Supervisors’ District Lines to Be Redrawn

Orange County’s supervisorial boundaries, long criticized as being more about politics than fair representation, are going to be redrawn, which may shift the balance of power in the county.

The chore of realigning districts for the five supervisors is certain to touch everything from the volatile battle over the mothballed El Toro Marine base to Latino representation on the county board.

Already, elected officials and community groups, especially Latino leaders in Santa Ana, are jockeying to keep cities from being split by district lines or even shoved into neighboring districts.

Santa Ana, for instance, was divided among three supervisorial districts in 1991, decreasing the odds that a Latino could be elected to the board or that the county seat would have direct representation.

“There’s no question that our districts are going to change. How drastically, we don’t know,” said Paul Hernandez, vice chairman of the county’s Redistricting Committee.

The committee will start its work Wednesday when it meets for the first time at the county Hall of Administration in Santa Ana. Armed with fresh census data, the committee must complete its work in time for supervisors to make an August deadline to have the new district lines drawn.

The once-a-decade process of redistricting--from federal to state to county districts--has produced some bizarre results over the years, with boundaries veering through or around neighborhoods and towns to capture or eliminate certain voters.

The shape of supervisorial districts in Orange County can have major consequences. While the amount of unincorporated land in Orange County is shrinking as new cities are born, the five-member board has the ability to shape anything from a commercial airport at El Toro to an expanded county jail near Lake Forest.

Much is at stake. Anti-airport cities in South County are worried that Newport Beach--the county’s biggest ally for building an El Toro airport--will be taken out of Supervisor Tom Wilson’s district, giving Wilson a new, “super” anti-airport area.

In turn, Mission Viejo and other South County areas could be removed from Supervisor Todd Spitzer’s district, giving his a more North-County flavor and potentially diluting Spitzer and Wilson’s minority anti-airport coalition.

That could change the board’s 3-2 majority on airport issues to 4-1, and the repercussions could be enormous. It takes a four-fifths vote to change El Toro’s master lease from nonaviation to aviation use and allow flight operations for cargo planes. While anti-airport groups insist such gerrymandering isn’t likely, Spitzer’s office is fearful of letting pro-airport supervisors gain such an advantage.

“Spitzer believes very strongly that South County deserves two supervisors,” said Hernandez, Spitzer’s chief aide.

There are various theories on how districts should be determined. Mark P. Petracca, political science chairman at UC Irvine, says district lines should be drawn with party affiliation in mind. While board positions are nonpartisan, it could make election more competitive, he suggested.

“You could draw boundaries in Orange County to actually produce some competitive districts,” said Petracca, a Democrat. “I think if you’re creative you could draw a district that includes Irvine, Laguna Beach together, which would be a competitive district, not one in which Republicans have a 30-point advantage.”

But Petracca’s ideas may be too idealistic given the history of redistricting.

Local redistricting policy calls for each district to have “communities of interest” so supervisors can provide consistent representation. Four years ago, former Supervisor Don Saltarelli drew up a plan that would have removed South County cities from Spitzer’s sprawling 3rd District. He suggested that it would make more sense to free the southern cities from the 3rd District, which reaches the Los Angeles County line, and reunite them with other South County cities in the neighboring 5th District.

“I felt for a long, long time the 3rd District had been designed very poorly because it goes from La Habra in the north clear all the way down to Mission Viejo in the south portion of the county,” Saltarelli said.

The district, Saltarelli said, was handcrafted for the late Ralph A. Diedrich, a county supervisor who lived in Fullerton but wanted sway in the development of South County.

Boundaries should be more logical and cities shouldn’t be divided, though that is not always possible given the size of cities such as Santa Ana, Anaheim and Orange, he said. Saltarelli’s redistricting plan failed.

Then there’s political reality. From the standpoint of elected officials, redistricting is viewed as trying to figure out where you can raise the most money and keep opposing constituencies at bay, said political consultants.

Consider what happened to Tom Rogers. As a former chairman of the county Republican Party in the early 1970s, Rogers was a bright, articulate threat to anyone in power. In the late ‘80s, he entertained the idea of running for supervisor in the 5th District against the incumbent, the late Thomas F. Riley.

But those plans changed abruptly when the district boundary was changed in ways that brought it very close to home. The new line went straight down Spotted Bull Way in San Juan Capistrano, the street on which Rogers lived. He blames Riley for the peculiar path the boundary took.

“[Riley] looped a finger of the 3rd District right down my street. There was nothing I could do about it,” Rogers said. “They looped right around my house and effectively put me out of business. They had such full control of the county in those days.”

Why Santa Ana was split three ways has been a point of conjecture. One theory is that former Supervisor Roger Stanton did so to ruin the chances of then-Santa Ana Mayor Dan Young running against him. Stanton denies such political intrigue.

Keeping a city in one district has its pros and cons, anyway, said Mayor Miguel A. Pulido. “The advantage is that you have more attention from the supervisor. But the downside is if you get caught in a pickle, you have one vote out of five.”

When residents of Santa Ana were fighting expansion of the county jail, they suddenly found themselves with three supervisors on their side. The expansion plan was ultimately scaled back.

With population growth and ethnic communities, the county’s makeup has changed dramatically, though there remain twice as many residents in North County than fast-developing South County.

New this time around are term limits--two terms of four years each for supervisors--and the growing political strength of Latinos. Term limits could motivate incumbent supervisors seeking state office to stretch their districts into new areas as a way of becoming known to more voters.

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Redrawing the Lines

With redistricting just around the corner, the county’s five supervisorial districts will be changed when new census data are made available. Supervisors have appointed a redistricting committee that will hold hearings in the spring and make a recommendation to the board. The board has an August 2001 deadline to approve new boundaries.

Source: Orange County