Redrawn Districts Welcomed as Way to Curb Growth : Redistrict: Supervisor Mike Antonovich, criticized as being pro-development, would be replaced in the county’s west end by Supervisor Ed Edelman under plan the board adopted in a secret session.

Slow-growth advocates in western Los Angeles County say a redistricting plan adopted by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors may give them what they failed to win at the polls--relief from Supervisor Mike Antonovich.

The plan, designed to cure an alleged bias against Latino voters by creating a predominantly Latino supervisorial district in the San Gabriel Valley, would have the secondary effect of removing Antonovich as supervisor for much of the western county and replacing him with Supervisor Ed Edelman.

The county’s west end, a rustic expanse of rolling hills and oak trees, has been the scene in recent years of major clashes between developers and environmentalists. More often than not, Antonovich, the area’s supervisor since 1980, has sided with developers, slow-growth advocates complain.

“I don’t think Antonovich ever met a development he didn’t like,” said Don Wallace, a Calabasas resident and Los Angeles City fire captain who surprised political observers by pulling in 20% of the vote as one of nine candidates who ran against Antonovich in the 1988 primary election. Wallace’s showing in the primary helped force Antonovich into a runoff election against former supervisor Baxter Ward, which Antonovich won handily.

With the redistricting plan, adopted 3 to 2 by the five-member Board of Supervisors during a secret session last week, the county is attempting to settle a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice and civil rights groups. The suit alleges that political boundaries were gerrymandered to weaken the political power of Latinos. The plaintiffs are reviewing the plan to see if it merits their acceptance.

Antonovich, the supervisor for the 5th District and a Republican, voted against the plan. Edelman, a Democrat who has been the 3rd District supervisor since 1974, voted for it.

The proposed redistricting plan has encouraged slow-growth advocates as they prepare to fight several huge development projects affecting the western county. These projects include a Baldwin Co. proposal to build 1,500 homes and apartments on 1,300 acres of vacant land in Calabasas and the extension of Thousand Oaks Boulevard through Cheeseboro Canyon.

“My impression is that Edelman sees things more our way than Antonovich,” said David Brown, vice president of the Las Virgenes Homeowners Federation, a consortium of 19 homeowner groups.

“I’d love to see this happen,” Jill Swift, president of the Santa Monica Mountains Parklands Assn., said of the redistricting.

But the optimism is tempered with caution. One reason is that Edelman has not been fully tested in the development arena. His 3rd Supervisorial District has generated few growth-related dogfights--because it encompasses mostly incorporated urban areas, where Los Angeles city officials reign supreme regarding zoning, growth and environmental issues.

“He hasn’t had to deal with high-profile development issues in his district,” said Swift, a long-time activist. “Those issues are easy where he is now. They’ll be more challenging out here . . . where there’s tremendous pressure to develop.”

“I think the question is whether Edelman will be as firm as we would hope or whether all those big-dollar contributions from developers will have their way,” said Gordon Murley, president of the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Homeowner Assn., a group that has been following development struggles in unincorporated areas to see how they affect traffic and smog.

Edelman, like the county’s four other supervisors, gets the greatest percentage of his campaign contributions from developers. But there are distinctions. From 1985 to 1988, Antonovich raised $3.9 million, 46% of which ($1.8 million) came from developers. From 1985 to June, 1989, Edelman garnered $469,522 in contributions, 28% from developers.

“Edelman’s no knight in shining armor,” said Glenn Bailey, a professional political activist and a leader of the coalition of candidates that sought to unseat Antonovich in 1988. Bailey said he has seen little evidence of Edelman’s leadership on development issues. Edelman’s record on development issues in the unincorporated areas of the west end of the county is mixed. In August, Edelman joined with the supervisor’s three conservatives, including Antonovich, to reject the request of environmentalists and homeowners that developer Currey-Riach Co. donate 218 acres--part of a huge development in the Las Virgenes area--to either the National Park Service or the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, a state parks agency.

On the other hand, Edelman last March cast the sole vote against a project to build 150 houses on the former site of the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, which became a cause celebre of slow-growth advocates who insisted that the county’s plan permitted only 103 homes.

John Stodder, a former Edelman deputy who is an environmental aide to Mayor Tom Bradley, said he expects Edelman to blossom as an environmentalist if he ends up representing the west end of the county, an area that includes Malibu. Malibu is part of Supervisor Deane Dana’s 4th District.

“I think Ed’s always had a latent environmental interest, and now he and his staff will have an opportunity to give expression to that,” Stodder said.

Joel Bellman, Edelman’s press secretary, refused to comment on the hopes of the slow-growth advocates that his boss will be more sympathetic to their cause than Antonovich has been.

“I’m optimistic about Mr. Antonovich leaving us, but I’m concerned about replacing him with an entrenched board member who has not changed the system,” Wallace said.

If slow-growth people would like to see Antonovich go, for reasons of their own, Antonovich may gain from shedding the western end of his district.

The area has proved to be a political headache for the veteran supervisor. Antonovich’s showing at the polls in the 1988 primary was particularly poor in communities in the west end.

Overall, Antonovich scored 45% of the vote in the June, 1988, primary election, forcing him into a runoff that November. But the supervisor did less well in the west end of his district in the primary. For example, in Agoura Hills, Antonovich got 26% of the vote; Calabasas voters gave him 24% and the vote for him in Topanga was 15%.

The problem for the supervisor lay in his pro-growth philosophy and in the fact that Wallace, one of his strongest rivals, was a favorite son in Calabasas. In fact, many of the leaders of the slow-growth coalition that tried to oust Antonovich hailed from the unincorporated west end of the district.

The supervisor is reluctant to comment on the political implications of the redistricting plan, which he has opposed. “I’d be as safe in the new district as the old one,” he said recently.

But Alan Hoffenblum, a political consultant and one of the small coterie of advisers who discussed reapportionment strategies with Antonovich before the supervisor’s vote on the plan last week, said it is clear that the plan makes Antonovich’s 5th Supervisorial District “more Republican,” and therefore safer.

Not only would the plan peel off the fractious west end of Antonovich’s district, but it would add new, rock-ribbed Republican regions to his bailiwick on the east, including the cities of Monrovia, Azusa, Glendora, San Dimas, La Verne, Pomona and Claremont. These areas are now represented by Supervisor Pete Schabarum.

But Antonovich’s dealings with communities torn by development issues would not end even if the new reapportionment plan were finally approved--he would retain the Santa Clarita and Antelope valley areas.