New Political Map of L.A. County OKd : Voting rights: Judge approves plan aimed at electing a Latino supervisor. June’s election results are tossed out.

A federal judge on Friday approved a reapportionment plan for the Board of Supervisors that dramatically realigns political representation for many of Los Angeles County’s 8 1/2 million residents, and he threw out the results of the June election in the 1st District.

U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon approved new district boundaries drawn by civil rights groups that are designed to help a Latino win a seat on the powerful five-member board. The new map also threatens to end a decade of conservative control of the county’s governing body.

In a half-page order, Kenyon canceled the November runoff between Sarah Flores and Gregory O’Brien for the seat being vacated by retiring Supervisor Pete Schabarum. The judge ordered a new primary Nov. 6 in the redrawn 1st District.

The court-ordered plan carves out a predominantly Latino district bearing the designation of Schabarum’s 1st District. It stretches from El Sereno and Lincoln Heights, through downtown Los Angeles, east to Irwindale and La Puente and southeast to Santa Fe Springs.

The map was drafted by a UCLA professor of urban planning on behalf of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union, plaintiffs in the historic voting rights case against the nation’s most populous county.

Kenyon had turned to the plaintiffs’ plans on Wednesday after rejecting a map offered by the board’s three-member conservative majority, calling it a “nonsensical distortion” of districts that was “insensitive” to blacks and Latinos. Kenyon ruled June 4 that the five Anglo supervisors intentionally discriminated against the county’s 3 million Latinos when drawing district boundaries in 1981.

Latinos make up a third of the county’s population, but no Latino has served on the board since 1875. The county is appealing Kenyon’s ruling.

ACLU attorney Mark Rosenbaum said he was “thrilled” by the ruling. “It means that for the first time in the history of this county, the Hispanic community is on equal footing,” he said, “and that all qualified candidates are going to have a fair and equal opportunity to serve on the most powerful body of local government in the United States.”

County attorney John E. McDermott said he will send a clerk to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals as soon as the office opens Monday to file papers seeking an immediate stay of Kenyon’s order.

Conservative Supervisor Mike Antonovich accused Kenyon of “working hand in hand with the ACLU and MALDEF in pursuit of their liberal ideological agenda.” Antonovich said he is confident the decision will be overturned on appeal.

Under the new plan, the composition of Schabarum’s 1st District increases from the present 49% Latino to 71% Latino. Latinos represent 51% of registered voters of the redrawn 1st District. The district, which is now 50% Democratic and 41% Republican and tends to vote for conservatives, would become 66.5% Democratic and 23.3% Republican.

Kenyon’s decision opens up the race for Schabarum’s seat to new candidates. It means that Flores and O’Brien, if they remain candidates, would have to run new primary campaigns. They could face some of the same candidates they beat in June, plus such veteran Latino politicians as Los Angeles City Council members Richard Alatorre and Gloria Molina and U.S. Reps. Ed Roybal (D-Los Angeles) and Esteban Torres (D-La Puente).

“I think it’s a bum deal, but I’m going to run,” said Flores, who took out a $12,000 loan on her home to run for supervisor and spent $400,000 in campaign funds to finish first with 35% of the vote in the June primary.

“I think this case has been more about politics than voting rights,” said Flores, a Republican.

O’Brien, a Superior Court judge and a Republican, said, “I think we need to see what the court of appeals does. I am still very much a candidate. . . . I’m not ready to throw in the towel yet.”

After Kenyon’s ruling, O’Brien went to West Covina where 100 supporters had gathered for the opening of a new campaign headquarters.

Still, O’Brien said that unless Kenyon’s ruling is reversed on appeal, he will probably drop out of the race. “If you’re going to run for office and the friends and neighbors you work with and grow up with can’t vote for you, well, you have to think about it,” he said.

Steven Rosenbaum, an attorney for the Justice Department, was unsympathetic toward Flores and O’Brien, telling the judge that the candidates knew the election might be thrown out when they decided to run.

Alatorre said, “I anticipate being a candidate. But the important thing now is to do everything humanly possible to have a united Hispanic community.”

The court-ordered plan puts the Glendora homes of Flores and O’Brien in Antonovich’s new 5th District. But Kenyon waived residency requirements so that residents of the existing 1st District could run in the redrawn district.

Schabarum, who decided not to file for reelection in March, could file to run, but his chief deputy said he doubts that Schabarum would do so. Schabarum could not be reached for comment.

Kenyon asked the plaintiffs to prepare for his approval a schedule for filing papers to run in the new 1st District. During a court hearing Friday, a Justice Department attorney proposed a filing deadline of Aug. 15. That would give candidates 83 days to campaign for the seat, the same amount of time between the March filing deadline and the June primary.

Kenyon ordered a Nov. 6 election in the redrawn 1st District, despite testimony Friday by County Registrar-Recorder Charles Weissburd that it is too late to get ready for such an election.

Justice Department attorney Rosenbaum had argued, “The inequities for Hispanic citizens and all citizens of Los Angeles County . . . outweigh any inconvenience to the county.”

The map approved by the judge shifts supervisors to many new neighborhoods.

Supervisor Ed Edelman loses East Los Angeles from his current 3rd District. He retains his Westside political base and picks up Malibu and Santa Monica from 4th District Supervisor Deane Dana and more of the San Fernando Valley from Antonovich.

Antonovich’s 5th District still includes Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena and picks up a part of the San Gabriel Valley now represented by Schabarum, including Azusa, Claremont, Pomona, San Dimas, Temple City and West Covina.

Dana’s coastal district is extended north into the San Gabriel Valley to include Diamond Bar, Downey, La Habra Heights, La Mirada, Norwalk, Walnut and Whittier.

Supervisor Kenneth Hahn’s 2nd District, which takes in South-Central Los Angeles, emerges only slightly changed. It picks up heavily black Compton from Dana in an effort to avoid diluting the voting rights of blacks.

As a “hedge against future discrimination,” Justice Department attorney Rosenbaum asked Kenyon to require supervisors for 15 years to submit any changes in district boundaries to Kenyon or the U.S. attorney general for approval. The judge has not acted on the request.

Kenyon still must issue a formal order to implement the new plan.

Times staff writer Frederick M. Muir contributed to this story

REDISTRICTING PLAN APPROVED

In June, U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon ruled that the Los Angeles County supervisors violated the voting rights of Latinos when drawing district lines in 1981. Earlier this week, Kenyon rejected a county redistricting plan, saying that it was insensitive to the rights of Latinos and blacks. And on Friday, he accepted one of three alternative plan submitted by plaintiffs in the historic voting rights suit. The plan--prepared by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund-- provides a Latino majority in a newly drawn 1st District.

The judge’s ruling blocked a November runoff election in the 1st District between Sarah Flores and Gregory O’Brien. The new map places the homes of Flores and O’Brien in Supervisor Mike Antonovich’s 5th District. But the judge’s ruling would allow Flores and O’Brien to run in the 1st District.

Below are the existing district boundaries drawn in 1981, and the new boundarie accepted by the judge on Friday.