Activists Upset by Central Coast Remap

For coastal protection activists, the business of realigning political districts for legislative and congressional seats was supposed to arrive with as much controversy as the changing of the tides.

But the plan to reconfigure the state Senate has crashed against Central Coast conservationists like a tsunami.

From Santa Cruz south to Oxnard, environmentalists have launched a last-minute lobbying campaign to rewrite the Senate map. They are fighting time, because the Legislature is scheduled to adjourn for the year on Friday.

Oddly, environmentalists find themselves battling some of their closest friends in the Legislature, including Senate President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco).

The activists argue that in drawing new lines for Senate seats, Democratic leaders weakened the Central Coast districts by flooding them with inland residents less sensitive to coastal protection.

“I cannot find enough fingerprints at the crime scene to see who is involved,” said Democrat Dave Potter, a Monterey County supervisor and vice chairman of the California Coastal Commission. “But it certainly acts and looks and smells like politics, and it certainly is going to be of great benefit to the development community.”

Although they have generally endorsed the proposed Assembly and congressional lines, Central Coast activists say their complaint about the Senate plan hinges on the fact that “communities of interest” legally required to be protected during redistricting have been subdivided and could be taken over by inland candidates whose first allegiance would be to interests such as agriculture or development.

The Santa Barbara section of the district of state Sen. Jack O’Connell (D-San Luis Obispo), for example, would collapse, merging with the Ventura County district of conservative GOP Sen. Tom McClintock of Thousand Oaks.

Likewise, San Luis Obispo County, which has been joined politically with Santa Barbara County for the last three decades, would be split off and merged with a new district that runs up the coast through Monterey County, bypasses neighboring coastal Santa Cruz County and finally ends up inland near the Silicon Valley.

“King City and Paso Robles and Atascadero really have little in common with Monterey,” complained Das Williams of the Central Coast United for a Sustainable Economy, a research and advocacy group.

The redrawing of lines on the northern and southern coasts drew general praise from environmentalists because the districts there would remain mostly unchanged. Conservationists also praised the redrawn 23rd District of their ally, state Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica). It would stretch along the coast from Malibu to Oxnard.

Currently, the Central Coast is represented by Democrat O’Connell and Republican Sen. Bruce McPherson of Santa Cruz, both hearty environmentalists. Each will be forced out next year by term limits.

Because the two districts will have no incumbents, they became prime targets for realignment under a redistricting deal between Democrats and Republicans to maintain the current Democratic-dominated partisan lineup in the Legislature and Congress.

Such coastal issues as land use, planning and development are primarily handled by local government and the Coastal Commission.

But the coastal protection advocates say their interests must also be represented in the Legislature, since it can enact laws that affect air and water, ocean fisheries and sources of coastal pollution.

“Without doubt, the coast of California is the environmental conscience of the state,” Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara) testified at a redistricting hearing last week.

Her own political fate is also tied up in redistricting: The increased GOP voter registration in the new district all but destroys her chances of succeeding O’Connell in the state Senate.

Democratic leaders in the Legislature were taking notice of the intensified lobbying of environmentalists last week. Uncertain, however, was whether it would be effective.

“It’s my top priority--one of my top priorities,” Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks) told the media.

When a reporter noted that coastal activists were upset at the Senate plan, Democratic leader Burton snapped, “Good for them!”

He said he did not anticipate any changes in the Senate’s plan for the area. But, he insisted, for “people to believe that we don’t care about protecting the coast is wrong.”

Some Democrats, who asked not to be identified, complained that the coastal dispute would never have surfaced had Hertzberg not insisted that the Senate create a seat in the San Joaquin Valley for his good friend, Assemblyman Dennis Cardoza (D-Merced). They said the seat was a condition of Hertzberg’s support for the Senate plan.

The speaker denied any such deal.

Jackson said it was a “grave mistake” to put a chunk of the California shoreline into the “hands of a guy like McClintock, who wants to drill offshore and wants to put nuclear power plants anywhere and everywhere.”

McClintock is running for state controller next year, but if he loses that race he will continue to represent the newly conformed district for two more years. He brushed aside Jackson’s attack, saying the realigned district is a carbon copy of a Senate district that existed 30 years ago.

“I think it would be hard to find two counties more similar than Ventura and Santa Barbara,” he said. He defended his support of nuclear power plants, saying they produce “clean, cheap and abundant electricity.”

The criticism of the Senate coastal plan is one of many disputes roiling the effort to realign the state’s political districts. Both the Senate and House plans are under fire from the Asian American and Latino communities, which contend that their bases of support have been weakened.

At week’s end, state Sen. Richard Polanco of Los Angeles, the Democratic floor leader, said he believed that a compromise would be reached to ensure approval of the redistricting plans.