Schabarum Needs More Than a Latino Grandmother : Supervisors: A politically remapped L.A. County boosts Alatorre’s star.

Now that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has come up with a redistricting plan to give Latinos a fair chance of electing one of their own to the board, the political game becomes all the more intriguing.

U.S. Judge David V. Kenyon will decide whether the plan meets the objections raised in a 1988 Justice Department suit that accused the supervisors of violating the Voting Rights Act by drawing political boundaries that dilute Latino voting strength. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union, plantiffs in the suit, will also submit a redistricting plan.

Of course, any such major political overhaul requires a sacrificial lamb. If the board’s remapping is approved by thecourt, maverick Republican Supervisor Pete Schabarum will find himself representing the new predominantly Latino district.

Schabarum, a former GOP assemblyman appointed to the board in 1972 by Gov. Ronald Reagan, has not formally announced whether he will seek re-election next June. But his sudden celebration of his Latino bloodline--his paternal grandmother was Mexican--suggests he’ll run.

This poses some problems for Schabarum: Democratic registration in the proposed district exceeds Republican by 24%. Worse, the early favorite among Democratic challengers is Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre, who does not face re-election until 1991. Like Schabarum, he is a superb fund-raiser and relishes a good political fight.

Alatorre, who grew up in the proposed district, is said to have revised his political plans. Once hoping to succeed Mayor Tom Bradley, the former assemblyman now wants to be the county’s first Latino supervisor.

A Schabarum-Alatorre matchup would be a classic conservative-vs.-liberal brawl. As such, it would be a rarity in Los Angeles County politics, where partisanship is less influential among voters than personality.

Although Alatorre would seem the favorite in a district that is 63% Latino and heavily Democratic, he faces some hurdles. Compared with other Democratic voters, Latinos are more conservative on issues--abortion, for example--tied to the family. And the GOP has quietly begun a major registration drive in Latino neighborhoods in the San Gabriel Valley that are part of the proposed district.

California activists have mounted a national lobbying campaign, aided by members of the entertainment community, to encourage lawmakers to end military aid to El Salvador when Congress returns late next month.

The protest, directed by the San Francisco-based grass-roots group, Neighbor to Neighbor, centers on a growing consumer boycott of Salvadoran coffee shipped to the United States. This year, the crop has earned El Salvador’s exporters $100 million.

Neighbor to Neighbor organizer Fred Ross Jr. and Democratic media strategist Bill Zimmerman have met with actor Ed Asner and members of the influential Show Coalition to solicit their backing for bipartisan campaign. The focus will be the immortality of giving aid to a government that has yet to make an arrest in the murders of six Jesuit priests and continues to tolerate human-rights violations by death squads, despite a decade of White House warnings.

The campaign’s centerpiece, to air in early January, will be a 30-second TV spot featuring a cup of coffee stained with blood. Top targets are conservative Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) and liberal Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.).

L.A. whispers. Former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein and husband Richard Blum will write a $1-million check to her underfunded campaign for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination before the end of the Dec. 31 reporting period, a source said. The Blums, already in for $300,000, plan additional cash infusions, the source added.