Councilwoman Flores: Plaudits Replace Early Condescension : Joan Milke Flores: First-Term Efforts Slowly Gain Acceptance

If she had started elsewhere, Joan Milke Flores figures she might have won fast acceptance on the Los Angeles City Council. But instead, she took her first job with former Councilman John Gibson, toiling for 25 years as a staff aide.

And after she succeeded the retiring Gibson in 1981, she found that other council members still regarded her as an underling.

“I listened . . . to them introducing me to people and they’d say, ‘This is Joanie. She’s only been (on the council) for two months and she’s really surprising us--she’s doing such a good job,’ ” Flores recalled. “After hearing this for nine months, I started to say, ‘Wait a minute--why are they surprised?’ I think . . . they still thought of me as clerical, because that’s how I got started.”

Aims for Second Term

But now, as she begins her quest for a second term, running against a single write-in challenger in the April 9 city elections, Flores laughs over the condescension. After all, she has far exceeded her first ambition--to prove that she belongs. In four years, she has gained recognition as one of the powerful and steadying forces on the 15-member council, where quarrelsome factions and imperious egos often dominate the headlines.

“She’s not a demagogue; she doesn’t harangue; she presents her side very well,” observed Joel Wachs, a council colleague who has opposed Flores on issues such as rent control (which she opposes) and major development (which she tends to support). “Even though we don’t agree on a lot of issues . . . I think she’s terrific. She’s got a lot of wonderful attributes I like to see in an elected official.”

Her reputation for fairness and for being evenhanded--”I don’t like to get caught up in factions”--has helped make Flores a rising political star in the eyes of many colleagues and City Council observers. As president pro tem, she is the first freshman in more than 50 years to be chosen for a council leadership position, and many supporters say the representative from the District 15 is bound to go higher.

May Hold an Edge

Last fall, when City Council President Pat Russell fell into disfavor by trying to cripple a council-authorized study of rent control, Flores gained support as a likely successor to the current council president. Insiders say she still may hold an edge over other contenders if Russell falters as her two-year term as president nears an end in July.

“I don’t see anybody else being able to put together the coalition of eight votes” necessary to win the position, said one council source who asked not to be identified.

Councilman Howard Finn, who supported Flores’ selection as president pro tem, said that job has given her a chance to showcase her leadership ability while filling in for Russell and Mayor Tom Bradley. Flores captured the post during a round of intense political jockeying in 1983, when the council vacillated among three possible selections before ousting Wachs and installing Russell as council president. Councilman John Ferraro, now a candidate for mayor, also was a contender for the top council spot.

During the frantic final hours before the vote, Flores committed herself to become the decisive eighth vote for Russell, then received support from Russell and her allies to emerge as president pro tem. Although the two have since denied making any backstage deals--Flores says she would have voted for Russell regardless of the pro tem position--the outcome to some underscored both Flores’ popularity and her political savvy.

“I haven’t noticed any weaknesses--I think she’s all strengths,” Finn said. Only her lack of widespread recognition stands in her way of becoming a serious candidate in some future mayoral race, Finn said. “She’s well respected by pretty much everyone for her opinions, for her votes.”

At 48, Flores seems both confident in her abilities and willing to accept where her knowledge and hard work may take her. In the April elections, her only challenger is expected to be Joe E. Collins Jr., a 20-year-old computer operator who has announced plans to run as a write-in candidate. Collins missed the Feb. 2 filing deadline to be placed on the ballot.

‘I Might Go for It’

Flores said she plans to spend less than $50,000 during the campaign, from a cache of more than $338,000. She talks of future aspirations--possible bids to become mayor or council president--by saying, “I’m a person who believes in timing and doors opening. I don’t have any specific plans . . . but if everything was right, I might go for it. I haven’t ruled out those things.”

She is the former wife of a Los Angeles police officer and the mother of a 24-year-old daughter who is preparing to enter law school. After joining Gibson’s staff at 19 as a stenographer, Flores worked her way up to become the former councilman’s chief deputy during his last 13 years in office. She helped manage his final election campaign and ran the office during his final term, when Gibson’s health was suffering.

“That was good grooming for me,” she recalled.

In her own first term, she has tried to establish herself as a council leader and to deal with problems in her district, which encompasses Watts, Wilmington, the vast Los Angeles Harbor area and the Los Angeles strip (now known as Harbor Gateway). In a region marked by high crime, chemical treatment plants and zoning problems, she has helped lead the drive for more city police officers, for tighter regulations on firms that handle hazardous wastes, and for more council control of the city’s largely independent Harbor Department.

She also tackled complex citywide problems. In the last two years, Flores has helped settle two of the city’s most protracted and controversial issues--the four-year battle over a cable TV franchise in the east San Fernando Valley and a decade-long dispute over the city’s water-pumping rights in Inyo County.

Praised as Effective

“She does her homework, she reads the reports--more so than anybody else on the council,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, a philosophical opponent of Flores on many development issues. Yaroslavsky said he was deeply disappointed over Flores’ unwillingness to support a building moratorium in the Westwood area, but called her a highly effective and popular council member.

“She’s a smart adversary--that’s one of my problems,” he said.

Flores said she often carts home reports to study critical issues, and she religiously tours her district every Thursday, trying to stay in touch with her 200,000 constituents. Under her glass desk top in the City Council chambers, Flores often keeps clippings of cartoons that reflect a philosophy of doing her homework and not getting carried away with her own ego.

“When the time for action arises, the time for preparation is past,” one recent cartoon caption warned. A current one suggests, “If there’s one thing worse than being wrong, it’s being right with nobody listenin’!”

Yet, Flores said, she is never 100% sure that she is right.

‘Logical Conclusions’

“Sometimes it’s very close--it’s 49.9% to 50.1%,” she said. “I try to come to logical conclusions--not just what I think is best, but also what I can sell to the council . . . to get the council approval I need and not make people really angry when they leave the council chambers. I like to leave the impression on people that I’ve given them every consideration that I could.”

In 1983, she showed how she can change her mind when she became the critical swing vote in a battle over a cable TV franchise then valued at nearly $100 million.

Serving on the council’s three-member committee on industry and economic development, Flores initially recommended that the franchise, for the east San Fernando Valley, be awarded to East Valley Community Cable Inc., an ad hoc group made up of 45 Valley shareholders.

But after the council asked for detailed financial statements from the two final competitors, East Valley revealed that it might have to call in new controlling investors to finance the expected $58-million project--a possibility that troubled Flores. She said she feared that new controlling interests might not honor the firm’s franchise proposal.

Lobbyists Give Funds

During the final months of debate, the two competing firms brought in lobbyists and made substantial contributions to several members of the council, including Flores. Critics suggested that some council members were dragging out the decision as a way to bolster their campaign funds, and at one point tensions erupted into a fistfight between representatives of the two firms.

Ultimately, Flores, who was not up for reelection that year, led an 8-7 vote that gave the franchise to Denver-based United Cable TV, which is due to complete the project in late 1986. In the aftermath, both firms praised her for forcing the issue to a conclusion and for not being influenced by heavy lobbying.

“Even though she changed her position, it was done on the basis of what she thought was fair and reasonable, not on political considerations,” said Mickey Kantor, an attorney who represented the losing East Valley organization, which is now defunct. “She was probably the most well-informed person on that entire council. I have nothing but the highest regard for her ability and talent.”

In December, Flores supported United Cable’s request for a 10-month deadline extension to make improvements while constructing the 160,000-home system, but she also voted to boost fines from $500 to $1,000 per day if the new deadline is not met. United officials described her as tough but fair.

‘Made Cable Happen’

“Flores was the person who made cable happen in the East Valley,” said Sam Street, the firm’s franchising director.

Although unenthusiastic about her appointment to the council’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee--overseeing an area in which she had little expertise--she became a leader in ending a water-pumping conflict that had been raging for decades between the Los Angeles and Inyo County. Los Angeles gets much of its water from Owens Valley in Inyo County.

In that county, located in Northern California’s Owens Valley, resentment over the city’s water policies had led to a legacy of lawsuits and ill feelings.

Expanding upon the work of previous committee leaders, Flores attempted to call off pending lawsuits and to get elected officials, rather than bureaucrats, to the bargaining table. Subsequent breakthroughs in negotiations led to an agreement in February, which assured a continuing water supply for Los Angeles while establishing new environmental protections for Inyo County.

“She is the only member of that committee who has ever recognized that it was going to be politicians who settled this thing, not staff members and lawyers,” said Cindy O’Connor, an Inyo County water commissioner.

“I don’t yell at people, I don’t swear at them and condemn their views,” Flores said.

Recalls Anecdote

Reflecting on her first term, she recalled an anecdote about former President Harry S. Truman, when he was preparing to enter the U.S. Senate.

“He had a judge friend who said to him, ‘Now, Harry, don’t feel an inferiority complex about going into the Senate,’ ” Flores remembered. “He said to him, ‘The first six months you’ll walk in there and wonder what you’re doing there. Then, after that, you’ll walk in there and wonder what everyone else is doing there.’ ”

Flores refused to say whether she had reached the same opinion of her own colleagues.

“No comment,” she said laughingly. “I think all of us feel that way sometimes.”