Election Hurdle Lifts as Council, Latinos Concur

Ending an eleventh-hour political and legal drama that threatened to postpone today’s San Diego City Council elections, the city of San Diego and the Chicano Federation reached an out-of-court settlement late Monday of the federation’s lawsuit seeking greater clout for minority voters.

After a hectic afternoon of negotiations that included two closed-door council sessions and three hearings in his federal courtroom, U. S. District Judge John S. Rhoades tentatively accepted a settlement of the class-action suit aimed at increasing the council’s size and altering the way that district boundaries are drawn. Formal approval of the settlement is expected early next month, when the final revised agreement will be before the court.

Providing a dramatic backdrop to the proceedings, Rhoades had earlier promised to hold hearings Monday on the federation’s call for postponement of today’s election if the two sides were unable to settle the 20-month-old lawsuit with the aid of U. S. Magistrate Harry McCue. But Monday--only minutes before federation attorneys were to argue for an injunction delaying the primary--Rhoades removed that obstacle to the first district-only council election since the City Charter was adopted in 1931.

To Be Settled at Polls

Echoing the sentiments of attorneys for both sides, Rhoades expressed satisfaction that the thorny political issues raised in the lawsuit will be settled at the polls rather than in court.

“Democracy is better served at the ballot box than through a judicial order,” Rhoades concluded.

The settlement came after council members successfully held out for the right to campaign individually against a key provision of the agreement: a June, 1990, ballot measure that will ask voters whether to expand the council from its existing eight districts to 10, effective in 1993.

The federation, which in its original lawsuit asked for expansion of the council to 12 seats, contends that Latinos and other minorities will be better represented by smaller council districts.

Retained in the settlement, however, is a previously undisclosed provision prohibiting the council from placing measures on the June, 1990, ballot to compete with the one authorizing the council expansion, a tactic that the council used successfully last year to defeat creation of a powerful police review panel.

The council members also requested, and won, language changes to prevent the federation from taking legal action against them or their heirs as individuals.

“There were some very significant changes,” said Councilman Ed Struiksma, one of four council members running for reelection today. “I don’t think I have been wanting to vote for a settlement more than I wanted to vote for this settlement.”

The major provisions of a tentative agreement announced last week were left intact, including a section that calls for redrawing council districts by Oct. 1, 1990, using preliminary 1990 U.S. census data, which federation attorneys contend will most accurately reflect the growth of the city’s Latino population.

Another provision specifies that Mayor Maureen O’Connor will choose the members of an advisory commission to aid the council in its decennial redistricting. The commission, however, will only offer recommendations on district boundaries, and final approval of the reapportionment will remain in council’s hands.

Under the plan, the council also will place on the ballot a measure to change the City Charter, mandating that reapportionments of council districts be conducted every 10 years, within nine months after final U. S. Census data becomes available.

A major objective of the original lawsuit--eliminating the citywide elections that Latino and black leaders argued diluted minorities’ voting strength--was rendered moot by voters’ narrow approval last November of the district-only system being used for the first time today. Under the city’s former two-tiered election format, the top two vote-getters in district primaries faced each other in citywide runoffs.

‘Long-Overdue Step’

“We accomplished part of what we set out to do at the ballot box last November, and we’re prepared to do the same thing next June,” Chicano Federation Chairman Jess Haro said after the court hearing. “This is another important and long-overdue step in the political empowerment of blacks and Hispanics in this city.”

Noting that the existing eight-seat council has never included more than two minority representatives--and often only one, as it does now--Haro predicted that, if the council were expanded, minority candidates could regularly capture three seats.

Under the settlement, the council will pay the federation $20,000 in attorneys’ fees, a clause that caused some reservations among council members when it was announced last week but that apparently did not present a formidable obstacle Monday.

The council voted 7 to 2 for the settlement, according to council members attending the closed session, with Councilmen Bob Filner and Bruce Henderson opposed.

In a later interview, Henderson said his major objection to the agreement “is that a message is sent that San Diego has not done right by the Hispanic community or the African-American community. And to me, that is not right.”

Henderson also called the agreement “an attorneys’ full-employment act,” noting that it contains many provisions allowing the federation to sue the council if it fails to comply with the settlement. Rhoades will retain jurisdiction over the case to ensure that its provisions are carried out.

Meanwhile, Filner, whose 8th District seat is the most likely target of Latino candidates in 1991 because of the district’s large Latino population, argued that “the settlement does not do what it purports to do”--namely, increase Latino political clout.

The federation could have held out for an expansion of the council to 10 seats in 1991, Filner said. Nevertheless, Filner said he will honor promises to campaign for the expansion next year. Several other council members, including Struiksma, Henderson and O’Connor, have said they do not believe city residents want the council expanded, in part because an expansion would increase staff expenses.

Urgency of Negotiations

Monday’s developments unfolded with an urgency stemming from the participants’ recognition that the holding of today’s election could hinge on the actions taken--or not taken--over several hours on the eve of the primary.

Throughout Monday’s harried court and council sessions, a pack of attorneys and reporters repeatedly shuttled back and forth between City Hall and the U.S. Courthouse. One attorney--Meyer’s partner, Michael Aguirre, who filed the original lawsuit--even managed to keep abreast of developments from 2,800 miles away. During the feverish negotiations, Meyer often conferred with Aguirre on an open telephone line between the courthouse and New York, where he is handling another case.

Distressed by the final hurdles to a settlement, Aguirre accused the city of “manufacturing a false and unnecessary constitutional crisis” through its last-minute objections, which he argued were intended “to make us look like the bad guys.” If the federation had resisted the changes demanded by the city and sought the injunction, Aguirre said, it would have opened itself up to criticism that it was to blame for the political and legal chaos likely to result from postponement of the election.

“We weren’t going to play into their hands, so we just agreed to what they wanted,” Aguirre said in a telephone interview. “But, because of the city’s tactics, you had a situation where, the day before an election, you didn’t know if the election would be held. It was the council that made San Diego look like something you’d expect to find in South America.”

Motives Questioned

During the first of Monday’s several brief court hearings, both Meyer and Rhoades raised similar questions about the city’s motives.

Pointing out that the proposed agreement had been before the council for several weeks, Meyer argued that the city was stalling, realizing that the judge’s option of postponing the election would, for all practical purposes, disappear with the close of court business Monday.

City attorneys denied that was the case, insisting that the council had legitimate concerns over the wording of certain provisions in the settlement.

Unconvinced, Rhoades described himself as “quite disappointed” at the potential stumbling block, noting that the council “has been given several opportunities to review the terms.”

“Time is passing,” Rhoades said. “By the time the City Council makes their decision, the option I have of restraining the election would be gone. . . . I’m suspicious--I can’t prove it--that they’re stalling.”

Hoping to preclude a hearing on an injunction to halt today’s primary, Rhoades asked both sides to make one final effort to iron out their differences in a jury room next to his court. After about 30 minutes, the two sides reported that they had done so, although the court’s action was delayed while city attorneys rushed back to City Hall to obtain council acceptance of the revised terms.

In the end, Rhoades said he was pleased that no impasse occurred that would have forced him to confront postponing an election in which candidates have spent months campaigning and thousands of people have already voted via absentee ballots.

“I want to thank the plaintiffs and the City Council for setting aside their personal agendas and approving the settlement,” Rhoades said. “Democracy is better served when people, rather the courts . . . decide issues.”