L.A. Charter Amendment DD election: Redistricting voter guide

For decades, redistricting in Los Angeles has been something of a blood sport.

The once-a-decade drawing of new boundaries for the City Council’s 15 districts has resulted in power plays, self-dealing and even some score-settling at City Hall. That’s because the redistricting process has been largely overseen by the very people who stood to benefit from it: the council members themselves.

Council members, both directly and through their political appointees, have tried to ensure that the maps were drawn in ways that would help them win reelection. They also sought to include certain “economic assets” — airports, parkland, educational institutions and commercial areas — within their own districts.

At times, council members have fought over who would get those assets. They also have drawn districts in ways that, intentionally or not, wounded their adversaries politically.

In 1986, for example, the City Council almost completely wiped out the Hollywood Hills district of Councilmember Joel Wachs, pushing it deep into the San Fernando Valley. Wachs, who was not well-liked by certain colleagues, nevertheless landed on his feet, winning reelection after he assiduously wooed his new constituents.

Yet L.A.’s most controversial redistricting may have been the most recent one, thanks in large part to a secretly recorded conversation involving three council members and a high-profile labor leader. That scandal reignited the push for an independent redistricting commission — and the creation of Charter Amendment DD, which goes before Los Angeles voters in the Nov. 5 election.

What would the measure do?

Charter Amendment DD would take the mapmaking process out of the hands of the City Council and turn it over to an independent panel of citizen volunteers.

Under the ballot proposal, the independent redistricting commission would be made up of 16 members and four alternates who would be charged with drawing new council district boundaries using data released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The city’s elected officials would not play a role in selecting those commissioners. Instead, the city clerk would randomly draw the names of eight applicants, each from a different section of the city. Those eight would then meet to pick another eight commissioners. Then, those 16 commissioners would choose the alternates.

Lobbyists, city commissioners and city employees would be barred from serving on the new redistricting commission. So would donors to city politicians. After completing the new maps, the redistricting commissioners would be ineligible to run for council seats in the districts they helped draw.

“This will help bring us closer to a city that is free of corruption, that is free of conflicts of interest,” said Councilmember Nithya Raman, who worked closely with Council President Paul Krekorian to draft the measure.

How does redistricting work?

Redistricting takes place at the start of each decade, soon after the release of demographic information from the latest U.S. census.

Each council district must have roughly the same number of residents. Because neighborhoods change over time — sometimes growing, sometimes shrinking — some districts must take on additional territory, while others must shed population.

The new maps also must comply with the federal Voting Rights Act, ensuring that underrepresented groups have a fair shot at electing a candidate of their choice.

L.A. currently has six council districts where Latinos make up more than 50% of the population that is eligible to vote — in other words, they’re 18 or older and are U.S. citizens, per 2020 census figures. In a seventh district, Black residents make up more than half the voting-eligible population. And there is an eighth “coalition” district where half the people eligible to vote are Black or Latino.

Why is this on the ballot?

Raman and Krekorian called for the creation of an independent redistricting commission in 2021, after a bruising redistricting process in which both faced the possibility that their districts could be eliminated.

The Raman-Krekorian proposal for an independent redistricting commission languished for nearly a year. But it gained new momentum in the wake of the scandal over the secretly recorded conversation, which focused on the 2021 redistricting.

Three council members — Nury Martinez, Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León — were heard on the recording discussing ways of drawing the maps to benefit themselves or their allies. Interspersed with those comments were racist and derogatory remarks about a wide array of targets, including then-Councilmember Mike Bonin, who is white, and his son, who is Black.

The scandal ended the careers of Martinez, then council president, and Ron Herrera, who headed the county’s Federation of Labor and also took part in the recorded conversation. Cedillo lost his reelection bid before the scandal broke. De León apologized and is now running for a second term.

But wait, there’s more

That’s hardly the only example of bare-knuckle dealings in L.A. redistricting.

In 2002, City Councilmember Nick Pacheco tried without success to move downtown Los Angeles, a major source of campaign contributions, into his Eastside district. Councilmember Jan Perry, who represented downtown at the time, defeated that effort.

A decade later, Council President Herb Wesson succeeded where Pacheco had failed, working with his colleagues to shift downtown out of Perry’s South L.A. district and putting nearly all of it in the Eastside district represented by Councilmember Jose Huizar, a Wesson ally.

Perry called it payback for her refusal to vote for Wesson for council president. Wesson denied it.

Either way, Huizar quickly took advantage of his redrawn district, hitting up real estate companies again and again for money — not just for his campaigns and his pet projects, but for himself. He was convicted last year in a sprawling corruption case that involved bribes from real estate developers who sought approval for their high-rise projects.

Once the 2012 maps were finalized, Wesson boasted about his redistricting work, telling an audience in South L.A. that he had ensured that two of the council’s 15 districts would be represented by a Black council member for 30 years. Those remarks were captured on video.

Who supports the measure?

Charter Amendment DD has widespread support, including from the entire City Council and the political organization LA Forward. According to the city clerk, no one has submitted a ballot argument against it.