Henderson’s Lawyer Files Remap Suit

The attorney representing San Diego City Councilman Bruce Henderson in the bitter redistricting fight at City Hall filed a lawsuit Friday on behalf of four city residents, contending the proposed new council district boundaries violate the City Charter and state law.

Attorney Patrick A. McCormick Jr. has been representing Henderson in federal court, and for weeks has threatened to file the suit. A class-action voting rights lawsuit against the city is being litigated in federal court.

A proposed settlement in that lawsuit has been reached by a five-member majority of the council and the Chicano Federation of San Diego County Inc. Henderson is not a member of the majority.

The settlement, which still must be ratified by the court, contains new council district boundaries. The Chicano Federation settled the suit because one of the districts, the 8th, contains a majority Latino population and increases the likelihood of a Latino being elected to the council.

The same map, however, drastically changes boundaries in districts north of Interstate 8, but none more than Henderson’s, who loses Mission Beach, Pacific Beach and Clairemont.

Henderson, along with Mayor Maureen O’Connor and Council Members Ron Roberts and Judy McCarty, contends that the new map was the product of secret meetings by the five-member majority, who intended to punish their political enemies, such as Henderson. Therefore, the new boundaries are unfair and may be illegal and unconstitutional, the minority argues.

U.S. District Judge John Rhoades, who is overseeing the voting rights lawsuit, has ordered the various lawyers for all sides in the dispute to tell him, among other things, whether the new map is tainted by “unfairness, inadequacy or illegality.”

Friday’s lawsuit, however, steers clear of allegations of secret meetings or other such improprieties, though it contends that the five-member majority agreed to the proposed settlement to avoid having to undergo depositions.

Instead, the lawsuit, filed in Superior Court, alleges that the proposed new map violates the City Charter four ways: Some districts are not composed of contiguous territory; some are not equal in population; some are not as geographically compact as possible, and some are not bounded by natural boundaries, streets or city boundary lines.

In making the charges, the lawsuit hits at the key districts that led the council majority and the Chicano Federation to settle. The lawsuit contends that Districts 8 and 2, for example, violate the charter because they are connected by way of an imaginary line down San Diego Bay.

One of the hottest items in negotiations leading to the proposed settlement of the voting rights lawsuit was that the South Bay community of Nestor--which is mainly white--would be split away and connected to District 2 by way of the city boundary line down the bay.

District 2 comprises Point Loma, Mission Hills, Mission Beach and Pacific Beach. The lawsuit contends that Nestor is not contiguous to those communities and thus the district violates the charter.

The lawsuit also finds fault with Henderson’s new District 6, as well as with Abbe Wolfsheimer’s District 1, which the suit says “splits in half the houses” in some sections of the city’s most northern district. “Citizens residing in the front rooms of their homes are in a different district than citizens residing in the back rooms of those same homes,” the lawsuit says. Wolfsheimer is part of the council majority, which also includes Bob Filner, Linda Bernhardt, Wes Pratt and John Hartley.

In addition, the lawsuit alleges that the new proposed map ignores natural boundaries such as the San Diego River, California 52 and San Clemente Canyon. It also says the redrawn districts violate the state elections code by splitting the Asian communities of Mira Mesa and Linda Vista, which are now in District 5 but would be in Districts 5 and 6 under the new map.

McCormick was not available for comment. An associate, Linda Zappe, said the lawsuit seeks to have the court tell “the city of San Diego that it has a duty to withdraw the map and formulate a new plan.”

Michael Aguirre, the lawyer representing the Chicano Federation, said the federal Voting Rights Act and federal court, not the state court, have jurisdiction over parts of the new map that “protect” the class that filed the original lawsuit, that is, Latinos and blacks. Those parts of the map include Districts 8, 4 and part of 2, he said in a telephone interview from New Mexico.

“The federal Voting Rights Act supersedes the City Charter,” Aguirre said.

Aguirre said Henderson, through McCormick, had said he supported the efforts of the Chicano Federation to carve out a Latino district.

“I guess this shows their commitment to the Latino community was not as strong as they had indicated,” Aguirre said.

Spokesmen for the city attorney’s office were not available for comment. Aguirre said, however, that representatives of the city attorney’s office had told him they intend to try to move the new lawsuit out of Superior Court and into federal court.