NEWS ANALYSIS : Redistricting O.C. May Lead to Court Fight

Unless changes are made in a redistricting plan that the Board of Supervisors is to consider Tuesday, the once-a-decade process of redrawing Orange County’s five supervisorial districts appears headed for a showdown in court.

Along with their own committee’s proposal, supervisors will also be presented with a map drawn up by the Hispanic Redistricting Committee, which would create a district with slightly more than 50% Latinos, unprecedented in Orange County.

While the two redistricting plans are not very different on paper, in the world of politics, where perception can be translated into votes, they are worlds apart, say members of the Hispanic committee.

The one person who can do the most to head off the kind of legal battle that turned Los Angeles County politics upside down is Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, whose 1st District includes Orange County’s largest concentration of minorities.

“We are not trying to dilute the minority community,” Stanton said last week. “The difference is so small. Is it enough to be a sueable case? I say, ‘Here it is, public, you be the judge.’ ”

Redistricting, a process being repeated all over the country, is supposed to set out new electoral boundaries to make up for population shifts determined by the U.S. Census. It is a unique numbers game, with the object being to divide the population as equally as possible among the voting districts.

But the process is not so simple. In fact, it is a minefield of competing political interests.

“Redistricting is a special-interest group process,” said political consultant Harvey Englander. “And usually, the interest group in power is the one that gets to draw the plan.”

Everybody wants something out of redistricting. Critics in Orange County say that supervisors, who are in charge of the process, want to preserve their own political futures. Others say that the Hispanic Redistricting Committee just wants to carve out a district where a Latino can win election to the Board of Supervisors.

Members of the Hispanic committee say they just want the supervisors to follow the mandates of the federal Voting Rights Act, which says that communities of like interests, such as ethnic communities, must not be split up among districts.

No matter who wants what, the advantage inevitably falls to those in charge of making the changes, which in this case is the Board of Supervisors.

By law, the supervisors had to appoint a panel to shepherd through the redistricting plan, to take public input and come up with one map.

But even the makeup of the Supervisorial Redistricting Committee was a sign of where the final plan was headed. Supervisors appointed an aide from each of their offices to the committee but included no one else. While the five-member committee invited input from the public, in the end it rejected plans submitted by both Latino and Asian groups.

The committee members also provided little explanation during weekly meetings about why they chose the redistricting map that ultimately will go to supervisors Tuesday for approval.

On the eve of the selection of a final plan, the Hispanic Redistricting Committee is charging that the county’s proposed map dilutes the voting strength of Latino voters.

“They’re looking at what is going to create a better environment for their own political futures,” said Ruben Smith, an attorney and counsel for the Hispanic Redistricting Committee. “That’s what drawing the lines shows you, where they see their support coming from.”

The county’s ethnic population has boomed in 10 years. One of every four Orange County residents is now Latino, an increase of almost 100% from 10 years ago. Asians now make up 10% of the county population, an increase of 177%.

But the tussle over the two plans is almost entirely over the makeup of Stanton’s 1st District, which includes Santa Ana.

Santa Ana, the county seat, is also the city with the highest percentage of ethnic minorities. The 1990 Census showed that Santa Ana’s population is 65% Latino, 9% Asian and only 23% Anglo.

The first map that Stanton’s aide submitted on his behalf early in the redistricting process showed all of Santa Ana being shifted out of his district and into the 3rd District, represented by Board Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez, the only Latino on the board.

The plan that the county’s redistricting committee finally settled on carves out a 1st District with 63% minorities, including 47% Latino.

It would chop up at least four cities, including Santa Ana, which would be split between three districts. A northern portion of Santa Ana would go into Vasquez’s district, which includes some of unincorporated South County. The central portion of Santa Ana would remain in the 1st District. The southern sliver would go to Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder’s 2nd District, which includes Huntington Beach and Seal Beach.

The plan that the Hispanic Redistricting Committee will present achieves its numerical balance without splitting any cities between districts, committee members said. The 1st District would include all of Santa Ana, all of Garden Grove and all of Stanton. But it would leave out Fountain Valley, Supervisor Stanton’s hometown, where he once served as mayor.

The Hispanic committee’s plan also would create a 1st District with 66% minorities, including slightly more than 50% Latinos, just a fraction more than the county-proposed plan.

What’s in a few percentage points? While it seems like a small difference, that fine line separating minority from majority also separates wishful thinking from political reality.

“Some of the difference is symbolism,” says UC Irvine political science professor Bernard Grofman.

“But it’s more than that. A relatively few percentage points can translate into a real difference in whether a candidate can be elected by a community. People become convinced that a candidate can win” if they number in the majority.

“The candidate can raise money because they won’t be seen as running a hopeless race,” he said. “A candidate won’t be deterred from running in the first place.”

Grofman said the Board of Supervisors is probably courting legal trouble if it adopts a plan that dissects the county’s most ethnic city, Santa Ana.

“The issue is this: If you can draw a map with 50% Hispanics without splitting any cities, then there’s certainly no reason to draw one with fewer Hispanics if you are willing to split cities,” he said.

The county’s map is also raising the ire of some mayors whose cities will be split.

It is especially galling to Santa Ana Mayor Daniel H. Young, who has said in the past that he is interested in seeking election as supervisor of the 1st District. The county’s plan leaves his residence out of the district.

Young said this week that he has no intention of running for supervisor because he wants to seek another term as mayor in the November, 1992, race.

“I don’t think I’m the issue here,” Young said. “It doesn’t matter what my (political) plans are. Our City Council has talked about this, and we just don’t want our city being cut into three. We believe we’re best represented in one district.

“I find it somewhat curious that the line for District 1 was drawn half a block from my home.

“So, I have been reading up on Seal Beach issues, he said facetiously, to see what possible common interests they could have with Santa Ana. I haven’t found any yet.”

In hopes of garnering the support of mayors, members of the Hispanic Redistricting Committee said they came up with a plan that does not split any cities.

The goings-on of the last few weeks leave many observers believing that a lawsuit is inevitable.

“I think the threat of a lawsuit is very real,” Englander said. But he added that he did not think it would be successful.

“It’s real cheap and real easy to file a lawsuit,” he said. “The filing of lawsuits has become a cottage industry for some groups.”

Such a fight could pit supervisors against a group backed by lawyers and others from organizations with a long track record at challenging electoral boundaries in other parts of the country.

The Hispanic Redistricting Committee is a 22-member bipartisan group of community activists and lawyers. It has been preparing for this process for some months and has been receiving advice from groups such as the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Southwest Voters Registration League.

Both of those groups were involved in the lawsuit that changed Los Angeles County’s supervisorial boundaries, making way for Gloria Molina to be elected earlier this year as the first Latina on the board.

Stanton said the Hispanic committee maintains that it is looking out for the interests of all minority groups but is in fact just looking out for Latinos.

“ ‘Community of interest’ is their watchword up to a point,” he said. “As long as we don’t consider anyone else’s community of interest, they want us to recognize it.”

He said his intent in the county’s proposed redistricting map is only to find a balance of numbers.

“Personalities were not involved here,” he said. “I thought Dan Young lived somewhere else.”

Members of the Hispanic committee have been meeting with Stanton in private throughout the process to come up with a compromise that could avoid a lawsuit.

“I think what it really comes down to is Roger Stanton,” said the Hispanic committee’s Smith. “The other board members probably could live with our plan or some similar version of our plan.

“Roger has the opportunity to bring groups in the community together and come up with a plan that everyone can agree on and then be a hero,” he said.

Redrawing the Lines

On Tuesday, members of the Orange County Board of Supervisors will consider a redistricting plan proposed by a committee the board appointed. However, a group of Latinos, whose members say the county’s plan dilutes the voting power of minorities, will present its own plan.