Political Map’s Challenge Is to Color It by the Numbers : Redistricting: Environmentalists, gays and ethnic groups all have their own proposals for redrawing City Council district boundaries.

To understand San Diego politics as the City Council uneasily approachesits decennial redistricting task, you literally need a map.

With its brightly colored hues of red, yellow, blue and green, an oversized 11-by-17-inch map prepared by a council-appointed task force has some council members either turning or seeing those colors. Indeed, if that map’s irregular shapes, squiggles and curves, which can boost or destroy careers, are approved, you can color some of the council members blue.

But that is only one of many maps floating around City Hall. Unhappy with the task force’s product, environmentalists have drawn up a counterproposal that, by reconfiguring the eight council districts, could reshape the city’s political future. Gay activists, neighborhood leaders and others have suggested stretching a boundary line here or trimming one there to address their concerns, and council aides have spent weeks poring over census data in an effort to protect their bosses’ interests--and, not coincidentally, their own jobs.

Whatever their ulterior motives, the political cartographers are bound by other guidelines from various sources: creating districts of roughly equal population with minimal disruption of existing boundaries, making certain that the lines do not discriminate against racial or ethnic minorities, respecting natural and man-made boundaries such as canyons and highways, and trying to avoid splitting communities into two districts.

What has become obvious to almost everyone who has taken marker pen to map, however, is that the immutable legal requirements and practical political goals are sometimes mutually exclusive. Or, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, when it comes to redistricting, you can please some of the people all of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.

“Some people are not going to be satisfied,” Mayor Maureen O’Connor concedes. “In redistricting, that’s inevitable. We talk about justice and fairness being the goal. The question is, whose justice?”

Proponents of the redistricting board’s proposed map characterize it as a fair, evenhanded attempt to devise logical council boundaries in the face of the multiple goals governing the process.

“This map wasn’t drawn to help or hurt either party, homosexuals, developers, environmentalists or any other particular point of view,” said campaign consultant Dan Greenblat, who served on the board. “What we did was look at what we had to do and what communities or the council wanted us to do, and then try to make the pieces fit together.”

Opponents, however, argue that the map is a thinly veiled effort to bolster pro-development forces on the council that further divide the city into districts of haves and have-nots. The plan, they contend, further concentrates low-income neighborhoods--and thorny crime and drug problems--in the three council districts south of Interstate 8 now represented by Democrats John Hartley, Wes Pratt and Bob Filner.

“This map is a cleverly drawn gerrymander that, under the guise of increasing minority representation, segregates the city along socioeconomic lines and tries to get rid of the most progressive, environmentally conscious members on the council,” said 8th District Councilman Filner, whose new Burlingame house was left outside the district’s proposed new boundaries. “It would be a disaster for the city.”

Monday’s council debate is certain to be lively, for nothing strikes so close to politicians’ self-interest as does the once-a-decade redrawing of district boundaries to reflect population shifts. A high-stakes political drama that can all but guarantee some officeholders’ reelection while endangering the survival of others, redistricting holds major implications for programs, budgets and minorities’ voting rights--thereby doing much to set San Diego’s political agenda for the next decade.

“Redistricting will set the stage for the 1990s in San Diego,” said political consultant David Lewis. “It creates the playing field where everything else happens.”

The focal point of the controversy is the proposed redistricting map developed by the 17-member citizens’ advisory board appointed early this year by the council and the mayor. Among other things, that map, the result of more than 20 meetings during the past five months, would create the city’s first majority-Latino council district, shift more than a dozen neighborhoods from their current district to another and leave two council members--Filner and Linda Bernhardt--outside their districts as a result of their recent or planned moves.

One of the panel’s major objectives was to rectify the district-to-district population imbalances that occurred over the past decade. For example, although only about 112,000 people live in Ron Roberts’ 2nd District, more than 172,000 reside in Abbe Wolfsheimer’s 1st District in northern San Diego. Two other districts, the 5th and 8th, also have grown substantially above the citywide average, while the 6th and 7th districts each need to gain about 20,000 residents to keep pace with the other districts.

If the city’s 1.1-million population were divided equally among the eight districts, each would include about 136,000 residents. Under the advisory board’s recommendation, the districts’ population would range from about 131,000 in the 2nd District to the 5th District’s 141,000--evidence that the guidelines used in drawing the district lines do not neatly conform to absolute numerical divisions.

An equally important purpose behind the redistricting process is to help settle a 1988 federal lawsuit challenging the city’s electoral system. Filed on behalf of the Chicano Federation of San Diego County, the lawsuit alleged that the citywide general election runoffs then used in council races unconstitutionally diluted the voting strength of Latinos.

Although San Diego voters made that point moot by adopting district-only elections in November, 1988, the lawsuit raised another critical issue: the contention that past redistricting has “fractured” Latino votes by dividing them among multiple districts, thus minimizing minority communities’ political clout. As proof, Latino activists emphasize that, while three Latinos have served on the council, none has ever been elected without first being appointed.

Worried about potential federal court intervention, the redistricting panel’s members settled on creating a Latino-majority district to avert that possibility. That goal would be accomplished in the city’s southernmost district, Filner’s 8th, where the addition of Barrio Logan and southern Golden Hill to the heavily Latino communities of Logan Heights, San Ysidro and Otay Mesa would increase the number of Latino residents from 40.3% to 52.2%.

“For too long, the Hispanic community hasn’t had a champion on the council,” said Jess Haro, the redistricting board’s vice chairman and the Chicano Federation’s former chairman. “This at least would give minority candidates a fairer chance to get elected.”

Filner says he could be reelected in 1991 despite the changed demographics. But in order for him to have that chance, the district’s proposed new boundary--which falls about 10 blocks from Filner’s new home--first would have to be realigned, a change that could be achieved relatively easily by shifting a small slice of the proposed 3rd District into the 8th District.

A more serious concern for Filner deals with the proposed redistricting plan’s removal of Balboa Park and a major chunk of downtown from his district. If, as proposed, those areas are moved into the 2nd District, Filner argues, the 8th District representative will be a “less substantial player” on the council because of the loss of those high-profile regions.

“They’ve not only taken me out of my district, but they’ve made it a far less important district,” Filner said. “That’s no accident.”

The redistricting board’s most active members included Greenblat, who was instrumental in Republican Gloria McColl’s victory over Filner in a 1983 council race; Patricia Meyer, the law partner of Filner’s 1987 opponent, Michael Aguirre, and Haro, who also was active in Aguirre’s campaign.

Another major complaint about the proposed new council boundaries has come from the Sierra Club and San Diegans for Managed Growth, which argue that the plan would create a pro-development bias on the council by concentrating most high-growth areas into the 1st and 5th districts. The proposed 5th District, for example, would include most of the Interstate 15 corridor in northern San Diego, as well as a major portion of Mission Valley.

Such boundaries not only would force one or two council members to bear the brunt of volatile growth battles, but also, thanks to district-only elections, would enable other council members to support development in the 1st and 5th districts with relative impunity, environmentalist argue. District-only races insulate politicians from the wrath of voters outside their own districts.

“By isolating growth into (two) districts, the plan . . . protects other council members from having to answer for their votes on growth issues,” said Sierra Club official Alan Sakarias. Members of the citizens’ task force note, however, that many community leaders from those northern neighborhoods--particularly those along the I-15 corridor--favored being consolidated into the same district, saying that it could enhance planning.

Under the environmentalists’ proposal, those high-growth areas would be divided among at least four districts, a plan that they argue would increase accountability on growth issues. Doing so, however, could dilute the Latino constituency in the 8th District, angering some Latino activists who, mindful of their community’s historical low voter turnout, fear that any such reduction would endanger one of the redistricting proposal’s major goals.

“This is a voting rights case, not an environmental case,” Haro said. “This shows a little hypocrisy and elitism on the part of environmentalists. They supported district elections because they said they wanted a greater voice for communities, but now they’re proposing something that does the opposite.”

Regardless of which map is examined, the proposed boundaries also leave some neighborhood activists distressed over their communities’ placement.

At a hearing last month, one gay activist labeled the advisory board’s plan a “homophobic effort . . . to divide and conquer” by splitting most of the city’s gay population among three districts, rather than consolidating it within a single one. Similarly, residents of Rolando, Oak Park and Golden Hill have protested the redistricting panel’s plan to either change their council representation or divide their community between districts.

Some of the loudest complaints have come from Golden Hill, which, with the exception of a small corner in the 4th District, now is concentrated in the 8th District. The advisory board’s plan, however, would evenly divide the community between the 3rd and 8th districts.

“This is just going to take the soul out of this neighborhood,” said David Moore, president of the Golden Hill Neighborhood Assn. “If we’re cut right down the middle like this, it will destroy our identity as a community.”

Other areas that in their entirety or in part would be shifted to new districts under the advisory panel’s proposal include Rancho Bernardo, Carmel Mountain Ranch, Serra Mesa, Logan Heights, Encanto, Chollas View, Middletown, Uptown, Burlingame, Hillcrest, East San Diego, Southeast San Diego, downtown, Mission Valley and Clairemont.

Similar complaints are heard about the environmentalists’ map, which would split areas such as Pacific Beach, La Jolla, University City and Scripps Ranch between districts. Some residents of the 2nd District, which stretches from Point Loma to Balboa Park under the advisory panel’s plan, also are displeased with the prospect of being converted into what one Ocean Beach leader called a “Coppertone District” running primarily along the coast.

Such dilemmas underline the difficulty of simultaneously meeting the mandates, wishes and expectations of the courts, community leaders, interest groups and politicians in drawing district lines--complicating the council’s effort to meet a July 24 deadline in completing the thorny task.

Most council members have said that they see a need for some changes to the redistricting committee’s work, with those amendments ranging from minor tinkering to a complete overhaul.

“I know this would lead to lots of screaming, but it might be that this map is so flawed that maybe we ought to go back to square one,” Bernhardt said. In contrast, Roberts argues that “a few minor adjustments” could remedy most of the map’s perceived ills.

Even small-scale changes, however, could be problematical, because, as Wolfsheimer notes, a shift of any line “touches off a domino effect” altering the makeup of other districts. Or, as GOP campaign consultant John Kern, a member of the advisory board, put it: “One change begets another that begets another.”

And, though the council members typically pay homage to issues such as community identity and ethnic balance when speaking of redistricting, they also recognize another vital point: The lines they draw can help stock their districts with friendly voters or purge them of hostile ones.

“Let’s just say that you’ve got at least eight people who are very interested in how this comes out,” consultant Lewis said. “ Very interested.”