Latinos Blast Rep. Berman in Map Fight

Leaders of Latino political and civil rights groups on Thursday hammered a longtime ally, Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Mission Hills), over a proposed congressional map that would carve more than 170,000 Latinos out of his district.

A dozen leaders of Latino groups gathered in the lobby of Berman’s district office on Sepulveda Boulevard to denounce him for supporting the proposed boundaries of his northeast San Fernando Valley district.

The map proposed by leaders of the state Legislature would replace the district’s largely Latino neighborhoods in Pacoima, San Fernando and Arleta with mainly non-Latino communities in Sherman Oaks, Studio City, Toluca Lake and Burbank.

“The Latino community is hurt and angry that Howard Berman would disassociate himself from a large segment of his constituency,” said Armando Duron, counsel to the California Latino Redistricting Coalition. “We are disheartened.”

The advocates praised Berman for fighting in Washington for the rights of immigrants and farm workers but called his support of the new congressional map a betrayal of his 432,000 Latino constituents.

Xavier Flores, a leader of the San Fernando Valley chapter of the Mexican American Political Assn., said Berman’s record “will not blind us to the fact that he is giving to our community with one hand while clobbering us with the other.”

Also at the protest were representatives of the William C. Velasquez Institute, a Latino think tank, and the League of United Latin American Citizens, a Latino voting rights group.

Berman said he supported the boundary change and disagreed with Latino groups’ argument that it would turn his Latino constituency into an “ineffective” force in two districts rather than a powerful voice in one.

Berman also said some of the protesters at his Mission Hills office had been political foes.

“I just don’t think they represent the large, mainstream population of voters in the district or in the Latino community,” he said.

It was the congressman’s brother, Michael Berman, a redistricting expert, who drafted the new map. Michael Berman’s firm, Berman and D’Agostino Campaigns Inc., is the redistricting consultant to both the state Senate and to the 32 California Democrats in the House of Representatives.

Rep. Berman said he and each of California’s 31 other House Democrats paid his brother’s firm $20,000 to draft the congressional map that state legislative leaders proposed last week. If approved by the Legislature and Gov. Gray Davis, the map would stand for 10 years.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and other Latino advocacy groups have threatened to sue if the congressional map is adopted. They allege it would violate the Voting Rights Act by, among other things, lowering the Latino population in Berman’s district from 65% to 41%.

For Berman, the new district boundaries offer a distinct political advantage. As the district’s Latino population has surged in his nearly 19 years in Congress, he faces the growing threat of a Latino challenger in a Democratic primary. But under the proposed map, the threat of a primary challenge would shift to Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), a non-Latino whose district would pick up the Latino communities dropped by Berman’s.

Sherman has balked at the plan, which stings all the more because he is one of the Democrats who paid Berman’s brother to draft it. Sherman traveled to Sacramento this week to urge lawmakers to shift some of the Latino constituents back into Berman’s district, said state Sen. Don Perata (D-Alameda), who heads the Senate redistricting committee. But Sherman’s influence appears in doubt.

“He’s got an interest, he’s got a point of view,” Perata said. “What he doesn’t have is a vote.”

Lawmakers are weighing whether to address the concerns of civil rights groups by shifting even more Latinos into Sherman’s district, Perata said. That would give Valley Latinos a stronger voice in electing a member of Congress.