Fight for Council Seat: A Test of Latino Power

Assemblywoman Gloria Molina, walking precincts near downtown Los Angeles, gleefully noted that campaign mail of her main rival, school board member Larry Gonzalez, had spilled on the ground and been stepped on near some mailboxes. “Larry’s stuff is on the floor, yea!”

In Lincoln Heights, Gonzalez’s headquarters posted a sign for workers: “11 days til we put her away!”

Such banter between the major candidates in Tuesday’s special City Council election in the new 1st District may seem good-natured. But it masks a seething beneath the surface--a fight not between Molina and Gonzalez but between her and Gonzalez’s backers, primarily Councilman Richard Alatorre.

Gonzalez himself acknowledges it, noting that in the past he endorsed Molina and she has supported him: “The problem is between her personality and his personality and that of other elected officials, not between her and me.”

The competition between the rising stars in Latino politics in a district designed by the City Council to provide more Latino representation is a sign of “political sophistication,” says Edward Avila, a Latino city commissioner. “The idea that the Hispanic community should come up with only one candidate that everyone could agree on is fantasy.”

Also in the 1st District race are two political unknowns, Paul D.Y. Moore and Leland Wong, who are trying to attract voters, particularly the more conservative Anglo voter who has proven more likely than Latinos to go to the polls.

The two Chinese-American candidates hold the key to whether Molina or Gonzalez can get the 50% plus one vote needed in Tuesday’s election to avoid a runoff. If Moore and Wong draw few votes, Molina or Gonzalez could win outright; if Moore and Wong fare better, they could force a runoff, probably in April.

The most popular notion is that the runoff would be between Molina and Gonzalez, although Wong and Moore supporters contend that Molina and Gonzalez will split the Latino votes, leading to a runoff between one of the Latinos and one of the Asians.

Between Molina and Gonzalez, there is the fight up front--and the fight behind the fight. The roots are legend by now in statewide Latino politics: Molina, a former aide to state Sen. Art Torres and Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, ran and won an Assembly seat after strong opposition from Alatorre, who backed another candidate, Richard Polanco, now an assemblyman in another district.

The race between Molina and Polanco was seen as a battle over other major questions: whether a woman could win in a Latino district considered heavily male-oriented, whether longtime Latino leaders such as Alatorre were trying to determine through their influence who was “in” and who was “out.”

Now, it is Gonzalez who is strongly backed by Alatorre, as well as by Torres, who supported Molina in her first election five years ago. Molina avoids direct or harsh criticism of Torres or Gonzalez. Molina implies it is Alatorre, “a councilman who wants two votes instead of one” who is “orchestrating” the Gonzalez campaign.

While Alatorre admits he has “called a lot of friends,” he denies persistent rumors that he has arm-twisted support for Gonzalez and against Molina. “Sure, I’m helping Larry. But she’s making me the scapegoat. I am not the candidate. I am not running the campaign.”

Gonzalez adds: “If Gloria (or) her supporters have a problem with Richard’s personality, then they ought to confront him with it, challenge him in the next election, if that is their wish, and not make me pay for it.”

The struggle for shared Latino leadership has been evident in other political races, said Avila, who supports Molina. A Gonzalez supporter agreed: “Richard, Gloria, Art (Torres)--all of the people involved here, they have no disagreement on philosophical beliefs, those that came out of the Chicano movement. This is about power--who gets more, who has to share more. It is in that context that this race is taking place.”

There is some irony in the Latino political struggle set in the new heavily Latino district, because 60% of the registered voters in the district are Anglo, Asian and black. No candidate can win with the Latino vote alone.

“Hello! hello!”

Molina was calling from the ground floor up to a second story apartment in the Temple Beaudry area, just west of downtown. She had been walking the steep hills for hours, and invariably, it seemed, registered voters lived on the second floors of gated buildings.

An elderly Chinese woman came to the balcony, leaning over the rail to apologize for not speaking English.

“I’m sorry I can’t speak your language, either,” said Molina, who speaks fluent Spanish. “Now I know how it feels when someone can’t speak Spanish and needs to,” she told a reporter. “I’m really going to have to learn some new language skills to communicate with some Asian voters in the district.”

She continued walking. Molina was wearing her usual business suit with heeled sandals for walking--”I had tried tennis shoes but I got funny looks,” she said. While walking precincts in Highland Park, Molina said, “One man said, ‘Don’t even talk to me, I’ll never vote for a woman,’ ” she recalled. Another man told her he would vote for her, influenced, he said, by his feminist daughter.

Molina, 38, named a Ms. magazine 1985 woman of the year, is supported by many women’s organizations, in addition to California Democrats Rep. Ed Roybal and Rep. Howard Berman, and five members of the City Council, including President Pat Russell.

In the many public forums she has attended during the campaign, she has talked of “developing agendas for empowerment for the community” to get better basic police and municipal services. The example she always uses is her well-publicized battle to keep a state prison out of the Eastside area.

“East L.A. has been told that its opposition to the prison is ignored. . . . It needs to demonstrate it will not be run over.” While denouncing “wimpy politicians,” she has tapped skillfully into a latent sense of outrage among many Latinos over many public works projects placed on the Eastside.

Reelected last November to a third term in the Assembly, Molina says she now wants to come back to politics on a local level, admitting she sometimes found it “frustrating” in the highly partisan Legislature “to not always get my way.”

Gonzalez mailers have said that 71% of the bills Molina introduced in Sacramento failed to become law.

At a press conference last week, school board member Jackie Goldberg came to Molina’s defense, citing her support of bills improving child care and fighting malathion spraying in residential neighborhoods. Goldberg called the 71% figure cited by Gonzalez “deceptive, irrelevant . . . it’s what you fight for that counts. You can introduce two bills all year, have one passed and have a 50% success rate. That doesn’t mean you are effective or that you’re doing anything important.”

One Sacramento-based source familiar with the Legislature said that Molina had a reputation of being “uncompromising, which has worked to her advantage in fighting the East L.A prison. But usually it didn’t because she didn’t want to compromise on anything, and that’s the only way you get anything done in the Legislature. You could call it principled, or you could call it impractical.”

Molina said she takes pride in “being a fighter, one who doesn’t just go along with the program because that’s how the pressure is being applied.”

Along Thomas Street in Lincoln Heights, there is still freshly turned soil where the Gates Street Elementary school is being prepared for expansion. Larry Gonzalez, a member of the school board who had worked to get that extra space, chose the area to walk with a reporter.

It was familiar turf to him, where his face was easily recognized by residents. He carried a clipboard, checking off the names of voters he intended to visit.

Julian Salinas recognized him when he came to the door. He has children who attend Gates school and assured Gonzalez, “You’ve got my vote.” Between homes, Gonzalez, 31, was low key and soft spoken. He conceded that “Gloria is the front-runner,” quickly adding that she is “heavily financed by the Westside. . . . I don’t think we want the Westside, the affluent and the powerful, telling people in this community what to do.”

Over the last few weeks, Gonzalez has gone from a tentative campaigner to an outwardly more confident one, one who talks about the need for better police protection and better municipal services and punctuates his speech with repeated jabs of his fist. On the school board he had a reputation as a hard worker, one who sometimes caught flak from parents on controversial positions, such as his vote to change the boundaries so that many Latino students in overcrowded South Gate High would go to the under-used and predominantly black Jordan High.

In the beginning of his council campaign, he so emphasized his school board accomplishments that some in the audience at public forums would often whisper aloud, “Is he running for school board or council?”

Since he could have legally run for the council in the election on Tuesday and for the school board in April (although he could actually hold only one seat) that was the major question hanging over Gonzalez. Two weeks ago he announced he would run only for the council job.

“There was a lot of anxiety in that decision, sure,” Gonzalez said recently. “But I figured the voters of the 1st District needed some signal that I was truly committed to serving their needs as a member of the City Council.”

With that settled, however, another question remains. Molina, as well as Moore and Wong, have questioned whether Gonzalez can be independent from those endorsing him. At meetings of homeowner groups worried about overdevelopment, he has often been asked about who has endorsed him and how much money he has received from real estate interests, who are his major financial backers.

He assured one residents’ group in Echo Park that “$500 (the maximum contribution from a single source allowed by city law) will not buy my vote.”

“How much will?” a skeptic from the audience countered.

Gonzalez is aware of the sensitivity. At a Mt. Washington forum, conspicuously missing from a lengthy recitation by Gonzalez of his endorsements were those of Alatorre and former Councilman Arthur K. Snyder, now a lobbyist for real estate interests.

“There may be those that are suspicious that elected officials in our community are supporting me,” he said in a speech earlier, “but I for one am proud to be associated with Sen. Art Torres and Councilman Richard Alatorre. . . .”

Several residents who live on Avenue 37 in Mt. Washington had seen Paul Moore at a recent community meeting.

Miriam Strong recognized him right away. “I saw you the other night at the meeting, you were good. I don’t expect you to win this time, though. . . .”

Bill Holslag knew his face, too. “I’m going to vote for you--you don’t seem to have a big machine behind you.”

Paul Moore, 35, is the Mr. Smith Goes to Washington of the group, the idealist who shows flashes of dry humor in community meetings. At one meeting he found a way to point out that Molina and Gonzalez had recently moved into the district.

“I want to welcome one of our new residents, Gloria Molina. I really know why you folks, you and Larry, have moved into this district; it’s a wonderful district. That’s why I’ve lived here 13 years.”

“I’ve always been talking about the issues,” he said later. “Slowly but surely they discovered the bread-and-butter issues like police response and municipal services. People don’t care about Sacramento or school board experience.”

His Anglo surname--acquired through his mother’s second marriage to a non-Chinese American who adopted him--is the only nonethnic name on the ballot. But Moore says he does not want a vote based on a misconception that he is white. “I don’t want any confusion about that, that’s one of the reasons I have my picture on my brochures.”

Moore is multicultural in another way: He speaks Spanish. He recently disarmed and drew laughter from a largely Latino audience by telling them in Spanish that he relates to immigrants’ problems because he too is an immigrant--with papers.

A former aide to Mayor Tom Bradley in 1973-1977, in conversation he reveals detailed knowledge of the district, down to which areas that have poor water pressure because of aging pipes.

“Very knowledgeable,” remarked one Echo Park resident who attended a community meeting where Moore spoke. “Does he have what it takes to be a good councilman? I don’t know.”

Hardwood Drive in Elysian Valley, near Dodger Stadium, is a street with a lot of locked chain link fences, bolted iron doors and large dogs.

Those impediments to entry were not stopping Leland Wong from trying. His has been an uphill struggle to maintain life in a campaign that started out with a splash, but then failed to live up to Wong’s own predictions of a “major league” campaign.

The major Chinatown money he expected did not materialize, making it difficult for him to compete against the better-financed campaigns of Molina and Gonzalez. But Wong, 29, a former anti-gang organizer and community planner, took a look at the demographics of the district “and I figured I still had a good shot,” he said.

“All of the other candidates are super liberal,” Wong said. “I’m more to the center. I think that will count for something important with the more conservative voters of this district, and those are the people who vote.”

Frank Ricchiazzi, chairman of the Republican 55th Assembly committee which covers part of the 1st District, said that while the committee does not endorse, members are making calls on behalf of Wong. “We’re making a strong pitch,” Ricchiazzi said. “We think Molina and Gonzalez are going to split the vote.”

At forums, Wong did not take positions greatly different from the other candidates, who all agree that the district needs better police protection, better housing in poor areas, protection in the hillsides from overdevelopment and better municipal services. Wong’s position varied mostly by degree: He supports rent control, for instance, while cautioning that some other options must be found if more housing is to be built. Noting statistics that show that the district is poorer, younger, has more unemployed and more substandard housing than the city as as whole, Wong has proposed several citizen task forces to work with him to address the problems.