How Panel Redrew the Political Map : Reapportionment: Jurists and staff say partisan politics had no impact on them as they drafted a plan for the state Supreme Court.

It was 4:45 p.m. on his 74th birthday when retired appellate Judge George A. Brown got a telephone call from California Chief Justice Malcolm M. Lucas asking him to take on an unusual and somewhat difficult task.

Would he be willing to preside over a three-member panel of special masters to draft a new congressional and legislative reapportionment plan for the state Supreme Court?

Brown accepted with little hesitation. “It’s pretty hard to say no to the chief,” he recalled Thursday. “It would be like saying no to Moses, or Charlton Heston.”

With that, Brown, two other retired judges and a small staff worked long hours for two months, poring over maps, computer printouts and a wealth of other data. The result was a 100-page reapportionment plan, released Monday, that promises to dramatically reshape California politics for the 1990s. While the plan must still be reviewed by the high court, few changes are anticipated.

As it turned out, the masters’ plan is likely to help Republicans--and result in the displacement of a number of incumbents. But the masters say they played no heed to partisan politics--and in fact did not know, or seek to learn, where incumbents resided.

“We just went out and did it,” said Brown. “We had no agenda, no political purpose, and we did not consider any political consequences.”

Nonetheless, there was grumbling this week in Sacramento. “No question, this is a partisan gerrymander of gigantic proportions,” said Assemblyman Steve Peace (D-Chula Vista). “There’s no reason for Republicans to do anything but cheer.”

The question of partisanship brings an ironic smile to the face of Paul L. McKaskle, the 57-year old University of San Francisco law professor who served in the key post of director and chief counsel for the masters.

In 1973, McKaskle led a staff that produced a similar court-drafted reapportionment plan. Then, the GOP was complaining.

Democrats made big gains in the Legislature in 1974--and some Republicans blamed the staff that drew up the plan. Other political observers noted that 1974 was a year of Republican losses throughout the country in the wake of the Watergate scandal.

If there is to be political heat from the current plan, the masters will be prepared for it, McKaskle said. “These are all veteran jurists who have been around for a long time,” he said. “They know what the law is and they try to follow it. They don’t play favorites.”

The daunting task of preparing the plan fell on a relatively small group. The masters included:

* Brown, a judicial appointee of former Gov. Ronald Reagan who served on the Superior Court in Kern County and the state Court of Appeal in Fresno. A registered Republican, he now sits temporarily by special assignment on the appeals court.

* Rafael H. Galceran, 70, an appointee of former Gov. Goodwin J. Knight who before retirement served on the Municipal Court and Superior Court benches in Los Angeles. He is a Republican.

* Thomas Kongsgaard, 70, another appointee of Knight who served on the Superior Court in Napa County. A Democrat, he still sits temporarily on the Superior Court and engages in private arbitration work.

McKaskle, currently a visiting professor at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, served as a deputy district attorney in Ventura County and as litigation director for the Western Center on Law and Poverty before joining the faculty at USF. A longtime authority on reapportionment, he grew interested in the subject as a college student, even before the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic “one-man, one-vote” decisions in 1962 and 1964, which essentially required equal populations within legislative districts.

Assisting McKaskle were consultant Eugene C. Lee, professor emeritus of political science at UC Berkeley; Rich Langree, a Supreme Court staff attorney with extensive computer experience; Guy B. Colburn, a retired court staff attorney, and staff members Rebecca Sullivan, Chang Morozumi and Erica Drewes.

McKaskle said neither he nor any other member of the staff had ever worked for a party or political organization in connection with reapportionment.

McKaskle’s experience proved invaluable. “He had been through the mill once before,” Kongsgaard said. “He’s very talented and has a remarkable knowledge of California geography. . . . Partisanship never came up in our discussions--except to say we were not going to consider it.”

In only two months, the masters conducted statewide hearings, collected data and reviewed 22 statewide reapportionment plans from Gov. Pete Wilson, lawmakers and others before drafting their own proposal for review by the high court. The justices will hear arguments over the masters’ proposal on Jan. 13, and plan to issue their decision by Jan. 28.

For McKaskle, advances in computer technology made the job easier in some respects this year than it was in 1973. But after nearly 20 years, there were important new developments in the law.

One key task was to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act by creating districts that will protect the voting potential of racial minorities. The panel also was required to adhere to a 1980 state Constitution amendment aimed at assuring that districts are composed of adjacent territory--and not of distant communities joined in odd shapes only by a highway, beach or waterway.

Times staff writer Ralph Frammolino in Sacramento contributed to this report.