Redistricting bombshell. (Politics).A redistricting redistricting: see legislative apportionment. proposal for the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is the five member governing board of Los Angeles County, California. Members of the board of supervisors are elected by district, the current members as of April 2006 are:
The longshot proposal was put forward by redistricting veteran Alan Clayton, director of equal opportunity employment for the Los Angeles County Chicano Employees Association, as part of a complaint he filed with the U.S. Department of Justice over the drawing of the current boundaries. Those boundaries, Clayton alleges, violate the Voting Rights Act Voting Rights Act Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 1965 to ensure the voting rights of African Americans. Though the Constitution's 15th Amendment (passed 1870) had guaranteed the right to vote regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” by packing Latinos into a single supervisorial district. Instead, Clayton wants to combine the South Bay with the Westside and the West San Fernando Valley San Fernando Valley Valley, southern California, U.S. Northwest of central Los Angeles, the valley is bounded by the San Gabriel, Santa Susana, and Santa Monica mountains and the Simi Hills. to form a single coastal-West Valley district, in which Supervisor Don Knabe would be the incumbent. Yaroslavsky's current Westside and West Valley district would be moved wholesale to the San Gabriel Valley The San Gabriel Valley is one of the principal valleys of southern California. It lies to the east of the city of Los Angeles, to the north of the Puente Hills, to the south of the San Gabriel Mountains, and to the west of the Inland Empire. . This would put Yaroslavsky in the unenviable position of having to campaign as a challenger in much of his home base or to run as the "incumbent" in a completely new part of the county. Clayton said he moved Yaroslavsky and not Knabe to the San Gabriel Valley to preserve the partisan makeup of the board. Moving the Republican Knabe to a predominantly Democratic district in the San Gabriel Valley would likely mean the eventual loss of one of the two Republicans on the five-member board, he said. Yaroslavsky's office declined to comment. Clayton, whose redistricting plans for the Los Angeles City Council  The Los Angeles City Council is the governing body of the City of Los Angeles, California, United States. and the Los Angeles Unified School District The Los Angeles Unified School District (the "LAUSD") is the largest (in terms of number of students) public school system in California and the second-largest in the United States. Only the New York City Department of Education has a larger student population. Board of Education were largely implemented last year, said that if the Justice Department accepts his challenge, it would then enter into negotiations with the county over how to redraw the lines. New district boundaries could be in place by the 2006 election, he said. But political insiders question whether the plan has much chance. "You have to remember that the current district lines drawn up 12 years ago are the direct result of a settlement to a Voting Rights Act lawsuit brought by the Justice Department, the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), nonpartisan organization devoted to the preservation and extension of the basic rights set forth in the U.S. Constitution. ," one county staff member said. "Everyone signed off on that settlement, including many leaders of the Latino community he (Clayton) claims to represent." Staff reporter Howard Fine can be reached by phone at (323) 549-5225, ext. 227, or by e-mail at hfine@labusinessjournal.com. |
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