GOP Offers New Plan for Assembly Districts : Remapping: Proposal relayed to state Supreme Court would give party excellent chance for a majority of seats.

Republican lawmakers have proposed new political districts that would give their party an excellent chance of seizing a majority of the Assembly’s 80 seats in 1992, giving them control of one house in the Legislature for the first time in two decades.

Gov. Pete Wilson, who last month vetoed three different Democratic-drawn plans for new Assembly districts, said through a spokesman that the GOP plan should be the starting point for new negotiations with the Democrats who control the Legislature’s lower house.

The plan was submitted to the state Supreme Court over the weekend and made public by the court on Monday. The Republican authors of the proposal said they would not comment on it until their lawyers present the lines to a panel of retired judges appointed by the court to draw the new districts.

Demographic and partisan information available with the plan show that it includes 40 seats--half the Assembly--in which Republican voter registration is 40% or greater, a standard often used by political analysts to define a district that can be counted on to elect a Republican candidate.

Because Democratic incumbents in some of those districts would probably run for reelection, one Capitol aide familiar with the plan said it would likely produce 38 or 39 safe Republican seats. Another half dozen or so districts could fall to either party.

Democrats now hold 47 seats to the Republicans’ 33.

The plan reportedly draws out of existence the seats of two liberal Democrats--Tom Hayden of Santa Monica and Byron Sher of Palo Alto--and moves those districts to the rapidly growing Inland Empire region east of Los Angeles. It also places Democrats Richard E. Floyd of Carson and Dave Elder of San Pedro into a single district and includes two Westside Los Angeles Democratic districts where there are now three.

The plan envisions six Los Angeles-area districts in which Latinos make up 40% of the registered voters, a level of voter registration that civil rights groups have said is necessary to enable Latinos to elect representatives of their choice. A plan proposed by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund included only five such districts.

The state Constitution requires the Legislature to redraw district lines every 10 years to reflect population shifts detected in the U.S. Census. When the Legislature and the governor reach an impasse, as they have this year, the task goes to the state Supreme Court.

The justices have appointed a panel of special masters--three retired judges--to draw the lines and ordered them to complete the job by Nov. 29.

Gov. Wilson earlier this year appointed his own bipartisan panel to draw up a proposal and endorsed that plan, with some suggested changes, when it was submitted to the special masters. He criticized the Democratic-drawn plans, which were approved by both houses of the Legislature, as attempts to guarantee Democratic domination of the Legislature through the end of the century. The Republican-drawn plan appears to be better for incumbents of both parties than were the lines drawn by Wilson’s panel.

Dan Schnur, a spokesman for Wilson, said the governor has been briefed on the contents of the Republican plan and would support it “as the basis for further legislative negotiations.”