’s office to start a process called quo warranto, which is used to challenge the right of a person to hold public office. A spokesperson for Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office confirmed that the office never received an application for a quo warranto investigation.

Similarly, Goldstein said he never got direction from the city council to investigate Pedersen.

Pedersen told Lookout that while he did move rentals in Capitola to downsize after his wife moved into their purchased home, he intended to live in the rental until he could serve out his term on council, which would have ended in 2026, and then move to Santa Cruz. He added that he was also still registered to vote in Capitola, since he had not yet moved to Santa Cruz.

So does that mean that the Capitola rental where he lived was his domicile? Legal experts disagree.

“I don’t care if he has five homes, the one he sets roots at is his domicile,” said Rex Halverson, a Sacramento-based tax attorney who often deals with tax issues involving someone’s legal domicile.

He added that it’s fairly common for politicians to own a home or property outside of the area that they serve – U.S. senators, for example. Many of them will rent places in Washington, D.C., where they are serving. Halverson argues that simply renting a property doesn’t imply domicile, as it is not the property where one intends to permanently stay. 

Others think Pedersen’s home purchase didn’t affect his eligibility to continue serving on the Capitola council. Justin Levitt is an election law expert at Loyola Marymount University’s law school in Los Angeles who most recently served as the Biden administration’s senior policy advisor for democracy and voting rights. He told Lookout via email that Pedersen’s situation didn’t necessarily pose a legal issue.

“Simply buying a home outside of city limits doesn’t create a legal problem (though it might well create a political one) if the councilmember in question didn’t intend to move there until after his term,” Levitt wrote. “If the rental property in Capitola was in his district, and he moved there originally with the intent to remain indefinitely, the residence was probably just fine under California law.”

Pedersen and his wife designated their purchased home as their primary residence for their mortgage, and had tax statements mailed to their home. Levitt said he still believes that Pedersen was likely safe under the state’s election law, so long as he was still living in the rental unit in his district.

“Nobody’s doubting that the new house is his wife’s primary residence right now, and that it’ll be his primary residence someday,” he wrote. “If it’s their mortgage, that doesn’t really speak to where his domicile properly is, in a situation like this.”

Goldstein, Capitola’s city manager, said that the city doesn’t have its own requirements for councilmembers to disclose where they own property, but the California Fair Political Practices Commission requires elected officials to disclose any property they own within 2 miles of city limits. Pedersen’s Santa Cruz house sits just about 3 miles outside of Capitola city limits. 

Goldstein added that city-specific residency rules for elected officials would be “very useful” but the city likely isn’t allowed to draft its own.

“State law governs, it’s not city rules that govern how we define residency,” he said. “Usually, the state law preempts local law, so I don’t know that that’s possible.”

Pedersen said that, at the end of the day, going through a legal fight over this issue was more than he wanted to do, given the cost and stress associated with it. But he said discussions with various legal groups makes him believe he would have won and that his detractors are wrong about their residency concerns: “I’m very confident that it would not have worked out in their favor.”

However, now that Pedersen has resigned, and the state attorney general’s office never received a quo warranto application into the matter, the legal question of Pedersen’s residency will likely never be formally answered.

“Courts have spent a lot of time analyzing what constitutes a residence and what constitutes a domicile,” Capitola City Attorney Samantha Zutler told Lookout. “I don’t know what the court would do.”

— Christopher Neely contributed to this report.

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.