Drawing the Lines in O.C.

The battle lines have been drawn for the next 10-year war in Orange County’s political arena, and it will test the resolve of the county’s newest voters to use their franchise wisely. The process is called redistricting, and it’s done every decade after the federal census to adjust for population changes and to balance local, state and federal districts so that each elected representative serves an equal number of people.

But the process does much more. Sometimes too much more.

Historically, it has been used by the political party in power to increase its hold on district seats, protect incumbents and at times draw illogical boundary lines to eliminate, or promote, potential candidates for office.

The political gamesmanship has at times split communities between several supervisorial or legislative districts and led to divisive controversy. We have seen howls of protest from the political party not in power, as well as from various ethnic and other groups. They want districts drawn that will allow them to elect more of their representatives. Partisan power politics also can lead to legal challenges, as it did after the 1980 and 1990 redistricting disputes in the state that ended with the court deciding district boundary lines.

On the county level, the current redistricting doesn’t appear to be as harsh as in years past. Not everyone, of course, is happy with the new districts, especially those for state and federal offices. Those lines were primarily drawn by Democrats in Sacramento to protect incumbents and the status quo, and not rile Republicans into filing a legal challenge.

Maintaining the status quo, however, and balancing districts to adjust for numerical population growth don’t really recognize the shifting makeup of the county’s population and its growing numbers of Latino and Asian residents. For example, in 1990, ethnic minorities were a majority of only one county city, Santa Ana. Today they’re the majority in 10 cities. In the last decade the Asian community has grown by 63% and the Latino population by 49%. Today about one of every two county residents is nonwhite.

Santa Ana, which has a 76% Latino population, had been divided among three county supervisorial districts. The new boundary lines put Santa Ana in only one, the 1st District, which includes Garden Grove and Westminster. And Latinos make up 56% of that new district, which greatly increases the chance of a Latino being elected as the board member from the county seat when term limits force out the current supervisor in 2004.

The challenge now is for the Latino community to use its new advantage and growing political clout by registering to vote and turning out in far greater numbers than in the past.

Some of the jockeying of lines along the Orange County-Los Angeles County border, such as the shifting of Buena Park and La Palma into a Los Angeles County state Assembly district, doesn’t show much concern for maintaining the “communities of interest” principle that should guide the process. Buena Park and La Palma have little connection or mutual concerns with the district’s Los Angeles cities. And they are left with much less political voice than they had in an all-Orange County district.

There is also this drawback in legislative redistricting for Orange County: Another shift put portions of Anaheim, La Habra, Orange, Villa Park and Yorba Linda into the Los Angeles County district of Assemblyman Robert Pacheco (R-Walnut). That does give the county one more Latino representative. But making the protection of incumbents the priority in setting new boundary lines has hurt the chances of electing more minority officeholders from Orange County--possibly for as long as another decade, when the lines are drawn again.

Until then, all residents have a chance to send a message to their elected officials. By holding them accountable, they can impress upon them that the only really safe district is one in which office holders devote as much attention to their district’s needs as they do to its boundaries.