Brown Offers 2 Remap Plans; Both Attacked : Assembly: An existing Orange County seat including Newport Beach would gain many Latino voters.

SACRAMENTO —  Democratic Assembly Speaker Willie Brown on Tuesday released two proposed sets of new districts for the Legislature’s lower house, but the plans drew immediate criticism as unfair to Republicans and being so confusing that they would deny the public any voice in the reapportionment process.

Details of the proposed districts were released region-by-region during the day in a mind-bending shower of paper and numbers that gave the public little opportunity to picture what representation throughout the state would look like under either plan.

Maps of all districts were not released and those that were did not always contain clear information on boundaries. Some of the maps showed only parts of districts outlined, with arrows pointing off the page to indicate their extensions into other areas not shown.

“They look like the maps Columbus used to sail off into the New World,” quipped Dan Schnur, an aide to Gov. Pete Wilson. “All that’s missing are those dragons and lizards off in the unknown.”

Republicans said it appeared that Brown’s proposals would give them at best 38 seats, three short of a majority, even if “lightning strikes five times” and enables them to win seats in which their candidates would be long shots.

Many Republicans believe that they would do better under a plan released last week by a coalition of Latino groups, and they may be willing to gamble that the courts would adopt such a plan if the Legislature and the governor reach an impasse.

The Latino plan, which members of the coalition described as “non-negotiable”--meaning they will sue if they don’t get their way-- would maximize Latino political clout by concentrating Latino voters into fewer districts. That would make the seats of Anglo Democrats vulnerable to Republican challenge.

“It’s the most bizarre coalition in modern civil-rights history,” liberal Santa Monica Democratic Assemblyman Tom Hayden said of the budding alliance between the GOP and the Latino coalition. “Republicans would come to power using a civil rights argument they’ve never used in history. There’s one criteria: maximizing Latino officeholders. There are 40 safe Republican seats, with more Latinos than ever--that’s the plan.”

The same thought occurred to Republican Leader Bill Jones of Fresno, who used the Latino plan as a yardstick against which he measured Speaker Brown’s offer. Jones said Brown’s proposal might prompt him to take another look at the Latino plan, which was drawn by the Latino coalition, which is suing the Legislature in an effort to force the use of adjusted census figures.

“It’s hard to make a case to my caucus and to the governor and other interested parties on our side that this (Brown’s) is a plan we ought to deal with seriously when the people you’re in court with are offering a better deal than that,” Jones said.

The Legislature is scheduled to adjourn for the year at midnight Friday and by then is supposed to complete the task of redrawing lines for the Legislature, Congress and the State Board of Equalization. To become law, the plans must win a majority of votes in the Assembly and Senate and be signed by the governor. The Legislature could override the governor’s veto with a two-thirds vote of each house.

Congressional Democrats released their own proposal Tuesday for carving up the state’s 52 congressional districts, including the seven additional seats awarded the state after the 1990 census.

Among other things, the plan would create an additional seat along the coast north of Los Angeles County and a heavily Latino, Democratic-leaning seat in San Diego County. An existing Orange County seat that includes the mostly white and affluent city of Newport Beach also would gain many Latino voters, though perhaps not enough for them to control the selection of the representative.

Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) currently represents much of the area proposed for the Latino district in Orange County. Cox said of the map Tuesday, “It looks like political pornography; it hurts to stare at this map.”

Cox said he believed that the county’s coastal cities should be maintained in the same district since they share many similar issues. The proposed Latino district would separate Newport Beach from the rest of Orange County’s coast and stretch inland through Santa Ana and Anaheim.

“It makes little sense to separate Huntington Beach, Newport Beach and Laguna Beach, and instead to connect Newport Beach and Placentia,” Cox noted.

He said he was confident that he could be reelected to any district in the area, but the proposal released Tuesday is predominantly Democrats--48% to 41%. The proposal also significantly increased the Democratic strength in Rep. Robert K. Dornan’s district, to 54% from 48%.

A spokesman for the Orange County Hispanic Redistricting Committee also criticized the Democratic proposal. “It won’t fly,” said Art Montez, spokesman for the committee. “How many Hispanics live in Newport Beach?”

The Hispanic Redistricting Committee released a statewide proposal for redistricting state and federal offices that includes seven representatives with districts all or partly contained in Orange County.

The congressional proposal did not include boundaries for Los Angeles County districts. It also has no official standing since only the Legislature is empowered to draw the districts.

After weeks of closed-door negotiations, during which virtually no information was available, Brown’s office released parts of two sets of maps for the Assembly. Also included were descriptions of the territory that would be added and subtracted from each and the breakdown of ethnic groups and voters by party registration. Brown said the separate plans were drafted using different assumptions about which incumbent Assembly members would decide to run for Congress and which would choose to remain in the Legislature.

Those who had hoped to testify at a public hearing scheduled for Tuesday night were angered by the way in which the information was released.

“It’s mass confusion,” said Ruth Holton, a lobbyist for California Common Cause, a self-appointed watchdog of the legislative process. “The members are confused. Certainly the public is confused.”

Holton said she suspected that the uncertainty was a deliberate strategy on the part of Brown to confuse the public and the Republicans.

“If everyone’s confused, he can, in the end, produce another plan that the members will have five minutes to look at and he’ll say, vote on it,” she said.

Of the two plans Brown presented Tuesday, the most obvious change for Orange County would be a loss by Assemblyman Robert C. Frazee (R-Carlsbad), whose North San Diego County district currently reaches up to San Clemente and Dana Point.

Those portions would be taken away from Frazee and given to Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach); Frazee’s district would be redrawn entirely within San Diego County.

The two redistricting proposals continue to leave four Assembly districts firmly in the hands of Republicans, whose voter registration hovers at a formidable 58% or greater. A fifth, held by Assemblywoman Doris Allen (R-Cypress), would keep its thin Republican-to-Democrat edge of 49% to 41%.

Of the two plans Brown presented Tuesday, one appeared to be the more plausible and some Democratic legislators said it was the one they were hoping to see enacted.

That plan assumed that Assemblyman Burt Margolin (D-Los Angeles) would run for Congress. His West Los Angeles Assembly district then would be collapsed and, in effect, shifted to Riverside County, where the population has been growing more rapidly than in Los Angeles. The territory now represented by Margolin would be divided among three other Los Angeles Democrats: Hayden, Terry B. Friedman and Barbara Friedman.

Also in Los Angeles County, the plan would increase the percentage of Latinos in several districts, giving that ethnic group the opportunity to control the election or at least have a strong influence on the outcome.

In addition to the three districts already represented by Latinos--the 55th, 56th and 59th--the plan would concentrate more Latinos in the 39th, now represented by Richard Katz; the 46th, now represented by Barbara Friedman; the 47th, now represented by Teresa P. Hughes, and the 63rd, now represented by Bob Epple--all Democrats.

In other parts of the state, however, the plan falls short of creating Latino-oriented districts to match those proposed by the Latino coalition of groups led by the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. And Latinos, most of whom register as Democrats, are dispersed into more districts in the Democratic-drafted plan, giving Anglo Democratic incumbents greater advantages in party registration than they would enjoy under the Latino-drawn plan.

The Latino coalition plan would create 40 districts--half the Assembly--in which Republicans would make up at least 40% of the registered voters, a trait that GOP lawmakers think would make those districts highly winnable for their party.

In contrast, one of the Democratic plans would create only 32 districts in which Republicans made up 40% of the registered voters. The other plan would create 33 such districts.

Republicans now hold 31 seats in the Assembly; Democrats hold 47. Two vacancies are expected to go to the Republicans in special elections this month.

Jones said that Brown’s plans seemed to be little more than a negotiating ploy. He predicted that the plans, one of which would collapse the district of Republican Assemblywoman Paula L. Boland of Granada Hills, would face a certain veto.

Times staff writers Dave Lesher and Mark Gladstone contributed to this article.