Bid to Alter Council : Santa Monica Group Pushes for Districts

With City Council elections over for this year, a group of community activists is stepping up its efforts to have Santa Monica divided into voting districts.

District council elections, the group contends, would give minorities a better shot at winning an office, increase representation of neighborhoods and bring down the costs of campaigning.

But others say that drawing district lines doesn’t make sense in a city as small as Santa Monica. The city would become fractionalized, they argue. And in some cases, campaign costs have actually gone up instead of down when cities were divided into districts.

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In Santa Monica--an 8-square-mile city of 90,000 people--government leaders are chosen in at-large elections. Seven City Council members are elected to serve 4-year terms, and members of the council designate one of their own as mayor every two years.

The push for districts is only the latest in a series of reform measures that have been urged in Santa Monica for years, as voters watched campaign spending soar and the power of so-called slate politics remain strong.

Buoyed by San Diego’s decision this month to enact district elections, an ad hoc Santa Monica committee calling itself CURE (Citizens United to Reform Elections) has started meeting to plan strategy for putting a districting measure on the ballot in 1990.

CURE was formed last June but held off most of its activities until after this last election. Members say the money spent on the campaign for four council seats in November--about $400,000--illustrates the need for changes in the system.

The group, which includes representatives of local Democratic Party clubs and local chapters of the Mexican American Political Assn. (MAPA) and the NAACP, plans to write several proposals that would be discussed and refined at public forums early next year.

Common Goals

Supporters of districts are still debating how many districts would be designated and where the lines would be drawn, but they agree on trying to maintain intact already established neighborhoods like Ocean Park or the Pico area, according to Tony Vazquez, a representative of MAPA and one of the proponents.

They also want to have at least one district in which blacks and Latinos form a majority, Vazquez said.

Only two blacks have served on the City Council, and there has never been a Latino council member. Some activists in the low-income Pico neighborhood also complain that they have never had a representative elected to a council seat.

Another issue that will have to be examined is whether to select the mayor through an at-large election.

Argument for Districts

“Single-member districts are always a good thing for any community, whether or not it has a large minority population,” said Richard Fajardo, chief legal counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which is suing Los Angeles County to force districts to be redrawn for Board of Supervisors elections. Fajardo spoke to the Santa Monica group earlier this week.

“(Districts) are in the best interest of the community, (which is) best served when all sectors’ points of view are reflected. They begin to see the needs and problems of other sectors.”

But others say districts would only divide the city and would not solve problems of high costs and slate dominance. They contend minorities are too spread out through the city to easily create a single, minority-dominated district.

“In a city the size of Santa Monica, districting is the worst thing I can think of,” said Councilman Herb Katz. “Going at-large, you have a better chance for representing the whole city.”

Katz’s opposition to districts cost him an endorsement from MAPA during his successful reelection campaign this fall.

He urged what he called true reform, such as limiting individual campaign contributions to $500 per candidate. The limit is currently $1,491.

Supporters of districts say the system reduces election-related spending because candidates campaign in smaller areas, appealing to a smaller pool of voters.

Pasadena Experience

But in the case of Pasadena, which went to districts in 1983, the reverse happened. In 1979, 10 candidates spent $62,000; in 1983, 10 candidates spent $197,000, according to the California Commission on Campaign Spending.

Santa Monica’s case is somewhat different, however. Elections in Pasadena before districting had not been very competitive; in Santa Monica elections have been contentious for years and spending has steadily climbed.

Councilwoman Christine Reed, who has been on the council longer than anybody, said political reality probably makes districts inevitable. But she said she continues to believe that the city is geographically small enough to be represented well by city-wide elections?

Councilman Dennis Zane said district elections are “an idea whose time has come” but added that council members would also have to be sure they addressed issues from a city-wide perspective as well looking at how their own districts would be affected.

Santa Monica voters overwhelming defeated a measure that would have drawn districts in 1975.