Council Candidates Have a Bitter Score to Settle in Hawaiian Gardens Race : Local Elections

When voters here go to the polls April 8, the ballots they cast will do more than determine who will lead their city through the end of the decade.

The contest, pitting a pair of longtime incumbents against their two archrivals, could also be the deciding battle in a bitter political feud that has raged for more than two years.

On one side are veteran Councilmen Jack W. Myers, 53, and Lupe A. Cabrera, 52, two closely aligned politicians who boast that they have spurred quality growth in the mile-square city and that they deserve reelection to fourth terms in office.

Former Councilman Donald E. Schultze, 52, and community activist Kathleen M. Navejas, 31, have teamed up to challenge the incumbents in what both sides say will be a low-cost contest. They charge that Myers and Cabrera have ignored the community’s law enforcement needs and barred most residents from the political process that is shaping the city’s future.

Fervent War of Words

Underscoring those issues, however, is a rancorous, long-running battle of wits between the incumbents and their challengers. Politics can get personal in any town, but in Hawaiian Gardens the war of words between the two camps has reached a fervent level.

Navejas, Schultze and their political allies repeatedly have sparred with Myers and Cabrera during council meetings in recent years, arguing over a wide array of issues.

Sometimes, however, the arguing has transcended words.

Take, for instance, an incident that occurred in November. Following a council meeting, four of the council’s five members--including Myers and Cabrera--had gathered at a local restaurant with family members and several city employees to celebrate Cabrera’s birthday.

When Navejas spotted the group, she pulled out a camera and began shooting pictures. Navejas said that she hoped to use the photographs as proof that the council was violating a state law that requires the public be notified whenever a quorum meets to make decisions.

Camera Slapped Away

As Navejas tells it, Ruby Myers, wife of Councilman Myers, got up from her seat and slapped the camera away. Navejas says she was bruised on the cheek by the blow. She filed a criminal complaint accusing Ruby Myers of assault and battery, but the district attorney’s office found insufficient evidence and refused to file charges.

That was only the latest scrape in a political feud dating back to at least 1983. It was during that year that Schultze--still a council member at the time--broke with Myers and Cabrera over their support for legalized gambling in the city.

More fuel was added during the 1984 election, when Schultze and Navejas both ran and lost to current council members Rosalie M. Sher and Richard O. Vineyard, candidates supported by Myers and Cabrera.

Since then, Schultze and Navejas have continually blasted the council for its support of Cooper Fellowship, an alcohol rehabilitation center that runs a multimillion-dollar bingo parlor that has been the subject of both a district attorney’s investigation and a state attorney general’s audit.

Those probes led to the filing of misdemeanor charges in Bellflower Municipal Court against Jack A. Blackburn, executive director of Cooper Fellowship, and two Cooper Fellowship employees. The charges alleged that Blackburn and the two other men illegally profited from the games.

Support Bingo Operation

Myers and Cabrera, meanwhile, say that they support the bingo operation mostly because of the more than $200,000 in revenues it pumps each year into city coffers. In addition, the councilmen maintain that they have no grounds for taking action against Cooper Fellowship unless Blackburn and the others are found guilty. No date has been set for the trial.

The incumbents prefer to avoid talk of bingo and point instead to their efforts to revitalize the city through redevelopment. In recent years, the council has authorized several projects to widen the city’s narrow boulevards and improve street lighting. A five-year plan has been drawn up calling for a new library, fire station and community building.

Last Tuesday, the council approved an agreement setting the stage for the city’s biggest redevelopment project yet, a 10-acre shopping complex at Carson Street and Norwalk Boulevard that will include an Albertson’s supermarket and a dozen or more commercial shops.

“Everyone in the community is so satisfied with what we’ve been doing. Our problem is going to be getting people to turn out to the polls,” Myers said.

Lives Off Investments

Myers, a resident of the area since his family moved from Oklahoma in 1934, is a Navy veteran and former owner of a ceramic mold business. Since selling the company last year, Myers has lived off his investments in property and stocks, which he estimates bring in about $60,000 a year.

He is also serving as president of the California Contract Cities Assn., with his one-year term set to expire in June. Myers, like all the other candidates, has yet to raise any campaign money, but said that he expects to hold fund-raisers and will spend about $2,000 on the race.

Cabrera also expects to spend $2,000--all of it his own money--and walk precincts to reach the voters. The first Latino elected to the council, Cabrera is former owner of a popular grocery store in Hawaiian Gardens. He is now semi-retired, but has a $10,400-a-year job as a public relations representative for Leaf Confectionary Inc., a Chicago-based candy firm.

Their challengers, meanwhile, say they plan to spend about $1,000 each on mailers and other campaign literature while walking door-to-door to capture votes.

Schultze, who served on the council for one four-year term beginning in 1980, is a general contractor making about $30,000 a year. A Missouri native, he has lived in Hawaiian Gardens since 1962 and has served six-year stints on the city’s Parks and Recreation and Planning commissions.

Ran Volunteer Food Bank

Navejas, a sales executive for GTE Directories, moved to Hawaiian Gardens from Tucson, Ariz., 10 years ago. She has worked in the city’s Head Start program and run a volunteer food bank along with her husband, Carlos Navejas, a former councilman who was defeated in 1980 after one term in office.

The challengers say they are centering their campaign on the inability of the incumbents to include the average citizen in important municipal decisions.

As proof, they point to the shopping center deal approved by the council last week. They say that the council refused to listen to pleas from residents that the project be put out to bid, a process they contend might have led to the site being developed as a department store, which generates more sales tax, instead of a supermarket.

“I think everything is decided behind closed doors before they get to the meeting,” Schultze said. “The citizens have no say in their government.”

Navejas is more blunt: “I call it a dictatorship. I think people in this city need to be properly represented. Jack and Lupe have been in office for a long time. The city needs a change.”

Sensitive to Requests

Cabrera and Myers, however, insist that they have been sensitive to the requests of residents.

“Every time they’ve brought something up, we have responded,” Cabrera said. “We’ve never denied any resident access to City Hall.”

Schultze and Navejas also complain that the city has a problem with police protection, charging that deputies from the Sheriff Department’s Lakewood substation sometimes take up to 45 minutes to respond to calls because of inadequate staffing for Hawaiian Gardens.

Those delays, they contend, could be rectified if the council would approve more money for the Sheriff’s Department, which covers Artesia, Bellflower, Cerritos, Lakewood and Paramount, in addition to Hawaiian Gardens, out of the Lakewood substation.

Myers and Cabrera, however, maintain the police coverage of the city is good. Their opponents, they say, are complaining merely to create a false issue. “They’re trying to create issues because there are no issues,” Myers said. “The whole issue is they just want to sit in the seat. I don’t think they could do anything more for the people than we are doing.”