Redistricting Stacking the Decks for Incumbents : Reapportionment: The way district lines are drawn guarantees safe seats for both parties. The 1991 redrawing is unlikely to change that, experts say.

Assemblyman Gerald Felando is glad he no longer represents the same political turf he did in 1980.

When legislative district lines were redrawn in 1981, the San Pedro Republican found himself “folded” into a new district with a far larger share of GOP voters than his old district.

Today, he doesn’t like imagining what his life would be like if his political boundaries hadn’t been changed.

“Are you kidding?” said Felando, who has amassed more than two-thirds of the vote in each of his four general election contests since 1982. “I would be fighting in every single election year.”

Felando’s situation illustrates how the drawing of district boundaries has stifled general election competition in South Bay legislative races.

All five of the region’s congressmen, all five of its Assembly members and two of its three state senators stand for reelection Nov. 6. But thanks largely to the way district lines are drawn, none is expected to experience serious opposition.

Like many of their counterparts elsewhere in the state, the incumbents are ensconced in tailor-made districts designed to include a dominant share of their own party’s voters. The deck, in effect, is stacked.

“It stinks,” said Leroy Hardy, a political science professor at Cal State Long Beach and formerly a Democratic consultant on redistricting. “What are we spending all this money for in terms of elections if the system is rigged?”

Hardy and other experts say the problem is gerrymandering, the partisan manipulation of legislative district boundaries.

The term dates from 1812, when Massachusetts Democrats under Gov. Elbridge Gerry--to the detriment of Federalists--crafted a district vaguely resembling a salamander. Critics dubbed it a “gerrymander.”

With state legislators redrawing district lines every 10 years to account for changes in population--a process called reapportionment--it is no surprise that charges of gerrymandering are commonplace today.

South Bay politicians disagree on whether the area’s legislative districts can be called gerrymanders. But it is clear that the reshaping of several districts here has helped discourage competition.

An example is the 27th Congressional District represented by Santa Monica Democrat Mel Levine. In the 1970s the district covered the coastal communities from the Westside to the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

The mix of Westside Democrats and South Bay Republicans made for close races in the 1978 and 1980 general elections, when incumbent Republican Robert Dornan twice came within 5% vote margins of losing his seat.

Then the district lines were shifted for the 1982 election, when Democratic Assemblyman Levine made his first bid for Congress. Areas of Inglewood were added and the entire peninsula was dropped, among other boundary changes aimed at beefing up the district’s share of Democrats.

The result: In 1980, Democrats accounted for 47% of registered voters and the Republicans for 41%. But in 1982, after reapportionment, the registration levels were 57% Democratic and 30% Republican.

Dornan, now a congressman from Orange County, decided against a run for reelection, launching an ill-fated U.S. Senate bid instead. Levine won the seat with 59% of the vote and went on to take the next three general elections with vote shares of 55%, 64% and 68%.

Levine asserts that his district has not seen strong general election competition since 1980 because constituents have been satisfied with his performance.

“There is no such thing as a completely safe district,” he said. His GOP challenger this year, David Barrett Cohen, disagrees.

“It was a cynical abuse of power. It was designed to squeeze democracy out of the district,” Cohen complained. “I certainly would’ve had a better chance under the old scheme. Republican registration was much better.”

Though California’s legislative district lines favor Democrats by maximizing their chances of winning a majority of legislative seats, they still ensure impregnable districts for some Republicans.

That is because the Democrat lawmakers who controlled the Legislature and thus reapportionment in the early 1980s sought to concentrate Republicans in as few districts as possible, improving their party’s chances of winning the rest.

Two Republican beneficiaries of that process in the South Bay are Felando, who represents the 51st Assembly District, and Dana Rohrabacher of Lomita, who holds the 42nd Congressional District seat.

In the 1981 reapportionment, Felando’s present turf was created by combining Republican parts of his previous district--a largely Democratic area including San Pedro and part of Torrance--with the former 51st, a GOP stronghold covering the Palos Verdes Peninsula and the beach cities.

Initially, the change was a problem: Felando had to take on the incumbent of the old 51st, Republican Marilyn Ryan, in the primary. But after beating Ryan and a Democratic challenger in 1982, he possessed a district in which Republicans represent a far greater share of voters than in his previous district.

For Felando, close general election fights are a thing of the past. He captured 67% of the vote in 1982, 69% in 1984 and 1986, and 63% in 1988--far more comfortable than the 52% he received in 1980, just before district lines changed.

Marilyn Landau, Felando’s Democratic challenger this year, says she hopes to pry Republican voters from the incumbent by drawing attention to “wedge” issues such as Felando’s support for government restrictions on abortion.

But she admits that the Republican advantage in party registration presents an uphill battle for Democratic candidates in the 51st. “The districts were drawn to suit what the Democrats wanted at the time,” she said. “That’s politics.”

Though Felando’s district is designed to corral Republicans, it covers a fairly compact geographical area. The same cannot be said of Rohrabacher’s congressional district, which goes to creative lengths to encircle the maximum number of GOP voters.

The 42nd was drawn to include the Palos Verdes Peninsula and part of Torrance. But to prevent the large numbers of Republicans there from influencing races in nearby Democrat-controlled districts, it was narrowed to a thread as it hugs the coast through Democratic San Pedro and Long Beach.

Then it broadens again to encompass GOP voters in northern Orange County.

Rohrabacher acknowledges that the district is odd. He condemns it as part of a Democratic scheme to “disenfranchise” voters.

“Gerrymandering created two classes of protected people,” Rohrabacher said. “One is the Democrat incumbent and one is the Republican incumbent. Only (the Democrats) ensured there would be more of the former than the latter.”

He added that he would be glad to run in a more competitive district “if it means that there will be more chances for Republicans to win more seats in Congress.”

Assemblyman Richard Floyd, a Carson Democrat, says the drawing of district lines inevitably favors the party in power. But these days, he asserts, that is good for his largely blue-collar, Democratic constituency--residents of Gardena, Hawthorne, Carson, Lawndale, Harbor Gateway, Harbor City and north Redondo Beach.

“If the Republicans had their way, this would be a Republican state and the people in my district wouldn’t have a voice,” Floyd said. “We’re in a political game. Politics has to be part of it.”

Politics will continue to play a part when state legislators redraw district lines next year to accommodate population changes detected in the 1990 Census. But it is unclear how free a hand the Democrats will have in determining what the new boundaries will be.

Voters on June 5 rejected two GOP-backed initiatives intended to place restrictions on the Legislature’s ability to draw district lines. That would appear to leave Democrats with a relatively free hand in the next reapportionment, since they control the Legislature.

But the election of a Republican governor this fall could change the equation, since the governor has the power to veto reapportionment plans. After the 1970 census, Gov. Ronald Reagan’s refusal to accept the Democrat Legislature’s district blueprint forced the state Supreme Court to appoint a special panel of three retired judges to draw the lines.

Experts say the new districts, in addition to fallout from Watergate and Proposition 13, breathed new life into that decade’s general election legislative races.

“There’s no question that the ‘70s district lines were probably the best districts the state has ever had,” said Gordon Baker, a UC Santa Barbara professor who served as a consultant to the court-appointed panel. “They were considerably more competitive than they are now.”

Failing similar intervention, however, few political observers predict that this decade’s reapportionment will dramatically increase competition.

Said Kay Conrad, president of the Palos Verdes Peninsula League of Women Voters: “As long as incumbents are drawing their own lines, they’re not going to make any significant changes. Incumbents aren’t keen about competition in either party.”

THE POWER OF INCUMBENCY How South Bay legislators fared in their last general election.

Last general Share of Incumbent Party District election the vote CONGRESS Mel Levine D 27 1988 67.5% Julian Dixon D 28 1988 76.0% Mervyn Dymally D 31 1988 71.6% Glenn Anderson D 32 1988 66.9% Dana Rohrabacher R 42 1988 64.2% STATE SENATE Diane Watson D 28 1986 78.6% Robert Beverly R 29 1988 67.4% Ralph Dills D 30 1986 72.0% ASSEMBLY Gwen Moore D 49 1988 76.7% Curtis Tucker, Jr. D 50 1989* 70.8% Gerald Felando R 51 1988 62.7% Richard Floyd D 53 1988 58.7% Dave Elder D 57 1988 69.2%

*Special election to fill vacant seat.

SOURCE: California Secretary of State’s Office