Local, state politicians getting younger

When 28-year-old Janet Nguyen was elected to the Garden Grove City Council in November 2004, she became the youngest elected official in Orange County.

But a little more than two years later, Nguyen, who is now running for a seat on the Board of Supervisors, has been eclipsed: In Santa Ana, newly elected Councilwoman Michele Martinez is 27, and in Buena Park, new school board member Jerry Kong is 26.

They are not alone.

In Los Angeles County, the average age on the Bell Gardens City Council is 32; the youngest member is Priscilla Flores, 28, and the oldest, Daniel Crespo, 38. In Lennox, school board members Veronica Renteria and Marisol Cruz are 27, and in the Centinela Valley Union High School District, Rafael Ramirez was elected in 2003 at 18. Alex Padilla, who was elected to the Los Angeles City Council at 26, is now the youngest member of the state Senate, at 33.

They and dozens of others are part of a trend playing out on school boards, water districts, city councils, the Legislature and beyond: Politicians are getting younger.

Although no one appears to have collected data documenting the youth movement, sociologists, political scientists and political pros agree it is taking place. They offer myriad explanations for the trend, including a generational power shift, the notion of California as a clean slate making it more hospitable to fresh leaders, and a renewed interest by young people in public service.

But all agree that term limits have played a significant role.

“Term limits have definitely opened it up,” said Art Torres, chairman of the California Democratic Party. He was elected to the Assembly in 1974 at 28 but says, “There wasn’t then a whole group of young people like we see today.”

The trend is particularly pronounced in areas where middle-class whites have been replaced by Latino and Asian immigrants, leaving a political power vacuum. Members of this new generation of young politicians, Republican and Democrat alike, are often the first in their families to grow up in the United States and to attend college. They are filling the void.

“In the southeast cities of Los Angeles [County], they’re getting elected in a new demographic environment, which means it’s a relatively new political environment,” said Jaime Regelado, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State L.A. “You’re getting a demographic shift that decades later is playing out politically,” he said.

The influx of young politicians is not limited to immigrant communities. Newly elected members of the new Congress are nearly nine years younger than the members they succeeded.

In California, a younger set of politicians first became noticeable in the 2002 election, when a handful of candidates in their late 20s and early 30s was elected to the Assembly. Among them was Cindy Montanez (D-San Fernando), who at 28 was the youngest woman ever elected to the lower house.

In many cases, these newcomers follow a well-worn path to public office, learning about politics and public policy while working on lawmakers’ staffs. But although a political aide once might have waited years for the boss to get out of the way, state term limits, which were passed by voters in 1990 and over the last decade have swept away nearly all longtime lawmakers, have created more vacancies quicker than ever before.

Padilla (D-Van Nuys) is among the best-known examples. The son of Mexican immigrants, he graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and returned to Pacoima. After a brief career in engineering, he worked on campaigns and then joined the staffs of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and then-Assemblyman Tony Cardenas (D-Arleta) before winning election to the Los Angeles City Council in 1999. He was elected to the state Senate in November.

“I don’t think you would have seen my kind of trajectory 25 or 30 years ago,” Padilla said. “Politics were different back then.”

Nguyen started at UC Irvine as a biology major but was bitten by the political bug after taking a community politics class from William G. Steiner, then chairman of Orange County’s Board of Supervisors. She became so enamored of the subject that she became Steiner’s intern and changed her major to political science. She worked for then-Assemblyman Ken Maddox (R-Garden Grove) for four years before running for office herself. She is now a contender in a field of 10 candidates running for the Board of Supervisors.

Kong turned 26 a month before he was elected to the Buena Park School District board. Not long after graduating from UC Davis, he went to work as a field representative for then-Assemblyman Rudy Bermudez (D-Norwalk). He began attending Buena Park school board meetings as part of his duties, and when a vacancy occurred, district officials encouraged him to run. In a city with a fast-growing Korean American population, there was so little interest in the job from community elders and peers that he ran unopposed.

“Korean Americans in general steer away from politics,” he said, “because culturally our parents want us to be in more established professions.”

Cubans, Irish, Italians and other earlier immigrant groups have also gone through cycles of electing young leaders.

In part, the trend may be driven by demographics -- immigrant populations tend to be younger than the population as a whole.

Voters in Santa Ana, one of the nation’s youngest large cities, just elected Martinez, 27, who got involved in civic affairs as a way of giving back after people steered her away from gangs.

“This is about a city where the young people want to have ownership,” Martinez said. “They want to be stakeholders. I think that’s why I was successful.”

In unincorporated Lennox just east of Los Angeles International Airport, Renteria was elected to the school board in 2005 at age 25.

Her parents emigrated from Mexico. Her father started as a landscaper and later launched a film production company; her mother stayed home with the children. She was the first in her family to attend college and works as a clerk at an adult school.

She became the political action coordinator for a chapter of her union, the California School Employees Assn.

When an opening came up on the school board, she ran for office, hoping to change things.

With little experience, young politicians can become overly dependent on party leadership for direction and on lobbyists for policy expertise, particularly in the state capital.

“When they’re so young, they haven’t fully formed their own personality, but they run into the lobbying corps and entrenched interests and don’t quite know what to do abut it,” said Barbara O’Connor, a political science professor at Cal State Sacramento.

They can also be lightly regarded -- even resented -- by older peers for a perceived unwillingness to pay their dues, which is sometimes interpreted as arrogance.

Padilla, whose reputation for unbridled ambition preceded him to the Senate, was rumored to harbor visions of quickly becoming its president. He drew a rebuke from Sen. Don Perata (D-Oakland), the current president, who plans on keeping the job.

Other researchers see in the trend a broader point about California as a state of constant regeneration.

“Because it is California, you have such weaker societal norms and institutions. California is much more open to rapid change and newcomers,” said Tim Hodson, the executive director of the Center for California Studies at Cal State Sacramento. “Newcomers are disdainful of the existing structure; they take things over.”

christian.berthelsen@

latimes.com