NEWS ANALYSIS : O.C. Remap Bid Builds Latino Political Savvy

SANTA ANA —  The Orange County Hispanic Redistricting Committee may not be successful at changing the new supervisorial boundaries that the Board of Supervisors adopted last week, but the group’s work will nevertheless represent a milestone in the evolution of Latino political strength in the county.

For the first time ever, a broad-based, nonpartisan group of Latinos that includes lawyers and community leaders has come together with one strategy to seek a bigger piece of Orange County’s political pie.

“If our efforts here fail, and we don’t change redistricting, the benefit will be that now we will know we have the machinery and the talent and resources to put together another effort later to effect change,” said David A. Valles, a past president of the Mexican American Bar Assn., who has been involved with the redistricting effort.

“In the future, we will be able to see that we are capable of coming together on common issues,” he said.

The group filed a formal complaint last week with the U.S. Department of Justice, charging that the redistricting plan adopted by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday violates the federal Voting Rights Act.

Lawyers for the group contend that the plan, which makes few changes in district boundaries, does not create a district in which Latinos would be the majority.

Supervisors say their plan is drawn in a way that best distributes the total population evenly among the five districts.

It could be more than a month before the Hispanic Redistricting Committee knows what will come of its challenge. In the meantime, the lawyers and community leaders who form the group continue to meet and plan strategy.

In a county dominated by conservative Republican politics where many officeholders run with little or no opposition, emergence of the Latino group has not been met with much enthusiasm.

In fact, the group has irritated some, such as Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, whose 1st District has been the focus of much of the attention. As drawn by the supervisors, the district, which includes Santa Ana--a city with 65% Latinos--will be composed of 47% Latinos, something the members of Hispanic Redistricting Committee say is intended to dilute Latino voting influence.

Stanton, however, scoffs at that. He accuses the group of being little more than a handful of opportunists new to the political scene. And, he has said, their efforts are little more than an attempt to carve out a district that will enable a Democrat to win a seat on the nonpartisan Board of Supervisors.

“A tremendous amount of attention is being given to three guys pursuing this for whatever personal issues they have,” he said. “They certainly don’t represent the community by anybody’s measure.

“When you look at all the support, all the real and sincere support and the accolades I have received from the Hispanic community for 10 years, the scale is not even budged by these three guys getting on the other end of it,” he said.

About the complaint filed with the Justice Department, Stanton said: “It’s nothing to worry about.”

Members of the Hispanic Redistricting Committee say Stanton is speaking like a politician afraid of what change may bring.

“We have all the major Hispanic groups in Orange County involved here,” said attorney Ruben A. Smith, counsel for the Hispanic Redistricting Committee. “I don’t know any that have opposed us. For him (Stanton) to say that--I just don’t understand it.”

“I certainly don’t have a political agenda,” Smith, a Latino, said. “This is just something that we believe the law requires and something that will help to improve our community in the long run.”

Another argument that has been raised against the group’s efforts is that the Board of Supervisors already includes a Latino, Chairman Gaddi H. Vasquez.

“The board has tried to use him as a deflector of all criticism,” Smith said. “The fact that Gaddi Vasquez is on the board is irrelevant. That’s not his district (that has been at issue).”

The idea for the Hispanic Redistricting Committee began almost a year ago, when local leaders began meeting with representatives of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and Southwest Voter Registration Project. Both of those groups have a long track record of bringing redistricting lawsuits in communities from south Texas to Watsonville, Calif., which have resulted in changing the balance of power in those areas. Both groups were involved in the lawsuit that cleared the way for Gloria Molina to become Los Angeles County’s first Latina supervisor earlier this year.

The Hispanic Redistricting Committee has drawn people already involved in a variety of civic and political groups in Orange County, from the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Orange County to the Downtown Santa Ana Business Assn., Hermandad Mexicana Nacional and the League of United Latin American Citizens. The 40-member committee includes lawyers, business people, computer experts and other professionals. Some of them have run for office before. Others have no interest in seeking office.

While not every group officially endorsed the effort--the Chamber of Commerce, for example, did not--its members have spoken on behalf of the committee at public meetings.

The committee includes several Democrats, but it also counts as members the chairman of the Republican Hispanic National Assembly of Orange County and other Republicans.

In addition, Smith said, the computer software and census data to draw redistricting maps were provided by the Republican National Committee. The GOP has been supporting the creation of more minority districts nationwide because it believes it can work to displace incumbent Democrats as the number of Democratic voters in surrounding districts are reduced.

Emergence of the Hispanic Redistricting Committee has demonstrated a new level of cooperation among the county’s Latino leaders. Armed with legal opinions and computer printouts of census tract information, they operated in a fashion more sophisticated than has been seen here before in Latino civic affairs.

But at times, even those who support them have figuratively slapped themselves on the forehead at some of the group’s tactics.

At last Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, for example, Arturo Montez, co-chairman of the group, spent 10 minutes in a rambling speech, comparing Orange County to Eastern Europe, and saying the county’s redistricting plan would “rape the community.”

At a press conference the following day, Richard Armendariz, president of the Mexican American Bar Assn., referred to board Chairman Vasquez as “Guadalupe--because that, after all, is his real name.”

“He would never have been elected to his post if he had not been appointed,” Armendariz said. Vasquez was appointed in 1987 to represent the 3rd District by former Gov. George Deukmejian, his former boss. He was elected to the seat in 1988.

Their comments have achieved little other than to anger the supervisors. An official of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce even approached Montez after Tuesday’s meeting and gently chided him for making personal attacks on the supervisors.

“It takes away and diminishes a great deal of our support,” said John M. Raya, chairman of the Republican Hispanic National Assembly of Orange County.

But, Raya said, the diversity of leaders in the group has managed to work well together because there is such a strong belief in the notion that Latino representation in the system has to be increased.

“With Hispanics being such a significant portion of the population, it’s incumbent on us to participate,” he said. “This is just the first step in the political maturation of our community.”

The next step, he said, even if the group is not successful in challenging the county’s redistricting plan, is to work on other areas, such as increasing voter registration among Hispanics.

“Without that,” he said, “all of this will have been nothing more than just rhetoric.”