AG Bonta Reportedly Challenging LA Council Districts

Nury Martinez may get her wish after all.

As you may recall, Martinez was Los Angeles City Council President when she and two other council members and a union boss had a private meeting about re-drawing the council district map to make sure more Hispanics got elected.

The meeting was surreptitiously recorded, Martinez and the other attendees were raked over the public coals for the rather bluntly racist content of said meeting, the story went international, Martinez buckled to public pressure and resigned her council seat.

But what the four nabobs were plotting – more Hispanics on the council no matter what the voters think – may come true after all, with state Attorney General Rob Bonta reportedly pressuring the city to re-draw its council maps prior to the 2026 election to ensure that happens. 

According to the Times:

“…sources familiar with the discussions said Bonta’s legal team has voiced concerns in recent weeks that the map approved by the City Council in 2021 does not currently provide sufficient representation for Latinos in parts of the city.

Bonta’s office singled out two council districts on the Eastside — one represented by Eunisses Hernandez, the other by Kevin de León — as areas of concern, saying those districts do not have a sufficient number of Latino voters to ensure that Latinos have the opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice, according to the sources, who declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak on the matter publicly.

In briefings with council members, lawyers for the city said Bonta’s team also has discussed the possibility of creating a third “Latino” district in the San Fernando Valley — one with a significant concentration of Latino voters, the two sources said.”

Currently, the city’s population is half Hispanic as is one-third of the council. The city’s black population (hence the racial over and undertones of the Martinez recording) is about 8.5% and there are three black council members: in other words, 20%.

For race-obsessed progressives, this is just not right. If the council numbers do not match the demographic breakdown of the city, then something racist must be going on and that is bad.

This position, though on its face absurd, does provide a neat “justification” to futz with council and assembly and senate district throughout the state in order to benefit one particular power structure and one party, the Democrats.

Re-districting is one of the most powerful tools a political machine can have in its effort to hold on to power.  At the state level, there is a technically “independent” citizens commission that handles the task, but their efforts are really anything but.

Even the liberal publication ProPublica took the 2020 commission to task, saying state Democrats gamed the system: 

The citizens’ commission had pledged to create districts based on testimony from the communities themselves, not from parties or statewide political players. To get around that, Democrats surreptitiously enlisted local voters, elected officials, labor unions and community groups to testify in support of configurations that coincided with the party’s interests.

The districts the commission has created are a farce of racial gerrymandering designed to keep Democrats in office. The lower “legal” population a district has, the lower the turnout – each district has about the same number of people, but not the same number of people who can legally vote – and the far more likely a Democrat will win the seat:

In 2020, there were 59 competitive Assembly races, “competitive” being defined as having both a Republican and a Democrat in the November general (the remining 21 seats either had two members of the same party, one party versus a member of a third party or write-in or independent, or were not contested).

In the contested races, the average turnout was about 207,000 people per district (each district having about, at this point, 500,000 residents).  In districts that had higher turnout – more than 250,000 votes cast, or about 20 percent above the average – four races were won by a Republican and five were won by a Democrat.

In the lower turnout districts – defined by being under 170,000 votes cast or about 18 percent below the average – one Republican was elected while 10 Democrats prevailed.

Los Angeles does not really have a Republican Party, so comparisons are a bit difficult to make, but in 2022 there were about 40,000 votes cast in the 15^th district – which runs from Watts, through the Harbor Gateway, Harbor City, Wilmington, and on to San Pedro.

In the 11^th, which encompasses Venice and much of the wealthy west side, there were nearly 100,000 votes cast.

But Bonta and the LA Hispanic power structure he is pandering to in preparation for his 2026 run for governor must be careful of what they wish for.  

After the 1990 census,  the small town of St. Martinville, Louisiana re-drew its city council maps and the feds did not like the result one bit because it did essentially automatically create three black seats.

The city of 5,500 people or so has a mostly black population, about 60%, but had never had a black majority city council. It should be noted that while St. Martinville is not formally “segregated,” the housing patterns are very clear: there are white neighborhoods and there are black neighborhoods.

The city offered the feds a number of different plans, with the second districting map including a 97% black district, an 86% black district, and a 72% black district. This was not good enough for the feds because they thought the 72% black district was really only 59%, and thereby appeared “to lessen significantly the opportunity of black voters to elect candidates of choice in the district.”

Note – around this time I was a reporter for a newspaper in the area and I covered the story and I recall the feds saying that unless a district was two-thirds black it was not really black because black people don’t vote as much. Seriously.

The maps and plans went back and forth and eventually the dispute was settled and now there are three very heavy majority black districts and three black city council members and two white ones.

The really funny thing about this process, a process that Bonta could be taking Los Angeles down?

It took 12 years to finalize.  

Therefore, the City of St. Martinville, because it did not have authorized  maps, could not hold a city council election for 12 years and the incumbents just stayed on in their seats for the entire time, skipping two entire election cycles.

Now, it is doubtful (though terrifying) that will occur in Los Angeles, but it is not out of the realm of possibility.

Bonta seems hellbent on flipping at least one more district to having a heavily Hispanic majorit and ensuring that two existing districts (both currently represented by Hispanics) add more Hispanic voters to make sure those districts “have a sufficient number of Latino voters to ensure that Latinos have the opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice…”

When asked, the AG’s office said “As this investigation/matter remains ongoing and confidential, we are unable to comment at this time.”

Bonta has said he wants the changes made in time for the 2026 elections, again, when Bonta hopes his name will be on the ballot for governor.  Considering the time it takes to re-draw maps and the inevitable lawsuits involved – like every other city, LA re-draws its maps once a decade, after the census – it is quite possible any new system would not done by election day (especially when one considers the March, 2026 primary.)

That could set up a very problematic battle between old and new maps, projected maps, maps being approved after elections, etc.

Los Angeles, meet St. Martinville?