Foes sound off in L.A. County supervisorial district fight

Battle lines hardened Tuesday in a raucous political fight over creating a second L.A. County Board of Supervisors district with a majority of potential Latino voters.

One of the largest crowds in recent memory — more than 800 people — packed the board’s downtown hearing room for a tense five-hour exchange of starkly different visions of how political boundaries should be redrawn in light of the region’s steadily increasing Latino population.

At stake is a potential landmark shift in membership of the five-person governing board of the nation’s most populous county. Two white incumbents are opposing two proposals that would radically reshape their districts to make way for a new district with a majority of Latino eligible voters.

Interactive maps: See how the plans compare

Supervisors Gloria Molina, a Latina, and Mark Ridley-Thomas, an African American, are promoting those plans, which could give the board its first nonwhite majority in modern history. Both supervisors are Democrats.

The issue has simmered for weeks, and there was no sign of a compromise Tuesday. With four votes needed to approve a redistricting plan in the coming weeks, the supervisors appear to be heading toward a 3-2 deadlock.

Molina, the first person of Latino heritage to be elected to the Board of Supervisors since the end of the 19th century, called on her colleagues to support the voting rights of Latinos, who now make up 48% of the county population.

But supporters of incumbents Don Knabe, a Republican from Cerritos, and Zev Yaroslavsky, a Democrat from the Westside, decried what they called a “political agenda” that could break constituents’ long-standing bonds with their elected representatives. Michael D. Antonovich, a Republican from Glendale, is the board’s fifth member.

“I am an elected official in a community with over 70% Latinos. I’m insulted that anybody would suggest that in our particular city that we vote by the color of the skin or somebody’s surname,” said Downey Councilman Mario A. Guerra, who noted that his City Council voted unanimously to back a Knabe plan that would largely preserve the status quo.

Rancho Palos Verdes Mayor Thomas D. Long, who also lives in Knabe’s district, said people would look back on the redistricting decision and ask: “Was service to the residents put first or some other political goal put first? … We must all represent each other, regardless of race.”

But several Latino speakers warned supervisors that they ran the risk of repeating the history of 20 years ago — when the county lost a multimillion-dollar federal voting rights lawsuit. In that case, courts found that the supervisors had systematically split Latino neighborhoods to protect incumbents’ reelection chances.

“Twenty years ago it took a court case to create a district that we now have that represents us [with] Gloria Molina,” said El Monte Mayor Andre Quintero. “Please think beyond your terms.... That legacy of 20 years ago was a black mark. You have a chance to change that.”

Lynwood Mayor Aide Castro said Latino voting power would be deliberately squelched if the current district boundaries weren’t changed to help address the need for more Latino representation. “It will certainly be self-evident when we win in a court of law,” Castro said.

Many in the crowd came by chartered bus. Supporting Knabe alone were busloads of people who traveled from a senior center in Hacienda Heights and the South Bay Center for Counseling, along with members of Long Beach’s Cambodian community. The buses were paid for by cities and community groups, a Knabe spokeswoman said.

Backing a second Latino-majority district, Irene Tovar, 70, of Mission Hills said working-class, heavily Latino enclaves in the eastern San Fernando Valley had little in common with the affluent and largely white community of Encino in the southwestern Valley. Both are currently in Yaroslavsky’s district.

If supervisors can’t agree on a redistricting plan, the decision will be made by a committee of three countywide elected officials: Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, Sheriff Lee Baca and Assessor John R. Noguez.

Interactive maps: See how the plans compare

ron.lin@latimes.com