Ethnic Politics Shape Debate Over Council Size

There is no issue that more dramatically highlights the politics of race than the drawing of legislative lines.

Create one large City Council district in South-Central Los Angeles and black representation could shrink from three council members to one; divide that area into five districts and representation could leap from three to five. The same is true for East Los Angeles and Latinos or Silver Lake and Armenians, one of the city’s larger minority groups all but invisible at City Hall.

In theory, small districts might create a predominantly Asian seat, something diverse Los Angeles, with its dispersed Asian population, has never had. Very large districts would almost certainly preclude that, although not the election of Asian American lawmakers. Former City Councilman and mayoral candidate Mike Woo, after all, represented Hollywood, which has relatively few Asian voters.

Now, as the rubber meets the road in the debate to rewrite Los Angeles’ City Charter, rival camps are forming around the questions of how many council seats there should be and where the lines that divide them might be drawn.

Some of the 15 council members, including council President John Ferraro, insist that the council should stay as is, that more seats would just mean more headaches. The elected charter commission is dabbling with 25 seats; its appointed counterpart, typically more conservative, is eyeing 21. One political scientist has floated the idea of 23 seats, including 19 districts and four regional spots. A San Fernando Valley business coalition is looking at 25, while a downtown business coalition prefers 35.

Mayor Richard Riordan may be about the only political player without an interest in the outcome. He has strategically steered clear of the debate, citing his lack of concern as evidence that he is not interested in using charter reform to meddle with the council.

And yet, despite Riordan’s professed indifference, each suggestion has profound implications for the political Los Angeles that will emerge in the 21st century. In fact, the tussle for power on this issue may ultimately define the most important legacy of the charter reform debate.

“What a lot of groups are going to be concerned about, and very legitimately, is how the size of the council and the district lines are going to affect their influence,” said Raphael Sonenshine, the executive director of the appointed charter reform commission and an academic who has long studied ethnic politics in Los Angeles. “There really are no guarantees that any group will get X, Y or Z. . . . It’s going to take years to work out redistricting.”

Neither charter reform commission intends to offer voters a new political map.

Both commissions hope that their work, including how many members should be on the City Council, will be considered by voters next year. But the appointed panel only has the authority to submit its recommendations to the council, while the elected commission can place its proposed charter directly before voters.

Each panel intends to draft language recommending the size of the council as well as the method to plot new district lines. The result is that the debate over council size already has strayed into a rollicking disagreement about how the world’s most ethnically diverse city will be reflected in its legislature.

Skepticism Over Proposals

First up is a proposal by a powerful alliance of business interests who see the radical expansion of the City Council as a way to strengthen the mayor’s office and head off neighborhood councils, which the business groups see as Balkanizing and potentially devastating.

The business leaders--a CEO organization known as the Los Angeles Business Advisors, which includes Times Publisher Mark Willes, the city Chamber of Commerce and the Central City Assn.--have gone so far as to hire a consultant to draw a map showing how the new district lines of a 35-member council might look.

According to that analysis, conducted by the Kamber Group, the dramatically enlarged council would solve a host of civic woes, from improving constituent services to increasing council diversity and creating the possibility of a predominantly Asian council seat.

Others who have studied the group’s proposal are skeptical, however, warning that in their zeal to sell the idea to voters, advocates of a 35-member council have proposed significant cutbacks in council staff, a move that may actually hurt constituent services.

Moreover, the group’s maps, which are still tentative, hedge on exactly where the much-ballyhooed Asian seat would be created. Chinatown is surrounded by heavily Latino areas, Koreatown has large numbers of Asian merchants but a low concentration of Asian residents and registered voters, and Little Tokyo is too small to support a council district.

The Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund worries that any significant council expansion might at least temporarily set back Latino hopes of gaining influence in the council. Latinos hold three of 15 spots, and one of the seats held by black council members may soon pass into Latino hands without any council expansion.

As a result, MALDEF would prefer a modest council expansion, from 15 to 19 members, and hopes that at least four or five of those 19 seats would be in predominantly Latino neighborhoods. But MALDEF opposes expanding the council to 25 seats, fearing that in any city map of 25 districts only four would have solid Latino majorities. Since 20% of the council is elected by majority Latino districts, that would represent slippage--or, in the vernacular of redistricting, “retrogression.”

“While sufficient Latino population resides to the west and south of downtown Los Angeles to enable the drawing of a fourth Latino district, we cannot be certain . . . that a fifth district can be drawn that would maintain the present Latino share of council districts,” MALDEF attorney Anthony E. Chavez wrote to the elected commission.

Contrary to that analysis, one attempt at drawing 25 seats performed by environmental planner David R. Diaz, a consultant to the elected commission who teaches at Cal State Northridge, concluded that no fewer than six seats of a 25-member council would have large Latino majorities. Another nine would have large numbers of Latinos as well--three, in fact, would have more than 55%. Given the growth of the Latino population and its increasing voter registration, the number of predominantly Latino seats could go as high as 15, the study concluded.

Contradictory Claims, Predictions

With so many contradictory claims and predictions clouding the debate, it’s no surprise that members of the two commissions reviewing the City Charter cover the entire waterfront: Some support the current 15-member council, some prefer 21 seats or 25 seats. So far, there is little apparent enthusiasm for expansion to 35 seats, but that idea has only recently entered the debate, so it still may gain traction as it gains attention.

At the most conservative end of the discussion is the idea that the council should remain in its current form: 15 members, each one in charge of one council committee and responsible for a district of about 250,000 people.

One argument for a small council is that it is easier to manage than a larger body. That explains the position of Ferraro, whose job it is to oversee the unruly body and who is wary of any proposal to boost membership.

“How would you like to have 35 Nate Holdens?” Ferraro joked, referring to the council’s most pugnacious, least predictable member.

Others who favor expansion, nevertheless, warn against growing too much or too fast.

Warren J. Christopher, the former secretary of state and one of Los Angeles’ preeminent lawyers, is among those who has warned that a large council would be a mistake.

In an interview early this year, Christopher said he would be skeptical of any proposal that increased council membership beyond 20 or 25. A council larger than that, he said, “doesn’t appeal to me much from a political-science perspective.”

Some critics oppose expansion in a different way: They contend that the council already is so petty and ineffective that substantially expanding it might create more of the same. Among those concerned about council expansion for those reasons is Alice Callaghan, an outspoken Episcopal minister who frequently has battled City Hall over skid row issues.

No matter what the ultimate council size will be, drawing new lines will test already fragile race relations. During the last redistricting debate in the early 1990s, tensions flared among whites, blacks and Latinos about where some boundaries would be placed; demographic shifts since then, and those anticipated in the coming years, make more face-offs seem all but inevitable.

“There was tension last time,” said Connie Rice, Western regional counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “It’s only increased.”

State, National Interests at Stake

So palpable were the stakes during the last redistricting that Rice and MALDEF chief Antonia Hernandez at one point hastily arranged a meeting to head off a confrontation over the council’s 9th District, which was held by an African American, but which some Latinos were determined to grab. Councilwoman Rita Walters, who is African American, held that seat in last year’s election, but narrowly won against relatively unknown opposition. Most observers believe that the 9th District almost surely will be won by a Latino next time it is up for election.

This time, the local politics also overlay state and national interests. Republicans are desperate to regain trust among Latinos--a sentiment largely squandered by Gov. Pete Wilson during the state’s ethnically charged debates on illegal immigration and affirmative action. Riordan is a Republican who ran well among Latinos, and many observers believe that he would be loathe to support any redistricting that curbed Latino voting power.

But that may increase the pressure on African Americans to fight erosion of their remarkably steady power base. Since 1963, three African Americans have consistently held council seats in Los Angeles despite reconfigurations of the council district boundaries and rapid growth in the Latino population.

As the debate over council size grows, it is likely to reach its next crescendo later this month, when the elected charter commission takes up the matter in public session.

Neither commissioners nor their staff members are prepared to predict where that body will end up, but for the moment it is focused mainly on a staff recommendation for 25 seats.

Erwin Chemerinsky, chairman of the elected panel, acknowledges that 25 is no magic number, but favors it because it is big enough to substantially shrink the size of each district without being so big that it fundamentally alters the working dynamics of the council.

Nevertheless, Chemerinsky is under no illusions that the issue will be a simple one.

“It’s enormously controversial,” he said. “There’s no doubt that every group seeks to keep or expand its influence, and that guarantees that there will be conflicts.”