First Latino to Hold the Office : Alhambra Mayor Blanco a Man of Contradictions and Surprises

Mayor Michael A. Blanco is described by friends as a man of contradictions. He is ordinarily reticent, yet excels at public speaking. He takes pride in being Alhambra’s first Latino mayor, but he does not speak Spanish. He champions redevelopment, but also worries about preserving neighborhoods.

“He keeps surprising people,” said Merrill Francis, Blanco’s law partner. “People didn’t think he’d run for City Council, but he did. They didn’t think he could campaign well, but he was the highest vote-getter.”

Blanco’s “polite, soft way” leads people to underestimate him, Francis said. “He’s low-key and very smart.”

Others look upon Blanco as enigmatic.

“I don’t think anyone knows him well,” said Richard Nichols, manager of the Alhambra Chamber of Commerce. Blanco is an exceptionally attentive listener to those who seek to persuade him on issues, Nichols said, but his reactions and votes are difficult to predict. “He’s hard to get to know.”

Blanco concedes that he is not easy to label. He is a liberal on some issues and a conservative on others. He said he judges each proposal on its merits.

The fact that he does not speak Spanish “is a decision my parents made for me,” he said. His parents spoke Spanish but did not teach him the language, he said, because they wanted to make sure he spoke English without an accent.

Blanco said he relishes opportunities to speak in public about Alhambra because he regards the job of mayor as “sort of like (that of) a cheerleader. You have to encourage everyone.”

Blanco, 36, was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Norwalk and Monterey Park as the second of 10 children. He graduated from Don Bosco Technical Institute and California State University, Los Angeles, before getting a law degree from the University of Illinois. He has lived in Alhambra for eight years, conducting a law practice specializing in probates, wills, estates and trusts. He and his wife, Donna, have one child, a newborn girl they adopted last month.

Blanco was elected to the City Council in 1982, running on a platform to save Alhambra Community Hospital, whose proposed sale by the city had sparked controversy. The hospital issue was resolved when the city canceled plans to sell the property.

Blanco was elevated to the post of mayor at the end of May under a system that rotates the office among council members.

Not only is he the first Latino to serve as mayor, but, Blanco said, he apparently is the first Latino elected to the council since the city was incorporated in 1903. Ironically, his elevation to mayor comes as the city’s Latino population, which had risen to 37% by the 1980 census, apparently has begun to decline. The city does not track demographic trends, but enrollment of children with Spanish surnames in Alhambra schools has fallen by 6% since reaching a peak in 1980, while Asian enrollment has grown 13% in the same period.

Only 12% of the city’s population was identified as Asian in the 1980 census, but the total is at least double that now, according to David Carmany, city director of housing and community development.

Blanco said he thinks the city is handling the influx of Asian immigrants well. People today, particularly the younger ones, are better educated and more tolerant and cosmopolitan than previous generations were, he said.

“It’s harder on the older residents of the city who have been here for a long, long time and are used to things the way they were,” he said. “They see all the Oriental signs on Valley Boulevard and it shocks them.”

Fixing the Potholes

But what is demanded from city government by people, whether they are Asian, Latino or Anglo, Blanco said, are the services that municipalities have been providing for years--police protection, roads, sidewalks and libraries.

“It’s not too glamorous to point to a pothole you fixed,” he said, “but that’s probably the real function of the City Council: to provide those basic services that people want and need.”

The city earlier this year surveyed residents to find out how satisfied they were with city services. Asked to assign the city a letter grade, residents bestowed a B average.

Blanco said the way to move up to an A is to pay more attention to the city’s everyday needs. To this end, the city has reordered its priorities and will try to take care of an eight-year backlog of sidewalk repairs this year. It also will undertake a five-year plan to upgrade street lights, increase the number of police officers from 86 to 92 and expand library hours. Starting in September, the library will no longer be closed on Mondays.

People Misunderstand

Blanco said Alhambra’s aggressive efforts to promote business growth through redevelopment, low-interest loans, the sale of industrial bonds and other tactics sometimes create misunderstandings among residents.

“People see us spending money on a redevelopment area and they say, ‘Why aren’t they using that money to fix my sidewalk?’ The impression that people get is that their city is spending a lot of money on stuff they don’t want it spent on.”

The explanation is that the city has access to funds that are available only to promote development, not to meet general expenses, Blanco said.

He added that business growth eventually benefits the whole city.

Before Proposition 13 was passed in 1978, Blanco said, Alhambra could raise property taxes to meet expenses. Now, he said, with revenue from property taxes limited, Alhambra is more dependent on sales tax revenue and must compete with other cities to attract new businesses.

Not the Only Benefit

But revenue for the city is not the only benefit from business expansion, he said. The growth generates jobs, and a healthy business community will contribute money and manpower to all sorts of community projects, he said.

As mayor, Blanco said, his goal “overall is just making the city a nicer place to live.”

As to his future, Blanco, a Democrat, said he is interested in running for higher elective office if the opportunity comes along, but is not getting his hopes too high.

“I have some relatives who have been involved in acting and I kind of compare it to that,” he said. “A lot of actors in Southern California are trying to fit into the small number of slots that are available to a few. Politics is much the same way. You see all these people running for office and you realize that only one of them wins.”