Latino Leaders Push Redistricting Goals : Politics: At a state Senate panel hearing in Ventura, officials and activists stress importance of districts that do not split minority areas.

Latino leaders dominated a public hearing Friday in Ventura on political redistricting, lining up to tell a key state Senate committee how to redraw the boundaries of legislative and congressional districts without fragmenting Latino communities.

A coalition of Latino elected officials and activists stressed the importance of placing those cities with heavy concentrations of Latinos in the same Assembly, state Senate and congressional districts.

For Ventura County, the coalition urged lawmakers to draw district lines around the cities of Oxnard, Santa Paula, Fillmore, and communities of Piru, Saticoy and El Rio so that Latino communities are not fractured and their voting strength is not diluted.

“If your objective is to enhance the chances for minority influence and election to office, you would avoid splitting Oxnard with congressional lines as it is now,” said Carlos Ornelas, a political science professor at Ventura College.

Ornelas was one member of the coalition that provided a well-orchestrated message of high expectations among the county’s growing Latino community. Census bureau figures scheduled for release next week are expected to show that Latinos now make up about 27% of the county’s population, compared to about 21% in 1980.

Organized in advance, coalition members quickly assumed control at the three-hour public hearing at the Ventura County Government Center, altering the speakers’ agenda compiled by the state Senate Committee on Elections and Reapportionment.

Committee Chairman Milton Marks (D-San Francisco) initially grew irritated at coalition members and then gave in altogether. At one point, he told one speaker, “Would you like to call your next witness?”

Richard Martinez, executive director of the Southwest Voter Registration/Education Project in Montebello, said Latinos have dominated the last three hearings that the Senate elections committee has held at different locations around the state.

By the end of April, the committee plans to hold 15 hearings before drawing new political district boundaries that reflect shifts in population as documented by the 1990 census.

“A lot of these folks were involved 10 years ago,” said Martinez, who is monitoring the hearings across the state. “Politically, legally, and technically, they are better prepared than they have ever been.”

For one thing, there are more Latino elected officials than there were 10 years ago. The speakers at Friday’s hearing included Santa Paula Councilman Alfonso Urias, Oxnard Councilman Manuel M. Lopez, Oxnard Elementary School Board Member Mary Baretto, Moorpark City Councilman Bernardo Perez and Pete Tafoya, a Ventura County Community College District board member.

The area coalition is backed by the Southwest Voter project, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund and other statewide Latino groups. These groups vow to challenge redistricting maps if they determine that the newly drawn districts violate Latino voting rights.