Snyder Picks the Date: 18-Year Council Career to End Friday

Councilman Arthur K. Snyder, after several months of speculation, Wednesday announced that he will resign from office effective Friday to practice law.

Snyder, a controversial and colorful politician who has represented Los Angeles’ heavily Latino Eastside since 1967, endorsed Assemblyman Richard Alatorre (D-Los Angeles) to replace him.

Although the City Council could appoint a replacement, Council President Pat Russell said Wednesday that she is certain the council will call a special election.

Those who know Snyder best say he got what he most wanted--to leave politics on his terms rather than to be forced out. Numerous personal, political and legal woes during his 18 years in office often brought him to the brink of what seemed certain political death, only to have Snyder find a way to turn those problems into political advantage.

In a speech thick with Horatio Alger imagery, Snyder, 52, told a large gathering of reporters how he once was “a barefoot barrio kid” in East Los Angeles and now is leaving office to pursue his childhood ambition of practicing law full time. Snyder opened a downtown law firm specializing in immigration, international trade and personal injury in 1982.

He said he does not rule out working as a lobbyist for firms that do business with the city.

Snyder generally will be free to lobby for clients who do business with the city. Deputy City Atty. Tony Alperin said, however, that the Municipal Code does not allow Snyder to act as a lobbyist for any specific project on which he had voted as a councilman.

Summing up his long political career, Snyder said: “For me there had been a time to seek office, though never lose it . . . there had been much time to keep it, and now it was time to cast it away.”

Because Snyder had said in January that he would leave office in July but later delayed his departure, Latino politicians and activists had been skeptically and anxiously awaiting word on the popular incumbent’s plans, many speculating he would decide to stay in office.

Snyder, an Anglo, was repeatedly returned to office by voters in the largely Latino district and eventually became a grating symbol to those seeking to elect a Latino to the City Council for the first time in more than 20 years.

Under the city’s Election Code, a special election can take place no sooner than 55 days after Snyder resigns. Until he is replaced, district business is to be conducted by his staff.

A motion by Councilman Robert Farrell to be discussed in council Friday could “put the wheels in motion for a special election Dec. 3 or 10,” Farrell said. Even Alatorre, who once wanted to be appointed to replace Snyder, endorsed earlier this week a special election in reaction to growing support for allowing district voters to elect their own representative to fill Snyder’s term, which expires in 1987.

Throughout the ups and downs of his political career, Snyder has managed to survive the most heated controversies with a hard-fisted manner likened by many to that of Chicago precinct captains.

When the City Council, under a 1972 court decision, redrew the 14th District lines to make Snyder’s district overwhelmingly Latino, he objected vigorously. Once the decision was made, however, he learned Spanish, and eventually he changed his Republican affiliation to independent, making the adjustments needed to keep his constituents happy. He chalked up an array of highly visible projects, from senior citizens’ and recreation centers to libraries, and was usually returned to office against little or no serious opposition.

In 1974, he fought a recall election. The next year, in the regular election, he defeated several Latino candidates, including one heavily backed by Alatorre. Snyder, who became the council’s biggest fund-raiser, let it be known that he was interested in running for mayor, county supervisor or even Congress.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, a series of scandals stymied his political rise. In 1978 and 1979 he and Michele Noval, his second wife, went through a messy and public divorce and custody battle over their daughter, then 4. A settlement awarded custody to Noval, with generous visitation rights granted to Snyder.

One of several accidents in a city-owned car led to a drunk driving trial that ended in a hung jury in 1980. In 1982, he was fined $14,000 by the state Fair Political Practices Commission for admitted conflict-of-interest violations stemming from failure to disclose about $142,000 in outside income.

When challenged at the polls last year, however, he again beat a recall election.

And during a Dependency Court hearing late last year, Snyder’s 9-year-old daughter said that he had molested her several years ago. In the midst of that controversy, Snyder announced in January that he would resign, not because of the allegations but because of his current wife’s health. In May, the district attorney’s office decided not to file criminal charges against Snyder because of insufficient evidence.

With that trouble behind him, there were renewed calls from Snyder’s supporters, particularly in the mostly Anglo Eagle Rock, for Snyder to remain in office. For months, he dodged specific comment about exactly when he would resign, until Wednesday.

Although Snyder had lobbied for the council to appoint Alatorre, he said Wednesday that he has concluded that “there was not a consensus” among council members or among voters for an appointment, news that was greeted Wednesday by Alatorre rivals Steve Rodriguez, Gilbert Avila and Antonio Rodriguez.