Remapping Plan Fails to Appease Latinos

Leaders of the state Legislature have agreed to scale back their plan to pull more than 170,000 Latinos from Rep. Howard Berman’s district, but Latino voting rights groups threatened Monday to challenge the proposed congressional map in court.

The newly revised map would still drop 97,000 Latinos from Berman’s San Fernando Valley district.

It would replace largely Latino neighborhoods in Sylmar and other parts of the northeast Valley with mainly non-Latino communities from Encino to the Hollywood Hills.

The shift would address Berman’s concern that a Latino candidate might oust him in a Democratic primary election.

“They’re telling the Latino community: ‘We do not want you to have an effective voice in the political representation of the San Fernando Valley,’ ” said Amadis Raul Velez, a redistricting specialist at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “It’s not acceptable, and we’re going to file a lawsuit if an effective voice is not returned to the Latino community.”

MALDEF and the William C. Velasquez Institute, a Latino think tank, told state legislators in a letter Monday that the revised map would still violate the U.S. Voting Rights Act by diluting the Latino vote.

Under the earlier proposal, the Latino population in Berman’s district would have dropped from 65% to 41%. The revised map would cut the Latino population to 54%.

Most of the Latinos removed from the district would end up in the territory of Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), who had lobbied hard against the earlier map. A Sherman advisor described the revised map as a modest improvement.

The boundaries of Berman’s district are one of the most contentious issues facing state legislators as they struggle this week to reach agreement on congressional and state legislative maps. Redistricting takes place every 10 years to reflect population shifts in the U.S. census.

The jockeying over which congressional member will represent the nearly 600,000 Latinos in the northeast Valley has offended some Latinos in the area.

“It’s causing very hard feelings and sad feelings in the Latino community,” said state Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sylmar), who is seeking reelection next year but is a potential contender for the congressional seat.

Alarcon said he agreed that even the revised map could run afoul of the voting rights law and prompt a court to draw the boundaries.

“Howard Berman has been a wonderful legislator for the Latino community, and we don’t want him to abandon us,” Alarcon said.

He also said Sherman has “fought vehemently and publicly to reduce the number of Latinos in his district. There are some fences that need to be mended. He needs to let the Latino community know that he supports them as a community.”

Aides to Sherman and Berman said both Congress members were unavailable for comment.

Sherman has cast his fight against the proposed boundaries as an effort to split the Valley along north-south or east-west lines to enhance community representations; either solution would leave the bulk of Latinos in Berman’s district.

Parke Skelton, Sherman’s top political advisor, described it as a “geographically difficult district to run in.”

“He sees it as a less-than-perfect solution, but a solution nonetheless,” Skelton said.