Once Again, Latinos Find the Political Door Locked : City Council: Incumbents redraw their districts to ensure reelection, rejecting a plan that reflects the city’s ethnic diversity.

Once again, Los Angeles’ elected officials have resorted to the nasty habit of denying Latinos a fair opportunity to participate in the political process.

Once again, in the process of redrawing City Council districts to reflect population shifts recorded by the census, the City Council has approved a reconfiguration that protects its incumbents at the expense of the city’s Latino population.

Once again, the Mayor and City Council would rather risk costly, divisive litigation rather than democratically acknowledge Los Angeles’ multiracial diversity. This at a time when such vision and leadership are desperately needed.

It is especially unfortunate that Mayor Bradley chose to endorse rather than veto the council’s self-protection plan. The proposed redistricting not only violates the federal Voting Rights Act; it also would perpetuate the current leadership vacuum at City Hall for another decade.

When the council voted on the plan on May 29, Council President John Ferraro said that everyone hated it--including members of the council. Their aversion was not too strong, however, since the proposed districts virtually assure all incumbents their reelection.

One district includes a miles-long finger stretching out to include Councilman Joel Wachs’ residence. District lines are contorted to include prized territory, such as parks, cultural and civic monuments, and future redevelopment areas in the districts of powerful incumbents. In the most vivid example of incumbency protection, the home of a would-be challenger to Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky was removed from the district.

Virtually every incumbent gets a piece of the action, every incumbent continues to have a safe district, and the disenfranchised communities of Los Angeles are once again locked out.

The council had an opportunity to do otherwise. The Los Angeles Latino Coalition on Redistricting and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) proposed a plan that created four majority Latino districts and allowed for three districts where African-Americans could maintain their voice. It also kept intact the core of each of the city’s four major Asian ethnic population concentrations.

The council rejected this plan, calling it “divisive.” The real reason, which was not articulated in the rejection, was that the proposed map would eliminate a safe district for one of the 15 incumbents and reconfigure that district into one where Latinos could elect a candidate of their choice.

In submitting this alternative, Latinos chose not to dictate which incumbent should be placed at risk. To do so would have focused attention on the inconvenience of an incumbent rather than on the legal obligations of the City Council.

The potential threat to an incumbent made it politically impossible for the council members both to protect one another and open the process to participation by all Angelenos. One goal had to be sacrificed, and the choice was clear.

The City Council chose to design a Latino “growth” district west of downtown that differs dramatically from the fourth Latino majority district proposed by the Latino community in the same general area. The reality of the “growth” district is that just enough Latinos are excluded so that they will not become the majority of the district’s voters until well into the next century. The city’s own demographic expert testified that the Latino community’s alternative district included a Latino majority of the population already eligible to vote.

Despite the compelling evidence of the Latino plan’s value to the Asian and African-American communities as well, the council shifted the focus of debate to disagreements about the number of skyscrapers and parking lots in some proposed districts.

In the end, the incumbent council members were protected and the city’s Latinos were shortchanged once again--but, we promise, not for long.