Why Republicans May Rue Their Heartfelt Support for Term Limits : Reapportionment: The plan of the court-appointed panel, in seeking to be apolitical, may end up making a political revolution.

The political earth in California has moved. It’s still too early to tell how far and in what direction it has shifted. But the redistricting plan submitted by court-appointed special masters, entrusted with drawing legislative and congressional lines after Gov. Pete Wilson and lawmakers couldn’t agree, could drastically alter California politics.

By now, reapportionment junkies know that the new lines portend a Democratic disaster of major proportions: their majority in the Assembly is at risk; their margin in the state Senate is likely to decline, and their lop-sided domination of the state’s congressional delegation is at an end.

This shouldn’t be surprising. Partisanship aside, it appears the masters aimed for an “honest” reapportionment. There are cynics who insist the panel, appointed by a Republican court, showed a flair for gerrymandering unequaled since Rep. Phil Burton plied his cartography for the Democrats in 1982. More likely, the masters’ lines merely confirmed population growth patterns that have been developing for years.

The 1982 Democratic reapportionment masked the extent of this demographic change. When Wilson won the governorship, it became inevitable that high growth in Republican-leaning areas would have to be accommodated, no matter who drew the lines.

The court masters also took notice of Voting Rights Act requirements regarding minority representation, although some members of the Latino and Asian communities are dissatisfied with the outcome. The cartographers, furthermore, largely adhered to guidelines for district compactness and geographic integrity. On the face of it, all this means good news for minorities and Republicans and bad news for Anglo Democrats.

Below the surface, however, there are a couple of surprises and a large dose of irony.

Unlike previous legislator-driven reapportionments, the court plan virtually ignores incumbency--in some cases dumping two or three sitting legislators together into one district. That’s something Wilson dearly wanted for Christmas. He has made entrenched Democrats and ultra-conservative Republicans the villains in his budget and policy fights. A new group of more moderate legislators would allow Wilson to move his agenda forward and build a record on which to run for reelection and higher office. As one Republican observed, “Wilson gambled and won.”

Perhaps. But the irony is that Republicans, just when they have a chance for long-term domination of the California Legislature, risk losing it in six years--thanks to the term limits Wilson and the Republican Party eagerly endorsed in Prop. 140. Throughout the decade, population growth will continue, demographics will change, voter registration shift. By 1998, when the first incumbents elected under the 1991 reapportionment would leave office, the Republicans may wish for the protective power of entrenched incumbency.

Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown may not have to wait that long to wax nostalgic for lost power. In another ironic twist, this reapportionment may have seen the consummate politician make the consummate political blunder. In trying to protect his incumbents, Brown may have doomed them. In trying to salvage his speakership, he may have destroyed it.

Early in the redistricting process, Brown might have been able to cut a deal with conservative Republicans that would have given the GOP a fighting chance to gain more seats, while still offering incumbents of both parties some protection. He didn’t. And there is little hope now that the Legislature will beat the state Supreme Court’s Jan. 28 deadline for adopting the masters’ lines by passing a law Wilson would sign or by amassing the votes necessary to override his likely veto.

The Senate leadership tried to do it right. Ironically, that doesn’t seem to have worked, either. The Democrats gave up some security to accommodate Republican growth and minority representation. The proposed Senate lines had a public airing. A bipartisan deal was cut. And if the Senate reapportionment plan had been handed to Wilson separately--without the baggage of unacceptable Democratic Assembly and congressional plans--it may well have become law.

Of the court plan, Senate GOP leader Ken Maddy groused, “It’s no great victory for Republicans, and I’m not sure it’s any great victory for fair reapportionment.”

David A. Roberti, the Senate president pro tem, appears to be without a comfortable district. Speculation is that the pro-life Democrat could move into a more Republican district, which would be hard going, or into a Democratic district to the West. But that is pro-choice territory.

There was a time when Roberti could have sold himself to a liberal Democratic constituency on other issues--gun control, education, welfare spending. But perhaps not in the first election year of the post-Clarence Thomas-Anita F. Hill era. Abortion may become a litmus-test issue, and there might be an angry woman out there ready to run.

There is another irony in what the masters have done. In Congress, among the incumbents most at risk appear to be Democratic representatives Howard L. Berman and Vic Fazio, who were the point men for that party’s reapportionment strategy, and Henry A. Waxman who, along with Berman, heads the vaunted West Los Angeles political organization that bears their names.

The media have trumpeted the theme that, because their districts have changed or disappeared, the political futures of these three Democratic leaders are at risk, as are those of state legislators supported by the Waxman-Berman organization. When the dust clears and districts are staked out, what is likely to happen is that they will face more difficult races, but they will run hard and spend the money necessary to win.

And that means money usually raised by Fazio, Waxman and Berman to contribute to Democratic congressional candidates nationwide may be diverted to their own California races. As a result, there will be less money available to invest in maintaining a Democratic majority in Congress.

California’s political clout in Congress won’t necessarily diminish. In fact, a less ideologically polarized delegation might be able to work together, thereby enhancing the state’s power. But the direction of national policy could well be affected.

This underscores another irony of the reapportionment--and of any plan that compacts minority constituencies into districts they can win. Latinos and blacks may see their numbers in California’s congressional delegation and Legislature augmented, but their policy agendas could fare less well. Under the masters’ plan, a number of their legislative allies--who happen to be Anglo Democrats--may be wiped out and replaced by Republican lawmakers who may not share the priorities of California’s minority communities.

Paul McKaskle, chief counsel to the masters, claimed that the panel ignored political considerations and implications. Not taking political data into consideration is itself a political decision. And the result of the court’s decision to be “apolitical” may lead to the high irony of a reapportionment that will shake California to its political foundations.