Governor Risks Latinos’ Support on Prison Issue

In a bitter feud with Senate Democrats, Gov. George Deukmejian has put his prestige on the line as he fights for construction of a controversial prison near East Los Angeles.

But as he hit the campaign trail last week, there were signs that his insistence on the site is costing him support among a group he has long tried to cultivate: Latino voters.

For many Latinos, the Deukmejian Administration’s decision to build a prison in Los Angeles near Latino neighborhoods has become a symbol of what they perceive as discrimination by the state’s political system.

Even among Latinos friendly to Deukmejian there is open criticism of the governor’s stand on the prison site.

“There’s a lot the Hispanic community will read into this--are we again being relegated to second-class status?” said Latin Business Assn. President Ruben Jauregui at a reception that Deukmejian attended in Los Angeles Friday with Latino business leaders.

“If this issue passes, I think the Hispanic vote will abandon him statewide,” he said. “It is a statewide issue.”

Some Offsetting Effects

At the same time, the governor is likely to gain some support among non-Latino voters outside Los Angeles County who agree that the county should have a prison. He might also win backing from some residents of other areas of the county who do not want a prison in their neighborhoods.

Deukmejian has called a special session of the Legislature in an attempt to win approval of the site selected by the Department of Corrections. Pointing out that the location is in an industrial neighborhood, Deukmejian argued that a prison must be built there to relieve overcrowding in the state prison system.

To consider alternative sites would create intolerable delays, he said.

But Democratic senators led by Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) have sided with East Los Angeles residents seeking to block Deukmejian’s choice for the prison site. The residents argue that many people live within a mile of the site and that there are 26 schools within a two-mile radius.

The prison issue followed Deukmejian to Stockton on Saturday, where he said that discrimination against the Latino community played no part in selecting the prison site.

The medium-security prison site is near 12th and Santa Fe streets about two miles southeast of Civic Center. The nearest homes are across the Los Angeles River about a mile away.

“It’s just absolutely ridiculous,” he said after speaking at a Republican fund-raiser. “It’s just that some of these people have decided to oppose this for political purposes.

“This is not even in a Hispanic area. It’s right in the middle of an industrialized area,” he said. Deukmejian noted that the state is building several other prisons around California that are not located in Latino neighborhoods.

Deukmejian’s stalemate with legislators came as opinion polls showed that the governor’s lead over his Democratic challenger, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, has slipped in recent months.

The Los Angeles Times poll showed Thursday that Deukmejian’s margin over Bradley had fallen to 9 percentage points from 17 points in March. A poll conducted by Steve Teichner for KABC released earlier in the week put Deukmejian’s lead at just 6% over Bradley.

Among Latino voters, the Times Poll found, the change has been far more dramatic. In March, Deukmejian led Bradley among Latinos by a margin of 46% to 38%. By May, Bradley had taken a lead of 41% to 32% among Latinos.

By last week, Bradley commanded a lead of 46% to 23% over Deukmejian among Latino voters, according to the Times poll. That represents a net loss of 31 percentage points for Deukmejian among Latino voters since March.

On Friday, Deukmejian acknowledged at a press conference that the prison issue could cost him political support but argued that the prison site is necessary for the state as a whole.

“You’ve got to exercise leadership and you’ve got to realize the total general public has to be served,” he said. “For me politically, in that part of Los Angeles, I’ll probably suffer as a result.”

But in Stockton Saturday, Deukmejian downplayed the political losses. “I doubt whether they (prison site opponents) would have been with me to begin with,” he said.