That is four people out of 17 primary contributors, not to mention that there are hundreds of other people who occasionally contribute. However, only one of those 4 has commit access, and none of those 4 are project maintainers. Since those 4 are not part of the project leadership (not maintainers), they cannot be considered to "basically represent core", they can't decide the direction that Core goes in and they can't force any changes to Core that other contributors are against.