Berman Ex-Aide Heads Drive to Defeat Reapportionment Initiatives : Measures: One creates a commission to study districting plans and choose one. Another asks for two-thirds legislative approval and a state vote.

The top district aide to Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) has become the fund-raiser for a Democratic congressional campaign intended to defeat proposed ballot initiatives that would change dramatically the way new post-census election districts are drawn in California.

Marc Litchman, 31, of Sherman Oaks, was Berman’s administrative assistant from December, 1986, until last month. He also has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions for Berman and was field director of City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter’s general election campaign in 1987.

Litchman will be succeeded by Fausto Capobianco, chief of broadcast operations for the U.S. Department of Education, who will begin running Berman’s district office on April 9. Capobianco, 50, previously worked as a reporter at the Courier-Post in Camden, N.J., as an anchorman-writer at KYW radio station in Philadelphia and in public relations and political consulting.

Litchman has been employed since Feb. 1 by Impact 2000, a national political action committee chaired by Rep. Vic Fazio (D-Sacramento). The state’s Democratic congressional delegation is sponsoring a fund-raiser in April with a goal of raising $500,000 to combat the redistricting ballot measures, Litchman said.

Berman, who has joined with Fazio to lead the effort among congressional Democrats to defeat the measures, said the proposed initiatives are “thinly veiled, partisan efforts to impose criteria with a bias in favor of the Republican Party” in the reapportionment process.

California, with its 45 representatives, is a major focus of the Republican Party’s efforts to make inroads in the current Democratic majority in the House. The state is expected to gain five to seven congressional seats in 1992 as a result of national population shifts.

Currently, state legislative and congressional districts are approved by a simple majority of the California Legislature based on results from the decennial U.S. Census, and then signed by the governor.

The Democrats are expected to retain control of both houses of the state Legislature this November, which means they have more to lose if the majority party no longer has the power to draw the lines. The governorship, meanwhile, is considered up for grabs.

The most far-reaching of the redistricting proposals, Proposition 119, would create a 12-member commission to consider independently produced reapportionment plans and choose the one that best fits a set of criteria outlined in the ballot measure. Another measure, Proposition 118, would require that any reapportionment plan be approved by two-thirds majorities in the Assembly and Senate and be ratified by voters.

Berman said that the ballot propositions would aid Republicans because the measures would have the effect of clumping Democrats--who tend to be more concentrated in urban areas--in as few districts as possible.

Democrats currently hold a 27-18 advantage in the state delegation, which Republicans maintain reflects blatant gerrymandering.