Both Sides Edge Closer to Compromise in Redistricting Dispute

Seeking to avoid a costly and lengthy trial, the two sides in San Diego’s protracted redistricting dispute met with a federal magistrate Tuesday and made progress toward a compromise to improve minority voting rights.

After weeks of acrimonious debate over the redistricting map that was approved by the San Diego City Council last week, the session with U.S. Magistrate Harry McCue appeared to bring the two sides closer by producing yet another map with a statistically--and politically--significant increase in the Latino population in the 8th District.

Under the council’s map, the 8th District--the linchpin to any settlement in the voting rights dispute because of its heavy concentration of Latino residents--would include a 51.9% Latino population.

However, the proposals made Tuesday by representatives of the Chicano Federation of San Diego County could raise the percentage of Latinos in the southern San Diego district, which extends from downtown to San Ysidro, to about 55%.

After their nearly five-hour, closed-door meeting Tuesday, rival attorneys--using some of the most conciliatory language heard in weeks--expressed optimism about avoiding a trial that could leave the city’s political future in legal limbo for years.

Indeed, there is at least an outside chance that a tentative settlement--one that would have to be approved both by the full council and, presumably, a federal judge overseeing the case--could be reached today, when the two sides are scheduled to meet privately again with McCue.

“This is a good objective starting point for discussions,” attorney David Lundin, who represents three of the five council members who supported the redistricting map, said after Tuesday’s session. “I think we’re well along.”

“We definitely made a lot of progress today,” added Chicano Federation attorney Michael Aguirre. “We don’t want to raise people’s expectations. . . But things are moving in a positive direction.”

As recently as last Friday, the dispute stemming from the Chicano Federation’s voting rights lawsuit seemed destined for a trial that U.S. District Judge John Rhoades warned would be a “difficult, expensive and time-consuming” process.

In an order that he described as the first step in that direction, Rhoades on Friday ordered council members and others to testify under oath about the council-passed redistricting map, which the Chicano Federation contends unconstitutionally dilutes minority voting rights.

Tuesday’s meeting with McCue, in fact, was expected to be a routine procedural session to prepare a schedule for those depositions.

Instead, McCue, as he has from the outset, prodded the two sides to try once more to reach a compromise that could preclude the need for a divisive trial.

In Friday’s 14-page order, Rhoades, lamenting the two sides’ inability to “resolve what is basically a legislative, not judicial, function,” noted that a settlement “requires that each side give up positions previously held.”

Based on Tuesday’s progress, it appears that the city is willing to travel farther to reach a middle ground than the Chicano Federation. If the Latino population in the 8th District were, in fact, increased by about 3 percentage points, that would help the Latino group realize one of its overriding goals in the case by improving Latino candidates’ chances for success in council elections.

Wary of unraveling what he called a “last-ditch effort” for a compromise, Aguirre went to lengths Tuesday not to claim the upper hand in the negotiations.

“We don’t want to get into who’s backed down or not backed down,” Aguirre said. “No one’s trying to characterize this as a victory for anyone.”

The tenuous nature of the negotiations, moreover, was underlined by Lundin’s failure to resist sniping at Aguirre, despite efforts to introduce comity into the negotiations.

“I’ve been asking him for two months to give us a map or statistics which he felt would satisfy (the Chicano Federation),” Lundin said. “Up until five minutes ago, he hadn’t done that. That was a moving target. Now we’ve got a stationary target.”

Given the history of the redistricting case, which has careened between City Hall and federal courtrooms since early July, both sides were reluctant to be too rosy in their projections of a settlement that could end the long-running political-legal dispute.

And, as Aguirre noted, should this latest bid fail, the prospect of a trial still looms. Plans for the possible sworn interrogation of council members about the volatile redistricting issue, the lawyer said, are “proceeding on a parallel track.”

“The judge would like to see this thing settled, as we would and, I think, the city would, too,” Aguirre said. “Things look more encouraging. But that doesn’t mean we’re counting on this working out. If it doesn’t, we’ll be ready to go ahead with the other option.”