New Maps Create Congressional Battle

New congressional district boundaries approved Monday may pit Diamond Bar Rep. Gary Miller against fellow Republican Ed Royce of Fullerton, but not before challenges to the maps from party leaders.

Miller stands to be the most affected member of the Diamond Bar delegation by Monday's changes.

The redistricting process, which occurs every 10 years, was done for the first time in state history by a 14-member citizen panel using demographic statistics and population data from the 2010 census to draw the new lines.

Commission Chairman Vince Barabba said at a press conference Friday that the group's goal was, in part, opening the political process to new challengers.

"For far too long, Californians have been frustrated by a legislative process that drew districts that primarily supported the re-election of incumbent legislators," Barabba said.

Miller expressed dissatisfaction with the new maps in an interview with the Los Angeles Times Monday.

"Judges will make the decision…. What they've done to so many districts out there makes no sense," Rep. Miller told the Times.

For Diamond Bar's state legislators, Sen. Bob Huff (R-Diamond Bar) and Assemblyman Curt Hagman (R-Chino Hills), the maps cut communities on the outskirts of their previous districts but keep both representing much of the same area.

"At the senate level, there is the Orange County hook that reaches from Cal Poly Pomona to Cypress, Stanton, La Palma," Ward said.

While the plans pose a new challenge for Miller, the commission and area cities by crossing county lines to create a district including parts of Orange, Los Angeles, and San Bernardino Counties — which the commission did in the first draft of state Senate and Assembly maps.

Both the city of Diamond Bar and the Four Corners Policy Committee that would have split the city's current congressional district in three and put Diamond Bar in a San Gabriel Valley corridor, extending west to Monterey Park and Arcadia.

To compare the commission's first proposal with the plans approved Monday, see the interactive map created by the L.A. Times.

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