Census May Net State Only 1 New House Seat

California’s declining growth rate during the past decade may net it only a single new seat in the House of Representatives when Census 2000 numbers are sent to President Clinton at the end of the year, the smallest gain for the state in a century, a Los Angeles Times analysis of population estimates shows.

The recession helped slow the Golden State’s population growth in the 1990s to 3.3 million new people by prompting many Californians to move to Nevada or the Pacific Northwest at the same time immigrants were streaming into California. A decade earlier, California grew by 6.1 million residents, earning it seven new House seats, which boosted the delegation to its current 52 members.

That history, said Assemblyman Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles), who is running for mayor of Los Angeles, is what makes the prospect of only one new representative a surprise.

“We had originally expected five to seven” new House seats statewide, said Villaraigosa, adding that he hopes census takers will come up with a high enough count for the state to gain two members.

Like Villaraigosa, many politicians and pundits are disappointed at the prospect of adding only one new representative after the 2002 elections, a person who might well come from a district carved into the Inland Empire.

“When you talk about reapportionment, you’re talking about relative growth, one state versus another,” said Tim Ransdell, executive director of the California Institute for Federal Policy Research, a firm that advises the state’s congressional delegation.

“California may grow by the largest number, but if other states have grown on a more rapid clip, they may take a seat that otherwise might have gone to California.”

The biggest winners after Census 2000 will be Arizona and Texas, according to the Times analysis, which plugged Census Bureau population estimates into the national reapportionment formula. Each state will add two new House seats if results of the ongoing census turn out to be similar to the estimates, as was the case in 1990.

On the other hand, Pennsylvania and New York--the latter has the second-largest delegation in the country, with 31 members--could lose two representatives each.

The impact on California will be far more than an adjustment in delegation size, however.

All congressional districts will be redrawn to reflect population and political changes in the past decade. Adding only one seat will heighten tensions among racial and ethnic groups and will increase partisan bickering within each political party, experts and politicians predict. They anticipate that these groups will try to get district lines drawn in such a way as to produce the strongest and most consistent possible representation for themselves.

“It has the potential of turning into our version of Kosovo . . . our own version of ethnic warfare, unless people stand up quickly and say we need to cooperate and collaborate and not tear ourselves apart,” said Tim Hodson, director of the Center for California Studies at Cal State Sacramento, who was also the Senate’s staff expert on reapportionment in the early 1990s.

Existing African American and Republican seats could be threatened, given the way the black community has spread out through the area from South Los Angeles in the past decade and the substantial growth of Latino neighborhoods, he and other experts said.

“When there are smaller pieces of the pie, the fighting is greater, especially in the South-Central Los Angeles area, where there are real strong arguments to be made that the demographics have changed,” said Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at Pitzer College in Claremont.

“It’s potentially going to be Asians versus Latinos versus African Americans,” Hodson said.

The surge in new Latino voters could also take its toll on Republican incumbents, given that Latinos have been registering as Democrats by an overwhelming margin, Pachon said. In Los Angeles County in 1998, for example, the ratio was 4 to 1.

But “I don’t think it’s a done deal that we are going to have blood on the hallways in Sacramento,” said Bruce Cain, director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley, who has served as a redistricting consultant in the previous two reapportionments.

Republicans, aware that reapportionment traditionally gives the spoils to the party in power, fear that majority Democrats in the Legislature will take seats away from them.

Several aides to Republican congressmen in the delegation said they fear that redistricting will cost the party five or more of the state’s 24 Republican House seats.

Some of that loss might be mitigated by new seats in Republican strongholds elsewhere, such as Arizona and Texas. Still, “the real losers are the people who are being represented,” said Tom Hofeller, redistricting director for the Republican National Committee. “The more members you stash into ‘safe’ districts, the less concern there is for the needs and concerns of political minority voters and sometimes also other minority voters.”

Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Los Angeles) said Republicans have only themselves to blame because they blocked Democratic efforts to use estimated census numbers, which would have increased the final count.

She, like most Democrats, argues that by using estimates to account for those missed by census takers, the state could have gained at least two seats. Instead, “There are a whole group of people who will . . . have no representation.”

Republican officials disagreed, saying estimation is inaccurate and does not ensure a correct count.

The only certainty at this point is that congressional districts will each grow by tens of thousands of residents to more than 630,000 Californians per House member. Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-Carson) said voters needn’t worry about being less represented, however; it’ll be up to her and other members to make sure they pay attention to their new constituents.

“You just have to do more outreach . . . more town hall meetings,” she said.

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Another Seat?

The most recent Census Bureau population estimates suggest California will only gain one congressional seat this decade. Following is the size of each state’s current delegation and how it would change if the population estimates are accurate.

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1990 Possible State apportionment change Alabama 7 - Alaska 1 - Arizona 6 +2 Arkansas 4 - California 52 +1 Colorado 6 +1 Connecticut 6 -1 Delaware 1 - Florida 23 +1 Georgia 11 +1 Hawaii 2 - Idaho 2 - Illinois 20 -1 Indiana 10 - Iowa 5 - Kansas 4 - Kentucky 6 - Louisiana 7 - Maine 2 - Maryland 8 - Massachusetts 10 - Michigan 16 - Minnesota 8 - Mississippi 5 -1 Missouri 9 - Montana 1 +1 Nebraska 3 - Nevada 2 +1 New Hampshire 2 - New Jersey 13 - New Mexico 3 - New York 31 -2 North Carolina 12 - North Dakota 1 - Ohio 19 -1 Oklahoma 6 -1 Oregon 5 - Pennsylvania 21 -2 Rhode Island 2 - South Carolina 6 - South Dakota 1 - Tennessee 9 - Texas 30 +2 Utah 3 - Vermont 1 - Virginia 11 - Washington 9 - West Virginia 3 - Wisconsin 9 -1 Wyoming 1 -

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Analysis by Times researcher Paul J. Singleton

Sources: U.S. Census, Biographical Directory of the American Congress

Researcher Paul J. Singleton contributed to this story.