Labor, Politicians Praise Contreras

When word of Miguel Contreras’ death spread Friday night, top members of California’s labor and political world flocked to Daniel Freeman Hospital in Inglewood in a show of respect.

Presidents of unions representing truck drivers, homecare workers, city employees, janitors and supermarket checkers made their way to console relatives of the longtime Los Angeles County labor leader.

There too was Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles), who worked as Contreras’ political director before running for office. There was state Sen. Gilbert Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), who first won office with the backing of a coalition of labor, immigrants and Latinos that would become the model for the state Democratic Party.

There, too, was Los Angeles City Councilman Martin Ludlow, who took over as political director after Nunez, and who Contreras first encouraged to run for office.

Also there were Mayor James K. Hahn, who received the backing of Contreras’ federation, and his challenger, Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa, a close personal friend who cut his political teeth in union organizing.

“We’re all here because of Miguel,” Nunez said. “He brought us to the dance. A lot of us owe a lot of our political success to him.”

The assembled crowd was a living tribute to the political empire Contreras built in his years as a labor organizer and behind- the-scenes kingmaker.

And that role, most friends and observers say, will be nearly impossible to fill, particularly at a time when the national labor movement is weathering an internal crisis.

“I just don’t know if anybody is going to fill that space,” Nunez said. “That may be a void that may be hollow for years to come. I just don’t know that someone is going to do that.”

Contreras, 52, secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, died of a heart attack Friday night.

“It couldn’t have happened at a worse time,” said Cedillo, noting that member unions, such as the Service Employees International Union, are threatening to leave the AFL-CIO.

“That’s a very tense discussion in the labor movement,” Cedillo said. “If there was a person who could keep the unions together, it was Miguel.”

National labor writer Harold Meyerson, a friend of Contreras, said the union leader’s death will have a deep effect statewide and nationally.

“Not only is there no one in Los Angeles who can take his place, there is no labor leader anywhere in the nation” to replace him, Meyerson said Saturday. “It was so much Miguel’s show, it’s hard to see what happens now. Miguel had an amazing combo of strategic vision and love of the game, and one didn’t trump the other.”

Peter Dreier, a professor of politics at Occidental College, disagrees, saying the political infrastructure Contreras built will survive him. “I don’t think the political power of organized labor will disappear,” he said.

Contreras’ death comes at a time when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has taken aim at issues near and dear to unions. Contreras’ critics, including some politicians, fear that the growing power of Los Angeles unions would make it more difficult to do business in the city.

“Labor has done a pretty good job of fighting back, but its chief strategist and field general was Miguel,” Meyerson said.

Since the late 1990s, Contreras has successfully ushered a host of pro-labor candidates onto the City Council and was ardently courted by both mayoral candidates.

Despite his backing of Villaraigosa in the 2001 mayoral race, Contreras was appointed by Hahn to serve on the city’s powerful Airport Commission.

In the upcoming mayoral runoff election, Contreras faced a difficult choice. Should he side with his longtime friend, former union organizer Villaraigosa? Or should he go with Hahn, who had been there for labor at every step during his administration?

“It was a hard decision for Miguel,” Nunez said. “He was torn between what his heart was saying and what his unions wanted. He came to the conclusion that he had to defend the institutional interest of the labor movement and put his personal preferences aside.”

Ultimately, Contreras’ federation voted to back Hahn, but Contreras maintained close ties to Villaraigosa, and many union members said they intended to vote for Villaraigosa anyway.

Under Contreras’ influence, meanwhile, the city of Los Angeles has embraced a new approach to municipal governance that incorporates much of the labor movement’s agenda, including a landmark 1996 law requiring its contractors to pay well above the minimum wage.

Last summer, city officials passed a law requiring big-box retailers such as Wal-Mart to jump through extra planning hoops and scrutiny before being allowed to open a store.

City officials also are considering laws that would require developers to include low-income housing in new buildings and force hotels converting to condominiums to help workers who lose their jobs.

What impact -- if any -- Contreras’ death will have on the mayoral race remains unclear.

Raphael Sonenshein, a Cal State Fullerton expert on Los Angeles politics, said Contreras’ death could sap the race of some of its recent intensity.

“In some ways it is bigger than the election,” Sonenshein said. “You have two labor Democrats running against each other in a town that once struggled to field a single labor candidate. That’s a fact because Contreras, with others, has made labor what it is today.”

Organized labor, said veteran L.A. political consultant Kerman Maddox, “was foundering as a major political entity in Southern California before he came along. The loss of Miguel Contreras could have a devastating effect on organized labor. He was such a political strategist and such a political genius.”

On Tuesday, the federation’s executive board, representing the largest of the federation’s 345 affiliates, will meet to discuss its next steps.

“In the last 12 hours we’ve heard from a whole range of unions -- building trades, actors, city workers -- expressing their support and wanting to move forward with his agenda,” said Charles Lester, political director of the federation, who has now replaced Contreras. “We have many battles ahead of us, and we will stay united and on track.”

Lester said he was helping the family plan a memorial, probably at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles. Contreras will be buried Saturday in his hometown of Dinuba, Calif., he said.

Throughout the day Saturday, friends and colleagues of Contreras stopped by his El Sereno home, where his widow, Maria Elena Durazo, was staying with family and the couple’s two sons.

Durazo, president of Unite Here Local 11, and a highly regarded national labor leader in her own right, was flying into Los Angeles when she heard the news of her husband’s death. A friend said Durazo was “devastated” and in seclusion.

Statements recalling Contreras as a champion of the working poor were released by, among others, Cardinal Roger Mahony, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), and even Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who Contreras was gearing up to battle after the local mayoral race.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who has relied heavily on advice from Contreras for reforming the national system of regional labor councils, said in a statement: “It is difficult to comprehend the sudden passing of Miguel Contreras or to assess the loss to the labor movement as well as to our country.”

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Times staff writers Nancy Cleeland and Ann Simmons contributed to this report.