Bradley Quickly Vetoes City Council’s Redistricting Plan

Setting up a dramatic confrontation with the Los Angeles City Council, Mayor Tom Bradley on Tuesday vetoed the council’s new redistricting plan just hours after it was adopted. He charged that it unfairly discriminated against Asian voters and the first Asian elected to the council in the city’s history.

The plan, drafted by Councilman Richard Alatorre, would have made Michael Woo’s 13th District predominantly Latino to fulfill a U.S. Justice Department demand that the city create a second Latino district to complement Alatorre’s own 14th District.

The proposal won City Council approval Tuesday afternoon after a 1 1/2-hour secret session and several hours of public debate, with the support of nine of the 15 council members.

Bradley vetoed the measure two hours later.

“My sense of justice and fairness simply will not permit me to redress an inequity to one ethnic protected class (Latinos) at the expense of another ethnic protected class (Asians), which only a year ago achieved representation for the first time in 205 years,” Bradley said.

Potential Racial Conflict

“Imagine the reaction if roles were reversed and the first black or Hispanic were so targeted for this treatment.”

Sources close to Bradley said the mayor was troubled by the Alatorre plan because of the potential for racial conflict between Asians and Latinos. He was also under political pressure from Asians, who contributed more than $200,000 to his 1985 mayoral campaign and whose support is important to his current gubernatorial race.

Bradley’s veto sent council members scurrying to come up with enough votes to override his veto or, barring that, to hastily fashion a compromise plan. The measure could come before the council as early as today.

The 9-6 council vote placed the future of the hard-fought Alatorre redistricting plan on shaky ground because 10 council members would have to vote to override the mayor, meaning that Alatorre would have to win the favor of one of the six council members who opposed his plan Tuesday.

Opposition by five of the six appeared somewhat solid, since they voted against the plan both times it came before the council. However, when the council took a preliminary vote last week, Councilman Joel Wachs voted for the Alatorre plan, but on Tuesday voted against it. He refused comment on his Tuesday vote.

Possible Contest

Some sources said privately that Wachs figured that since Alatorre’s plan would win without him, he could vote against it and thus avoid offending Woo. There has been speculation that Woo might decide to run against Wachs in the newly drawn 2nd District, which, under Alatorre’s plan, includes much of Woo’s Hollywood political base.

Others voting against the Alatorre plan were council members Marvin Braude, Joy Picus, Zev Yaroslavsky, Council President Pat Russell and Woo. Supporting it were Alatorre, Ernani Bernardi, Hal Bernson, Dave Cunningham, Robert Farrell, John Ferraro, Howard Finn, Joan Milke Flores and Gilbert Lindsay.

Alatorre, in comments made before the veto, said he was confident that council members’ instincts for political survival would lead to an override of the mayor.

The council has until July 31 to draw a redistricting plan that will satisfy the U.S. Justice Department and several minority groups, all plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the city alleging that its 1982 redistricting plan discriminated against Latinos.

If the mayor’s veto is successful and no plan can be drawn in the remaining days before the deadline, the boundary lines could be fashioned by the court or the Justice Department, options that council members fear because their incumbencies could be threatened. Alatorre himself would probably be safe, since his district is already heavily Latino.

“Look,” Alatorre said. “From my particular vantage point, if the court ends up doing redistricting, Richard Alatorre isn’t materially impacted. . . . But I believe the other members of the City Council are going to be impacted by it.”

The Bradley veto gave new life to efforts by Woo and Council President Pat Russell to float an alternate plan that would place Woo in a district with Ferraro--leading to a race between the two incumbents--and still create a new district with a Latino majority.

“The mayor has pointed a direction to the council to provide opportunity to increase Hispanic representation without penalizing another minority group,” Woo said. “I was very pleased to see the mayor come out so quickly with his decision because the timing gives the council enough time to come up with an alternate plan and still satisfy the July 31 deadline.”

The redistricting process, after months of public hearings, came to a head three weeks ago when Alatorre released his plan, which placed Woo in a 65% Latino district and generally protected the other members of the council. He won the backing of several Latino groups but drew the rage of Woo and Asian groups, who contended that it unfairly discriminated against them.

Woo drafted his own alternate plan, which would have kept him in his Hollywood base and shifted fellow Councilman John Ferraro into a Latino-dominated district. When that plan failed to win council approval, Woo threw his support behind a third alternate plan by Russell, the council president.

Last-Minute Maneuvering

Russell’s and Woo’s plans were defeated when the council took preliminary votes last week, but the Russell plan stayed alive until Tuesday.

In last-minute maneuvering, the council president tried to open a broad discussion of the merits of the two plans but was stymied by a series of parliamentary votes that left her unsuccessfully seeking to amend Alatorre’s plan.

Russell, adopting a theme Woo had championed in his three-week battle to derail the Alatorre plan, charged that the Alatorre draft would spark racial antagonism between Latino and Asian voters within the city.

Ferraro Critical of Woo

Ferraro, however, charged that racial strife would result not from the Alatorre plan but from Woo’s fight against it.

“Somebody’s talking about the racial division in this community,” Ferraro said, alluding to Woo. “Well, it’s been stirred on by one individual who’s been crying for weeks now that there’s going to be the greatest race war in the area. I don’t think that’s true.”

Councilman Hal Bernson noted that Woo won election to the council in 1985 in a district with predominantly Anglo and Latino voters, not Asians.

“Mr. Woo, certainly if you are reelected (in the new, heavily Latino district), it will be by the will of the population that elected you. . . . To the credit of the district that elected you in the last election, they did not look at racial backgrounds.”