Vote Marks New Era for 1st District : County Board: For the plaintiffs who sued over bias against Latinos, the balloting is the real victory.

Leo Estrada, the UCLA-based demographer who with his computer created the boundaries for Los Angeles County’s new 1st District, arrived at work Tuesday morning and was handed a card by one of his students.

“Congratulations,” it said, “on your new baby!”

Estrada could laugh--at last. “That’s kind of the feeling I have,” he said, “like I’m seeing someone born.”

A special election Tuesday ended years of frustration on the part of Los Angeles County’s 3 million Latino residents, placing a Latino on the five-member Board of Supervisors for the first time in more than a century.

While it ultimately involved just two candidates--City Councilwoman Gloria Molina and state Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles)--the special election for the county’s 1st Supervisorial District was the product of a decade of political infighting and courtroom wrangling by grass-roots activists, lawyers, power brokers and other players, large and small.

And for these people, the vote marked the resolution of a struggle that transcended the fortunes of any one candidate. Depending on which side they waged war, it was a day for proudly recalled moments or private misgivings by the players involved. Most of the participants have moved on to other issues; only a handful actually were able to vote in the hard-won new district.

“To me,” said Yolanda Garza, the Arcadia resident who was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the county’s district boundaries, “this is really icing on the cake, because we have two really good candidates. I feel it’s a victory we’ve already won.”

“From now on,” she said, “I really believe we’re going to have more information (in the Latino community) on what the issues are, what’s being funded . . . and what the community can afford.”

Garza, 31 and a mother of two young children, is a state toxic waste specialist who makes a living cleaning up hazardous landfills. She spent much of Tuesday at the state Department of Health Services office in Burbank, assessing hazardous waste samples from an old landfill at Normandie Avenue and 120th Street in Los Angeles, a site needed for part of the Century Freeway project. She is expecting a $70-million cleanup of the site to begin in March.

She scarcely had time to reflect on the election before leaving by plane to attend an evening workshop on toxic waste management, held by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in San Francisco.

Despite her role in the fight to elect a Latino supervisor, Garza herself could not vote Tuesday, a piece of irony produced by Estrada’s computer: The newly drawn boundaries place her a mile-and-a-half outside the 1st District.

“I’d love to be able to vote--it would be wonderful,” Garza said. “It’s something I tried so hard to get. But the important thing is, it’s there for the community.”

On the surface, the election resulted most directly from a ruling by U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon, the low-key, homespun jurist who threw out the county’s old 1st District boundaries on grounds that they discriminated against the Latino community. While the issue had been smoldering in the county for more than a decade, it was not decided until last summer when Kenyon ruled that the County Board of Supervisors had discriminated against Latinos when it drew district lines in 1981.

“The Hispanic community,” he ruled, “has sadly been denied an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect candidates of their choice to the Board of Supervisors. . . . The supervisors’ primary objective was to protect their incumbencies and that of their allies.”

Richard Fajardo is an attorney for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund whose investigation of county district lines and ethnic demographics laid the groundwork for the lawsuit.

His work on the case is not finished. He spent a part of Election Day totaling up the number of hours he had worked--he declined to give an estimate--because of legal questions over attorney’s fees. Other battles loom; he could be found Tuesday at MALDEF’s downtown offices, ordering computers and preparing for statewide redistricting efforts, based on 1990 Census data, that will begin soon.

Fajardo, in meetings in the Latino community, began the first serious discussions with Garza about filing a lawsuit. They did in 1988, and the case grew to involve about a dozen of MALDEF’s attorneys and staff members. One of those who worked innumerable late evenings at Fajardo’s side was Carole Thomas, a paralegal. Next month, she and Fajardo will get married.

“We got to know each other pretty well working on the case,” Fajardo said. “Our idea of a hot Friday night date was spending time organizing documents.”

Fajardo said the magnitude of the court decision hit home when he voted in the primary a month ago.

“When I went in that first time and was given a ballot and realized I had a choice . . . that was the best feeling,” he said. “It felt like quite an accomplishment. I had that feeling again today.”

Mark Rosenbaum, 42, an ACLU attorney who worked side-by-side with Fajardo, spent Tuesday morning jogging and having breakfast with his 3-year-old daughter, Samara. It is something he never got to do during the hectic months of fighting the case.

By the time he reached his office, however, Rosenbaum once again had the county on his mind; he spent much of the day preparing yet another lawsuit, this one challenging the county’s policies involving the homeless and mentally ill.

Numerous boxes sat on Rosenbaum’s desk as he read legal papers, preparing for depositions he would soon take. He also took time out to vote in the election, but declined to say which candidate he favored.

“It is going to be a great day no matter what the outcome is,” Rosenbaum said. “Somewhere, I think the first (Latino) natives of Los Angeles are smiling. When you do these kinds of cases you have a deep sense of history. . . . I feel like we’ve really broken the color line.”

Attorney John McDermott, a specialist in commercial litigation, handled the county’s $6 million defense of the old district lines.

McDermott conceded it had been difficult even to keep track of the hours it required--the nights that drifted over into sleepless dawns. It was the only case the Harvard-educated private counsel ever handled for the county, and he no longer dwells on it.

“I don’t live in that district, so I don’t have an opportunity to vote,” McDermott said. “ . . . When you’re in trial, if you’re a trial lawyer, you are pretty much consumed by a case,” he said. “Then, when it’s over, you go to the beach (to relax) and start a new one.”

Supervisor Pete Schabarum, who is retiring next month after 19 years of representing the old 1st District, was not talking to reporters Tuesday.

He sat impassively through one of his final board meetings--a daylong session devoted to numerous technical matters, including geologic studies of a proposed housing development in Malibu. He leafed through papers while soil engineers talked about fault lines and rock layers.

Privately, Schabarum is said to be eagerly awaiting March 8, when his term ends. “He’s been telling me every board meeting, ‘Only so many more left,’ ” said one member of the supervisor’s staff.

After the long meeting, Schabarum was asked through an aide for comment on the end of his days on the board.

“What’s to say?” was his response.

The 1st District struggle made a name of sorts for a former Schabarum aide, Sarah Flores. She won the 1st District primary balloting last June--one day before Judge Kenyon ruled that the lines must be redrawn and another election held. She subsequently failed to qualify for Tuesday’s two-candidate runoff.

And so Flores spent Election Day at home, fighting the flu. It was a bitter day all around. She remains convinced that, given the opportunity, she could have won the 1st District seat under the old configuration--and in the process made political history as the first Latina supervisor.

“It became a political thing,” she said. “I was destined to win.”

For Kenyon, Election Day was just one more day on the bench in U.S. District Court. He was overseeing jury selection in a bank fraud case. He polled jurors himself, asking questions with the same gentle humor that often had softened the courtroom animosity that accompanied the redistricting case.

“What did you do before you retired?” Kenyon asked one prospective juror.

“I was a research chemist.”

“How about your wife?”

“She was a chemist too.”

“So--you two have good chemistry.”

Kenyon had no comment on the election. A secretary noted that he still must rule on questions of legal fees.

KEY PLAYERS IN REDISTRICTING BATTLE

A number of important players spent months--even years--to bring about Tuesday’s supervisorial election in Los Angeles County’s newly drawn 1st District. The new district resulted from a successful lawsuit brought by Latino activists who contended that old boundaries reflected a racial bias against Latinos. These are some of the people involved in the ensuing legal battle. Richard Fajardo: An attorney for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund who investigated old supervisorial district boundaries in light of shifting ethnic populations.

Yolanda Garza: The Arcadia resident who became the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit.

Mark Rosenbaum: An American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, he worked with Fajardo to try the case.

Judge David V. Kenyon: The federal judge who ruled last summer that existing district boundaries were discriminatory against Latino voters.

Supervisor Pete Schabarum: With his 19-year term to end in March, Schabarum had no comment on his final days in office or on Tuesday’s election.

Leo Estrada: The UCLA demographer who used computers to draw new boundaries for the 1st District.