Coveted Landmarks Add a Twist to Redistricting Task : Politics: From Dodger Stadium to Disneyland, they offer lawmakers fund-raising and sentimental benefits.

When state legislators redrew district boundaries in 1981, then-Assemblyman Mike Roos made a request. He asked that Dodger Stadium be drawn into his Los Angeles district.

But Roos, a die-hard baseball fan, ran into a problem--Dodger Stadium was in the district of Assembly Reapportionment Committee Chairman Richard Alatorre, who was not about to give it up. Alatorre, however, did offer Roos a consolation prize--the parking lot.

“I was able to say that I represent part of Dodger Stadium,” Roos chuckled, adding that the boundary change did not earn him free tickets, free parking or political benefits.

He is not the only one who has requested special boundary changes.

Officials have drawn jigsaw-shaped districts to pick up their favorite restaurants, movie studios, hospitals, military bases, real estate developments and, in the case of former Los Angeles City Councilman Dave Cunningham, the cemetery where his parents are buried.

Presently, state legislators are locked in turf wars over Santa Catalina Island and Marina del Rey. “There has always been a fight over Disneyland,” added one redistricting expert.

Redistricting is an arcane political game being played out this year as cities, counties and the state adjust district maps to reflect population changes recorded in the 1990 Census.

Most of the effort goes into shaping districts that ensure the political survival of incumbents without violating the voting rights of minorities. But there is another side to the drawing of lines.

“It comes (down) to perks, prestige and money,” said Eric Schockman, associate director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC.

Alatorre, now a Los Angeles councilman, has expressed interest in extending his Eastside district deeper into downtown Los Angeles, a potentially rich fund-raising source for a possible 1993 mayoral campaign. Alatorre said that preserving the Latino business corridor along Broadway is foremost in his mind.

Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) said he and two colleagues--Tom Mays (R-Huntington Beach) and Gerald N. Felando (R-San Pedro)--are fighting over whose district will include Catalina Island.

“It’s not something that’s going to raise you a million dollars,” said Ferguson. “It’s just that it would be kind of fun to be the representative of an off-shore island. And there’s three of us wanting that island. You’d like to represent Hawaii if you could.”

Ferguson said if Catalina is included in his district, he will introduce a bill next year to make one of the island’s famous fishes--the bright orange Garibaldi--the official state fish. The golden trout currently holds that honor.

Felando argues that he has represented Catalina previously and it is closer to San Pedro than Long Beach, which is part of Mays’ district. “I campaigned hard on that island,” he said. “I walked it three times.”

Said Mays: “The only reason they want Catalina Island is so they can go over there and have a little vacation. My district saddles both Orange County and Los Angeles County, and the island caters to both Los Angeles and Orange County residents.”

A similar dispute has erupted in the state Senate between Los Angeles Democrats Diane Watson and Herschel Rosenthal over representation of affluent Marina del Rey. “Without the marina,” Watson said, “every affluent area has been taken out of the district.”

Rosenthal said the marina fits neatly into his coastal district, which includes Venice and Santa Monica.

On the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, Mike Antonovich and Ed Edelman have been fighting over whose district will include Olive View Medical Center in the San Fernando Valley.

Antonovich said that he wants the hospital in his district because he helped build it and has an “emotional attachment” to the facility.

Edelman said he does not want to lose Olive View and become the only supervisor without a county hospital in his district. “It makes sense to keep the hospital in a district where most of the patients are from,” he added.

In his book, “The Reapportionment Puzzle,” Bruce Cain, who has been a redistricting consultant to Los Angeles city and county and the state Legislature, wrote that boundaries often reflect the “idiosyncratic preferences” of lawmakers.

“Legislators will sometimes request to have the line diverge to pick up amusement parks, athletic stadiums, the houses of key contributors, mothers-in-law and the like,” Cain wrote. “While such requests are a nuisance, their effects on representation or partisan balance are minimal.”

Cain, associate director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley, added: “These things can matter to people to a degree that you wouldn’t anticipate.”

Politicians have extended boundaries to pick up neighborhoods where they are shopping for new homes. They have drawn out the homes of potential opponents.

A landmark such as a movie studio can be a great place for a fund-raiser or a source of campaign contributions, according to political consultants.

Roos, for example, succeeded in having Paramount Studios placed in his Assembly district.

“Paramount offered, when Roos called, their commissary for fund raising,” said Schockman, a former Roos aide.

But sometimes the benefits of such creative redistricting prove to be illusions, according to Leroy Hardy, former consultant to the California reapportionment master, the late Rep. Phillip Burton (D-San Francisco).

Hardy recalled that the late Rep. Charles Wilson (D-Torrance) insisted in the late 1960s that his district include Los Angeles International Airport “because he thought he got better treatment. But (airport officials would give special treatment) to any congressman who came in there.”

Richard Robinson, a former assemblyman, said he fought to keep Disneyland in his district so that no matter where he was in the world, “everyone would know where my district was.”

In fact, U.S. Sen. John F. Seymour of Anaheim said that England’s Queen Elizabeth II, during a recent visit, figured out who he was only after he identified himself as “the senator from Disneyland.”

Bob Gay, former chief deputy to the late Councilman Gilbert W. Lindsay, said he succeeded in placing his favorite breakfast eatery, the Pacific Dining Car, in the 9th District during the last council redistricting.

“I drew the line so I could have a restaurant in the district because that’s where I eat breakfast,” said Gay. “It doesn’t mean you get a better table (or free meal). Sometimes, it’s just a matter of ego.”

Gay added that the elderly Lindsay insisted in 1986 that his district include Good Samaritan Hospital, because “he felt if he had a problem and needed medical care, he might get slightly better service.”

During the 1981 state reapportionment, Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) asked that his San Fernando Valley district be extended to pick up the Palomino country-and-Western bar where he has held fund-raisers, according to redistricting experts.

Katz, however, said that he was only joking when he made the request. “Someone asked me in a lighthearted conversation what are you looking for in reapportionment,” Katz said. “I said the Palomino club is a couple of blocks outside of my district. I like to hang out there.”

Redistricting consultants said they treated Katz’s request seriously but were unable to grant it because of objections from the assemblyman in whose district the bar was located.

Sometimes the requests baffle the experts.

Joseph Shumate, a redistricting consultant to Gov. Pete Wilson, said: “I had a legislator say, ‘Can you make sure my church is in my district?’ . . . I had another insist that we (extend his boundary line) over the mountains to pick up his vacation home in Lake Tahoe. I can’t figure it out.”

In Pasadena, each of the seven City Council districts bisect trendy Colorado Boulevard because each council member wanted to represent a piece of the city’s major business area, a city official said.

In San Francisco in 1961, former state Assemblyman Charlie Meyers, an Irish Catholic, “wanted his district drawn following parish lines so all the parishes where he went to baptisms, weddings and funerals would be in his district,” recalled Tony Quinn, a redistricting consultant.

“Republicans generally have enjoyed having country clubs in their districts,” said Quinn, who was in charge of Assembly reapportionment for Republicans in 1981.

During last year’s voting rights trial involving Los Angeles County, it was revealed that conservative supervisors in 1981 drew a redistricting plan stretching Supervisor Kenneth Hahn’s South-Central Los Angeles district with a long, narrow finger to pick up the beach and Hahn’s alma mater, Pepperdine University in Malibu.

“We had heard rumors that Kenny Hahn wanted to get to the ocean,” political consultant Ron Smith testified.

“He just loves the beach,” Mas Fukai, chief deputy to Hahn, said of his boss. But the proposed map lost political support.

One redistricting expert said he expects to see fewer such boundary changes because federal law prohibits redistricting that fragments minority communities and dilutes their voting strength.

“Without all of the constraints of the Voting Rights Act, it was a lot more colorful in the past,” he said. “Now the line-drawers do what the lawyers tell them to do. It’s not the good old boys back room deal. It really has changed.”

Times staff writers Mark Gladstone in Sacramento and Dave Lesher in Orange County contributed to this story.

BACKGROUND

City, county and state officials are embarking on the usually contentious political remapping that is required after every census. Officials must equalize the population among districts. They also seek to carve out districts that maximize their political strength and that of their ideological colleagues or party members while placing desireable geography in their districts. Reapportionment this year is complicated by the changing ethnic composition of Los Angeles and California and by court rulings that prohibit the fragmentation of heavy concentrations of minority voters.