Groups Blast Council’s Redistricting Efforts : Politics: About 2 dozen diverse organizations combine to take aim at a map tentatively approved by five council members.

San Diego’s already bitter attempt to complete a controversial redistricting plan grew even more heated Thursday as representatives of more than 20 community, business and civic groups ripped the City Council’s redistricting efforts in a press conference at City Hall.

The speakers directed their wrath at five of the nine council members--John Hartley, Linda Bernhardt, Wes Pratt, Abbe Wolfsheimer and Bob Filner--who on July 9 tentatively approved the map that Hartley had proposed.

Some of the disgruntled San Diegans used the noon press conference to demand that council members drop the controversial Hartley map and instead adopt a competing map drawn up earlier this year by a redistricting advisory board. Others declined to endorse any particular map but openly questioned the process that council used to tentatively approve the Hartley map.

Gus Chavez, a College Heights area resident who acted as spokesman for the newly formed “Coalition for Fair Redistricting,” said the organization included “groups in the city who collectively want to publicly express our outrage at the callous and malicious way the gang of five is trying to subvert the will of the people.”

“This is the closest ever to political rape that the citizens of San Diego have experienced,” Chavez said. “We will not let it happen.”

Chavez, who serves as a spokesman for RACHE, a group that works to make higher education opportunities more widely available to Latinos, said the redistricting issue is “not just a Chicano issue.” Chavez, during an interview, said the redistricting touches all San Diegans.

“We are protesting the action that took place at the City Council, which totally disregarded” a redistricting map drawn by the citizens advisory board, Chavez said. “It was always understood that they could accept that map, review it, redraw it . . . even change it,” Chavez said. “But they accepted it and threw it in the wastebasket.”

Thursday’s press conference included representatives from such diverse organizations as the National Conference of Christians and Jews, the San Diego Assn. of Realtors, the Black Federation and community planning groups from Miramar Ranch, Clairemont Mesa, Rancho Bernardo, Scripps Ranch and Tierrasanta.

Other groups at the meeting included the Catfish Club, Casa Familiar, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Mission Hills Business Committee, the Urban League and Barrio Station.

In a prepared statement, Realtors President Marjorie McLaughlin announced that her organization is urging the council to adopt the citizens’ advisory board map that the council rejected July 9. Vernon Sukumu, executive director of the Black Federation, also voiced support for the advisory board’s map.

Although the Urban League and the National Conference of Christians and Jews did not endorse either of the maps, representatives of both organizations expressed concern that individuals have been left out of council’s redistricting.

“This is an extraordinary display of unanimity,” Carol R. Hallstrom, representing the National Conference of Christians and Jews, said after the meeting. “The breadth of people who came out here today astounds me.”

Hallstrom said her organization was concerned that the council’s redistricting actions to date “have the potential to exclude people. . . . We have questions about the process.”

Similarly, Kevin McNamara, chairman of the Rancho Penasquitos Planning Group, argued that the council should “reopen the whole issue and get it back on track. . . . This fight is not reflecting well on the City Council or the city of San Diego.” McNamara said that, although his planning group has not endorsed a particular map, he is “fed up with the process” that the council used to tentatively adopt the Hartley map.

In a related matter Thursday, no new judicial orders were generated during a morning session in the chambers of a U.S. magistrate who is overseeing the redistricting attempt.

Attorneys who attended Thursday’s closed-door session said that U.S. Magistrate Harry McCue directed all parties to delay legal challenges until after a 7 p.m. redistricting hearing at Golden Hall on Monday that is expected to draw hundreds of San Diegans who would be affected by the final map.

McCue’s next hearing on the redistricting matter is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. Tuesday. It was uncertain Thursday if U.S. District Judge John Rhoades, who plays a key role in the federal court’s possible intervention, would also hold a hearing Tuesday.

McCue on Thursday directed the growing number of attorneys involved in the case to “let the council do its business,” said David Lundin, a private attorney who represents council members Filner, Bernhardt and Hartley. McHue directed the attorneys to let the council “carry out its function,” Lundin said.

Mayor Maureen O’Connor said that McCue’s directive “fits in perfectly with her recommendation” that council hold Monday’s meeting and report back to the magistrate Tuesday, according to mayoral spokesman Paul Downey.

In a joint release issued Thursday, Hartley and Bernhardt hailed McCue’s decision to let Monday’s hearing proceed.

“We took the judge’s order very seriously when he told us the council had not allowed adequate public review and comment on the proposed map,” Bernhardt said. “That’s why we scheduled an additional series of community public hearings.”

Hartley said: “I’m looking forward to hearing additional public comment and attempting to draft a plan that responds to the concerns raised by both supporters and opponents of the map.”

It is uncertain what will occur at Monday’s meeting, which City Hall observers believe will draw an overflow crowd.

Wolfsheimer, one of the five who voted for the “Hartley map,” leaves this weekend for Europe. Consequently, if a vote occurs and remaining council members stick to their previous positions, the result would be a 4-4 tie.

The Monday hearing is one of three now scheduled. The five council members who supported Hartley’s map earlier in the week called special hearings for Aug. 13 and 27.

In a related action Thursday, Councilman Bruce Henderson joined the growing list of council members who have hired their own attorneys to represent them in the continuing court fight. That trend began earlier in the month when Hartley, Bernhardt and Filner hired Lundin, apparently at their own expense.

Earlier this week, City Atty. John Witt advised Henderson, O’Connor and council members Judy McCarty and Ron Roberts that his office was unable to represent both them and the five-member majority who voted for Hartley’s map.

O’Connor is being represented on a temporary basis by a lawyer of her choice. Now, only McCarty, Pratt and Roberts have yet to announce that they have retained independent council.