Analysis : Ethnic Remapping of L.A. Is a Bitter Legal Pill for Many

The inevitable numbers of ethnic population growth were behind Wednesday’s Los Angeles reapportionment vote, producing acrimony between emergent Latinos and settled suburbanites who fear loss of power in City Hall.

The implications of City Council approval of a redistricting plan extend far beyond the boundaries of the city.

The emotions touched off by the plan sent to Mayor Tom Bradley may be expressed throughout the Southland in the years ahead as births and new immigrants greatly increase the size of the Latino population and, to a lesser extent, the number of Asians.

The numbers were revealed in computer detail last week by the Southern California Assn. of Governments, the area’s major regional planning group. The populations of Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, Riverside, San Bernardino and Imperial counties will rise from just under 13 million to more than 18 million by 2010, the SCAG forecast said. Latinos, the fastest-growing ethnic group, are expected to constitute almost 40% of that population.

That sort of projection is especially true for Los Angeles, the multi-ethnic receiving point for much of the new immigration, and where large numbers of the Latino births will occur.

Councilman Hal Bernson pointed out in the debate that the Voting Rights Act requires such population shifts to be reflected in council district lines--and that the city government had to obey the law.

But that was a hard-to-understand legality for the busloads of suburbanites, mostly from the east San Fernando Valley communities of Sunland and Tujunga, who feared that a new-style council would zone their semi-rural area into an overdeveloped duplicate of urban Los Angeles, and to other valley residents from such areas as Studio City, afraid that uncaring council members would open their neighborhoods to even more traffic and Ventura Boulevard high-rises.

To them, as their many speeches indicated, all the council was doing was playing politics to save the seats of two politicians from the urban side of the Santa Monica Mountains--Hollywood’s Michael Woo and mid-Wilshire’s John Ferraro. The East Valley district of the late Howard Finn was divided up to assure separate districts for Woo and Ferraro and to make possible a valley district designed for the eventual election of a valley Latino. The council, in response to a federal suit, has also created an inner-city district tailored for a Latino. The council now has one Latino member, Richard Alatorre, an architect of the council’s redistricting plans.

Finn’s widow, Anne, expressed a common view that splitting up Finn’s old area would weaken the influence she believes had grown because of the late councilman’s ability to unite the suburban areas, traditionally not politically oriented, into effective political action.

“May I, in memory of Howard Finn, ask you to stand in his memory and in opposition to this vengeful plan to break up his district?” she said. The audience stood.

“I fully support the Hispanic community, but not at the expense of the 1st District,” said Jean Pollock of Lakeview Terrace, an East Valley suburban community.

In addition to the question of City Hall representation, there was an undertone of racial conflict in the debate--conflict that mirrored many public opinion polls that have shown discord between Anglos, Latinos, Asians and blacks in this era of population shift.

Pollock, attacking Woo and Ferraro, objected to “two gentlemen using special interests to establish a power base.” The term “special interests” has been a loaded one to minority group leaders, who recall how former Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty scornfully criticized black support for Bradley, who is black, as “special interest” and used that phrase in attacking Bradley in predominantly white valley areas during their mayoral campaigns in 1969 and 1973.

East Valley resident Thomas Montgomery, first vice president of the San Fernando Valley branch of the NAACP and a foe of the Woo-Ferraro plan, spoke critically of the impact of Mexican immigrants. “Go down Lankershim Boulevard in the valley where they are lined up,” said Montgomery, warning they were taking jobs away from blacks and whites.

Initial Hostility

Such intensity indicates that the reapportionment power shift will not be easy. The urban council members whose districts will stretch across the Santa Monica Mountains to the valley suburbs--Woo, Ferraro and Zev Yaroslavsky--will encounter initial hostility as they try to win the support of new constituents and deal with new power equations.

For the results of the reapportionment will affect many details of life of the unhappy valley residents.

Will Councilman Joel Wachs--who inherits Sunland-Tujunga, new communities for him--be able to defend its rural aspects with the vigor that Finn exhibited? Will the others, whose base has been elsewhere, put the valley high on their agenda? Down the road, how will a council with several minority representatives who back growth, and its attendant construction jobs, deal with neighborhood opposition to development?

Those are the hard questions the council will face, and the questions that confront the mayor as he decides whether to approve the plan or to respond to valley activists by vetoing it.