Legal Showdown Looms Over Council Districting : City Hall: Political in-fighting has taken its toll, despite approval of a redistricting plan. Opponents seeking better minority representation vow to overturn the council map in court.

The tumultuous debate over San Diego’s political future hurtled toward a climactic legal showdown Tuesday as the City Council approved a redistricting plan that opponents immediately vowed to challenge in court on the grounds that it weakens minority voting rights.

Approving a slightly modified version of the plan that it tentatively passed last month, the council voted by the same 5-4 margin for a redistricting map that will create the city’s first Latino-majority district and change council representation for more than 300,000 San Diegans.

However, Latino political activists, who preferred an alternative plan proposed by a council-appointed citizens’ advisory board, angrily charged that the map passed early Tuesday morning after a special 5 1/2-hour meeting does too little to enhance minorities’ political clout. If, as expected, the council gives final approval Aug. 27, the plan will take effect a month later--only days before an Oct. 1 deadline.

Contending that Tuesday’s decision violates a settlement agreement in a voting-rights lawsuit filed against the city by the Chicano Federation of San Diego County, Latino leaders said they will ask a federal judge to throw out the council’s map and replace it with one that increases the minority population in two of the council’s eight districts. At least two previously scheduled court hearings before U.S. District Judge John Rhoades are to be held later this month.

“If we’re to receive fair treatment, it’s going to have to happen in court,” said Chicano Federation attorney Michael Aguirre. “From beginning to end, the council has lied to us. They promised to maximize minority voting rights, but ending up looking for ways to minimize it.”

The likely court confrontation is hardly an unanticipated development in the month-long political and legal battle, which has careened between City Hall and federal courtrooms since the council conceptually approved a controversial redistricting plan offered by Councilman John Hartley on July 9.

Indeed, while they concurred on little else, the two sides’ proponents inside and outside City Hall have agreed from the outset that the courts, not the politicians, likely would be the ultimate arbiter in the decennial task of redrawing council boundaries.

Supporters of the amended Hartley plan, who argue that their map protects minority rights at least as well as the advisory board’s alternative, profess confidence that their plan will withstand judicial review. Before the council’s vote, city attorneys said that, in their opinion, any of the redistricting options under consideration would satisfy federal voting rights standards.

“We have made history here tonight,” said Councilman Bob Filner, whose 8th District seat--viewed by Latinos as their only realistic electoral opportunity in council races--is the focal point of the redistricting dispute.

Under amendments proposed by Councilman Wes Pratt, the Latino population in the 8th District would rise from the present 40.3% to 51.9%--a “significant increase” that Filner contends satisfies the overriding goal of strengthening minorities’ political voice. Similarly, the number of blacks in Pratt’s 4th District would increase from 33.6% to 36.1%.

“I think that’s a great victory for those who brought the suit and for everyone who supports the principles behind (it),” Filner said, noting that overall, minorities will make up nearly three-quarters of his district.

The plan’s other major changes include dramatic alterations to the boundaries of several coastal and northern San Diego districts--shifts that, among other things, move about a dozen communities to new districts and threaten the political future of at least one councilman, Henderson, whose new 6th District bears little resemblance to the one that elected him in 1987.

Emphasizing that redistricting, by its nature, cannot please everyone, Filner expressed the hope that council’s vote will quell the acrimony over the volatile issue, warning that a “protracted court fight can only bring on the divisiveness . . . we all want to end.”

“Those are just words,” Henderson angrily shot back. “If divisiveness follows, it will be because five members of this council . . . violated the settlement agreement. If divisiveness follows, it’s because (Councilwoman Linda) Bernhardt decided to run from her district. If divisiveness follows, it’s because this council has decided to split Pacific Beach and to split Clairemont.”

Now serving an area that includes Mission Beach, Pacific Beach and Clairemont, Henderson will lose his district’s major coastal regions while picking up politically hostile turf in communities such as Mira Mesa and Scripps Ranch--environmentally oriented neighborhoods now in Bernhardt’s 5th District.

Arguing that the new 5th and 6th districts largely assume each other’s existing boundaries, Henderson went so far as to suggest that the two districts should trade numbers.

While that idea was quickly dispatched, Henderson threatened to mount his own legal challenge to the redistricting plan because it will disenfranchise tens of thousands of his current constituents by shifting them from his district, which will hold a council election next year, to the 5th District, where the next election is in 1993.

However, Assistant City Atty. Curtis Fitzpatrick said that the number of San Diegans whose council voting rights will be postponed for two years does not pose a serious legal problem.

With the so-called “Gang of Five” that backed Hartley’s plan last month remaining intact, Tuesday’s council vote mirrored the body’s July 9 ballot. Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer, whose European vacation postponed council action on redistricting for several weeks, and Bernhardt joined Hartley, Filner and Pratt in voting for the plan, while Mayor Maureen O’Connor and council members Ron Roberts, Judy McCarty and Henderson opposed it.

As that breakdown indicates, the marathon council session--which included often repetitive testimony from 76 public speakers--essentially reinforced the philosophical and political battle lines that have divided the members throughout the lengthy redistricting debate.

Anticipating the impending legal challenge, Roberts caustically predicted that federal judges are “not going to be deceived by the political spin” that the council majority has used to justify its redistricting actions.

O’Connor, meanwhile, provided another rhetorical boost to the Chicano Federation by describing herself as “embarrassed” over the 8th District’s proposed 52% Latino population, saying she believes that a 60%-plus figure would be more appropriate.

Latino activists, in fact, intend to pursue just such a statistical goal in federal court. During the council’s Monday night-Tuesday morning meeting, Chicano Federation officials proposed raising the Latino population in the 8th District to more than 53%, and Aguirre said later that the group plans to ask Rhoades to hire a demographics expert to suggest ways to further increase the minority composition of both the 4th and 8th districts.

“All bets are off at this point,” Aguirre said. “We were willing to settle for the 52% that the advisory board proposed, but after what the council’s done, we’re going to try to get the number as high as possible. We’re done compromising.”

At a scheduled Aug. 24 hearing, Aguirre said that he will renew his request that Rhoades authorize the sworn interrogation of council members and their aides on the key question of precisely how Hartley’s plan was developed.

Angered that Hartley’s initial plan was approved in July only hours after being publicized, Chicano Federation officials complained that its tentative passage violated an agreement that settled the first phase of the group’s 1988 lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the city’s electoral system. Though three Latinos have served on the council, none has ever been elected without first being appointed--a telling fact at the heart of the lawsuit.

Probably the major question in any court test will focus on whether the plan passed Tuesday illegally dilutes minority voting rights.

Hartley’s original proposal would have reduced the Latino population in the 8th District from the advisory board’s proposed 52.2% to 51%--a numerically minor but politically significant reduction, according to Aguirre.

However, subsequent changes to both proposals obliterated that numerical distinction, leaving both with a 51.9% Latino population.

COUNCIL DISTRICT ETHNICITY Current Makeup

District Total population White Latino Black Asian/other 1 172,292 78.9% 7.1% 2% 12.1% 2 111,547 80.2% 9.2% 4.8% 5.8% 3 131,970 58.7% 17.9% 13% 10.55% 4 141,413 18.8% 32.2% 33.6% 15.4% 5 150,925 64.9% 10.3% 4.6% 20.3% 6 116,214 84.4% 8.8% 1% 5.8% 7 117,188 83% 6.7% 3.2% 7% 8 145,043 40.2% 40.3% 5.1% 14.3%

Proposed Makeup

District Total population White Latino Black Asian/other 1 134,150 77.1% 7.5% 2.3% 13.1% 2 139,668 82.7% 8.3% 3.9% 5.1% 3 137,904 65.4% 18.3% 7% 9.3% 4 133,974 24.6% 22.9% 36.1% 16.4% 5 129,551 72.3% 10.8% 3.6% 13.3% 6 141,284 74.3% 7.6% 2.4% 15.7% 7 134,680 78.6% 8.1% 5.1% 8.2% 8 135,381 25.5% 51.9% 8.3% 14.45