Statehouse Turns Attention to 33rd Senate Race : Norwalk Councilman Green Offers Democrats a Way to Hang Onto Seat

It was all smiles and handshakes until state Senate candidate Cecil Green stopped at Joe Meyers’ house in Norwalk. The retired truck driver was bugged, and he let Green, a Norwalk councilman, know it. A neighbor around the corner was illegally keeping bees in his backyard and they were buzzing the entire neighborhood, making it tough to barbecue or walk at night along LeFloss Avenue.

Green tried to switch subjects, asking Meyers to vote for him May 12 for the 33rd Senate District. But Meyers found a way to bring back the bees and sting Green again.

“Hey, if you can’t solve our bee problem, what makes you think you can go to Sacramento and fix anything?” Meyers asked, pushing back the brim of his ball cap. “You’re just a councilman.”

But Green, a 63-year-old Democrat, wants to be more. He wants to be a state senator, representing a district he believes mirrors his own values. The son of a carpenter, Green preaches the work ethic, a theme that plays well in this predominantly blue-collar district of single-family homes and shopping centers.

He is an uncomplicated man with a quick temper, a hawkish look and a zeal to go to Sacramento as the first state senator ever from Norwalk.

To accomplish that he must defeat Assemblyman Wayne Grisham (R-Norwalk). At first glance, the two men are look-alikes. Less than a year in age separates them, and both are regarded as political conservatives. But Green draws the line there, believing that his almost legendary connections in the district will set him apart.

The former muffler shop owner contends that his roots in the district go much deeper--35 years as a resident and businessman in Norwalk, the largest city in the 33rd. He said he helped incorporate the city 30 years ago and now is championing its rebirth as the council’s leading advocate of redevelopment. He points to $165 million in new building in the city since 1984 as proof that he can help make things happen in a big way.

The Republicans certainly took notice after Green rallied from way back to nearly win the 33rd Senate District seat outright in the March primary--an almost unthinkable feat at the outset of the campaign. He did it with a broad base of Democratic support and nearly $800,000 in cash and staff from around the state. Party leaders are doubling their support in the runoff in hopes that Green’s folksy character can win enough votes to keep the seat vacated by former state Sen. Paul Carpenter (D-Cypress) in Democratic hands.

Green knows the race has implications well beyond the district as both parties wrestle for control of the statehouse and an advantage when reapportionment of districts comes in 1990.

Still he admits he is uncomfortable with the amount of money being spent, and tries to justify it by saying “everything costs 10 times what it did a few years ago.”

Record spending in pursuit of elective office is nothing new to Green. The four-term council member spent $55,000 last April to win reelection in Norwalk in what he figured was his final political campaign before retiring from public life.

But when Carpenter decided to run for the state Board of Equalization, Green said he started thinking about replacing his longtime friend in the state Senate.

“I decided I still had something to offer,” Green said recently. “I just hope the voters agree.”

Considered Dominant Figure

In recent years, Green has been considered Norwalk’s most dominant political figure. Critics and friends alike say much of his success is tied to his years as a mechanic, operating a string of repair shops, which he sold in the mid-1970s. Through his business, Green built a network of contacts that he has continued to tap over the years for contributions and support, and it is no different this time around. Many of those longtime friends walked precincts and telephoned voters in the primary, urging them to the polls.

“When it comes to running this city, he’s a straightforward, no-nonsense kind of guy,” said Phyllis Eliasen, a Norwalk resident and City Hall observer since 1950. “When he says he’ll do something, he does it. . . . He has always been very fair.”

But Green’s critics disagree. “He’s not the grandpa type they are trying to paint,” said one former Norwalk councilman. “He is a hard-hitting type who intimidates and bullies people when he does not get his way. . . . And he has a temper that flashes without warning.”

In one celebrated incident a year ago, Green and former City Manager Raymond Gibbs stood toe-to-toe shouting obscenities at each other that were overheard outside Gibbs’ office. The argument, prompted by Green’s attempt to censure another councilman for releasing city records to a local activist, was broken up by Mayor Bob White, who physically restrained Green. Green wanted to discuss the possible censure of Councilman Lou Banas at an open council meeting, but Gibbs questioned whether it was wise to air the matter in public.

Acknowledges Temper

Green explains his occasional outbursts as a “low tolerance for incompetence.” At a Sunday strategy session early in the runoff campaign, he half-jokingly remarked to campaign aides: “I’m going to apologize now for my short temper. . . . I do get angry when things don’t go right.”

Green also bristles at the subject of council travel expenses. In September, 1985, Green and the rest of the Norwalk council came under fire for running up $87,019 in expenditures for travel and meetings, more than 2 1/2 times that of any similar-sized city in Southeast Los Angeles County. Green himself spent $18,933 on travel and meetings in fiscal 1984-85, which was more than the combined travel expenditures of the councils in Cerritos and Downey for that year.

Since then the Norwalk council has reduced its travel. But Green defends the expenditures as necessary to “build contacts and generate new ideas.”

He said it was on one such trip to Palm Springs in the late 1970s for a California League of Contract Cities meeting that the idea for a municipal insurance consortium was conceived by Green and several others. Since then, the Southern California Insurance Consortium has grown to include 50 cities that are self-insured under one master policy. Officials in Norwalk say participation in the program has saved the city in recent years nearly $1 million in premium payments.

“Very little is often written about the good those trips produce,” said Green, who is the current president of the insurance consortium. “We were not playing fast and loose with taxpayers’ money.”

First Pulled Into Politics

In fact, Green said, it was a tax issue that first pulled him into politics. A planning commissioner at the time, Green said he decided to run for the council in 1974 after the city raised business license fees. “There was no apparent need for it,” Green recalled. “I was mad. I never intended to run but I walked out of that council meeting a candidate.”

He won that year and has never come close to losing an election since. The reason, he offered recently, is integrity. “My daddy taught me that the only thing that is truly yours is your integrity,” Green said. “My integrity is intact.”

Born in Riverside, Green grew up in a family where “punishment was a leather strap.” Discipline, Green said, was the “foundation of our household.” During the Depression, Green sold newspapers, and on Sundays, the family of four (Green has one sister who lives in Oregon) went to the local Methodist church, something Green says now he does not do as much as he should.

After high school, Green passed up college and moved to Northern California to follow his father’s path and become a carpenter. During World War II, Green enlisted in the Seabees and was sent to North Africa where he worked in medical units. “My gun was a hypodermic syringe,” he said. He also served 16 months during the Korean War, but never left the United States. Discharged in 1952, he worked with a friend at an auto shop in South Gate and soon after opened his own muffler store in Norwalk.

Green’s first wife died of cancer in late 1959. Two years later, he met his current wife, Mary. It was a blind date to an Elks club ball. “He showed up in this white tuxedo jacket, handsome as could be,” Mary remembered. “We danced every dance, and I thought he loved to dance. Only later did I find out he can’t stand it.”

Two days later they were engaged and by week’s end they were married. Their only child is Mary’s daughter, Jan, from a previous marriage. They have two grandchildren, twins Patrick and Michelle.

In some respects, all the attention generated by the race has overwhelmed the Greens. When U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston, the state’s leading Democrat, arrived at Green’s Norwalk headquarters by helicopter, Mary snapped pictures of her husband greeting Cranston. Later, Cranston signed autographs for the Greens’ grandchildren. “This is a special day for us,” Mary said. “This does not happen to many people.”

The Greens have lived in the same tract home on the city’s East Side for 14 years. Green, an energetic sort who smokes constantly, said that making a lot of money has never been a goal of his.

“If I wanted that, I would have worked a lot harder,” he said. “I just wanted a good, comfortable living and a chance to go fishing once in a while. . . . “ His idea of striking it rich was winning $5,000 on a scratch-off game the first week of the California Lottery in 1985.

Green, who has been mayor of Norwalk three times, was a registered Republican for nearly two decades. Originally a Democrat, he said he switched parties so he could vote for former President Dwight Eisenhower, one of his heroes. “I thought a lot of Ike,” Green said. “He was a tough, honest man.” By the early 1970s, Green said he had returned to the Democratic fold.

In the spring of 1976, Green ran for state Senate for the first time. But the campaign barely got rolling when he came down with pneumonia and wound up in the hospital for six weeks. He lost in the primary, and eventually decided to sell his auto shops and become a real estate consultant.

An independent businessman with vast contacts and a pro-development reputation, Green has had steady employment ever since. For seven years, he worked for Fotomat Corp., scouting new locations on the West Coast for the company’s film processing kiosks.

Tired of the travel, he left Fotomat in 1983 and went to work for Metropolitan Theatres Corp., a Los Angeles-based chain of 70 movie houses from San Diego to Santa Barbara. Bruce Corwin, owner of the theater chain, is one of the most influential Democrats in the state, particularly when it comes to fund raising. In recent years, he has been Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley’s campaign finance chairman, and Green said Corwin is a “valuable player” in his Senate bid.

Represents Theater Owner

On zoning and planning matters involving Metropolitan Theatres, Green said he often appears before public agencies as Corwin’s personal representative. In Huntington Park last year one of Corwin’s theaters burned and it was Green who guided the rebuilding project through that city’s approval process.

In recent years, Green has also worked as a consultant for Shell Oil Co.; a Norwalk company, Neil Irving & Associates, and a Compton garbage disposal firm, Murcole, Inc. John Mgrdichian, owner of Murcole, said Green advised him on how to develop a 17-acre commercial site in Compton. “He’s got a know-how when it comes to getting things approved at City Hall,” said Mgrdichian, who has contributed $5,000 to Green’s senate campaign.

To win the 33rd, the Norwalk councilman has been talking tough on education, transportation and care for the elderly. He has denounced the governor’s proposed cuts in special school programs for minority, handicapped and gifted children, and said he would use the $1 billion state surplus to restore the programs and reduce class sizes.

In a district crisscrossed by five freeways, Green is a strong proponent of mass transit. “Gridlock is coming and the people of this district need relief,” he said. But unlike Grisham, he opposes any increase in the gas tax to pay for new roads or transit system. “The money is already there,” said Green, who has the backing of most labor and police groups. “It’s just mismanaged.”

Leaders of several senior citizen groups in Norwalk give Green and the council good marks, although some argue that the elderly are receiving more attention these days because they are a potent voting block, making up nearly 18% of the city population. Green and the council recently agreed to spend $260,000 to upgrade the city’s senior citizen center, and the city continues to maintain and staff the center year-round.

On a get-out-the-vote walk through a Norwalk mobile home park, Green was greeted warmly by many of the elderly residents.

“He’s a good man, I’ll vote for him,” said William Palm, leaning against a pool table in the park’s recreation hall. “Besides, he’s almost as old as I am, and age has to count for something.”