Remap Bills Are Vetoed by Wilson

Accusing the Legislature’s Democratic majority of seeking an “unfair partisan advantage,” Gov. Pete Wilson on Monday vetoed three bills containing alternative plans for redrawing legislative and congressional districts for the 1990s.

Just hours later, Democrats in the Assembly and Senate failed to override the vetoes. Unless there is a last-minute compromise, the task of drawing new political boundaries to reflect population shifts detected in the 1990 U.S. Census will go to the state Supreme Court.

In three nearly identical veto messages released by his office, Wilson said the plans were hastily drawn without sufficient involvement from the public and failed “to meet even the most fundamental standards of fairness.”

The Legislature’s effort, Wilson said, “falls so short of a fair and lawful redistricting plan that it cannot be considered a serious attempt to redistrict the state and must be summarily rejected.”

Wilson cited a number of examples of what he called “misshapen, twisted” districts, which he said were designed to protect incumbent lawmakers and to safeguard the Democrats’ majorities in the Assembly, the state Senate and California’s delegation in Congress.

The move by Democratic leaders to override the vetoes did not attract a single Republican vote. Both attempts fell far short of the two-thirds majorities required to override the governor. In the Assembly, Democratic Speaker Willie Brown of San Francisco implored Republicans to break with their governor, noting that the proposed district lines would make it easier in almost every case for incumbent Republicans to win reelection.

“For you to sit silently on this floor and allow your representation to be corrupted by this governor’s process is awful,” Brown told the GOP lawmakers. “You ought to show him you represent a level of independence, a level of courage, reflective of those people who sent you here to exercise that kind of leadership.”

The Assembly vote was 41 to 32, with 54 needed to override. In the Senate, the override attempt failed on a 22-10 vote, with 27 needed for a two-thirds majority.

It appeared Monday that only further concessions by Assembly Democrats would keep the matter from the state Supreme Court, which last drew the lines in 1973 after the Democratic-controlled Legislature and then-Gov. Ronald Reagan reached an impasse.

The proposed Senate plan already has bipartisan support, and at least one of three congressional plans has significant Republican backing. But in the Assembly, GOP lawmakers are insisting on a solid chance to seize a majority, while Democrats are refusing to agree to any plan that jeopardizes their hold on the house--which they now control 47 to 33.

Each of the three bills vetoed by the governor contained different Assembly and congressional plans and a single Senate plan. Each bill had to be acted upon as a package. Wilson did not indicate whether he supported any of the alternatives, although his aides have made it clear that the biggest obstacle to agreement is in the Assembly.

An Assembly-Senate conference committee was scheduled for today, but Brown said he would offer no new plans. He said he would be willing to react to Republican proposals.

“If there are to be any plans, it better be plans suggested by the governor himself, and let us take potshots at what they look like,” Brown told reporters. “If he’s so imbued with all this genius on how to do it, than he ought to do it.”

The impasse left Senate leaders frustrated that their plan, which was approved in the upper house on a 37-0 vote, had its fate tied to the more divisive Assembly proposals.

“I think we should continue to try, but it takes two houses to put something together,” Senate Leader David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) said. Wilson’s vetoes won praise from groups that have been monitoring the redistricting process.

Lisa Foster, executive director of California Common Cause, a government watchdog group, said the matter should go to the court as soon as possible.

“The Legislature’s behavior in the last two weeks only demonstrates that they are incapable of redistricting in a meaningful and fair way,” Foster said. “If they can’t do it, the court should. We should get on with it.”

Arturo Vargas, director of outreach and policy for the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said the Legislature took many of his group’s concerns into account but in the end failed to draw lines that were fair to the Latino community.

Times staff writers Jerry Gillam and Carl Ingram contributed to this article.