County Remap Rejected : A Blow to Conservative Supervisors

In a blow to the Board of Supervisors’ conservative majority, a federal judge today rejected a Los Angeles County redistricting map as a “nonsensical distortion” of supervisorial districts and “insensitive” to the voting rights of blacks and Latinos.

U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon said he will begin hearings Thursday on alternative maps drawn by plaintiffs in the voting rights suit against the county--all of which would jeopardize the board’s three-member conservative majority. He said he hopes to end the historic case by Friday.

All three maps submitted by the plaintiffs would carve out a new, predominantly Latino district bearing the designation of retiring Supervisor Pete Schabarum’s 1st District. The plaintiffs’ maps are designed to help the first Latino win a seat on the powerful board.

The plans would also change the political representation for many of the county’s 8 1/2 million residents.

Kenyon rejected a map submitted by the board’s conservative majority. It was drawn in response to the judge’s June 4 ruling that the current supervisorial district boundaries violate the federal Voting Rights Act by diluting the political power of the county’s 3 million Latinos.

“The court finds that the county plan is not the result of a good faith attempt” by supervisors to correct voting rights violations, Kenyon ruled from the bench.

The county plan, Kenyon said, “constitutes a nonsensical distortion of supervisorial districts, a callous interpretation of the Voting Rights Act and is insensitive to the needs of Hispanic and black residents. The court rejects the plan as constitutionally invalid.”

Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who attended today’s hearing with fellow conservative Supervisor Deane Dana, said of the judge and the plaintiffs: “They are trying to deliberately shift the county Board of Supervisors to a liberal majority outside of the electoral process. They are trying to draw a district in the shape of a donkey,” a reference to the symbol of the Democratic Party.

Antonovich said that if the judge’s decision is upheld, “it’s likely that you could have four Democrats to one Republican” on the board.

Dana said he is confident that Kenyon’s June ruling will be overturned in the county’s current appeal.

Antonia Hernandez of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a plaintiff, said, “It’s ludicrous to say that this is a partisan issue.”

The supervisors’ map, approved by the conservative majority, created a predominantly Latino district but placed liberal Supervisor Ed Edelman in the new district.

Under the plaintiffs’ maps, Edelman’s district--which now includes heavily Latino East Los Angeles, the Westside and part of the San Fernando Valley--would encompass his Westside political base but move north to pick up much of the San Fernando Valley from Antonovich. Antonovich’s 5th District would move east to take in more of the San Gabriel Valley from Schabarum.

East Los Angeles would become part of the new Latino district, which would extend east to Glendora and Irwindale and southeast to Santa Fe Springs.