The new "visualizations" (dated June 22) are less than detailed and in parts difficult to discern. They appear to show:

• Part of Long Beach mainly north of the 405 freeway and west of Signal Hill -- including Cal Hts. and Bixby Knolls and northward into NLB -- in a Compton-centered Congressional district

• A portion of Long Beach roughly south of the 405 to points eastward that includes about [very rough estimate, irregular line] half to 2/3 of East Long Beach, in a district that includes both Ports and stretches northward from Palos Verdes north to Manhattan Beach.

• Another portion of Long Beach, [rough estimate] about a third of East and South East Long Beach. including part of the Peninsula and Naples, are in a district northward to include Lakewood, Cerritos and Los Alamitos.

Details about why the "visualization maps" were produced weren't available on the Commission's website as of dawn today (June 27) but their release as a Commission handout on June 24 follows a June 17 Commission meeting (in Whittier) at which representatives of some Latino and African-American groups testified against the first draft of the L.A. County maps.

Commission media spokesman Rob Wilcox told LBReport.com in a Sunday email exchange that the new "visualization" maps are based in part on public testimony and are "starting points for the Commission to consider."

Caveats: Mr. Wilcox said the Commission worked with these visualizations on Friday June 24 in drawing districts, so these visualizations have changed. He added that the Commission "will work with the new visualizations next week"...from which we presume the maps may change still further.

A previously released first-draft map showed Long Beach reunited in a single Congressional district (as it was prior to a 2001 Sac'to-Dem created redistricting). Congresssman Steve Horn, a moderate Republican, won elections in that district from 1992-2000, but faced increasingly close races against Gerrie Schipske. Horn chose not to seek reelection when most Sac'to Dems (then-Assemblyman Alan Lowenthal dissenting) approved a redistricting that split Long Beach, putting about 80% of LB in a Carson-centered district (then represented by Cong. Juanita Millender-McDonald, succeeded by Cong. Laura Richardson) with ELB and SE LB and shoreline areas in a OC centered district (now represented by Cong. Dana Rohrabacher).

When the Citizens Redistricting Commission released its first draft map showing Long Beach reunited in a single Congressional district, now-Senator Alan Lowenthal announced he planned to seek election to that district.

Cong. Richardson has remained publicly mum thus far about her 2012 plans.

Watch for continuing updates to this story as they develop on LBReport.com.