Tovar Accents Latino Roots in Council Race

City Council candidate Irene Tovar traveled to downtown Los Angeles on Thursday to raise money for her campaign to become the first Latino elected to a San Fernando Valley district.

Such a trip far from the district where she is running is unusual. But the $500-a-plate fund-raiser, attended by about 75 Latino business leaders and community activists from throughout Los Angeles County, served to highlight the changing political landscape in the northeast Valley’s new, mostly Latino 7th District.

Tovar, 50, the daughter of Mexican immigrants and a former chairwoman of the Hispanic Caucus of the state Democratic Party, is one of seven challengers--and one of two Latino opponents--to Ernani Bernardi in the April 11 election. The other Latino candidate is Richard Yanez, a psychiatric social worker.

“For the first time, we have a chance to elect a Hispanic from the Valley,” Tovar, a consultant to a community clinic in East Los Angeles, told supporters Thursday.

Latinos have run for Los Angeles city office before in the Valley, but none has waged as aggressive a campaign as Tovar.

The chances of a Latino winning a Valley seat were bolstered by the 1986 council redistricting. It consolidated the Valley’s fast-growing Latino neighborhoods, previously splintered among two districts, into the 7th. Only two of the 14 other council districts have a higher population, and both are represented by Latinos.

But political analysts, including a number of Latinos, are skeptical of a Latino’s chances of winning the 7th District seat this year, or whenever the 77-year-old Bernardi vacates it.

Low Turnout

Fewer than one-fourth of the district’s Latinos are registered to vote and even fewer turn out on Election Day, according to a study conducted for The Times last year by Caltech political science professor Bruce Cain.

In addition, some in the Latino community have been slow to support Tovar’s campaign.

The Southwest Voter Registration Education Project, a Latino voting rights group that has registered more than 1 million voters, is waiting to see if Tovar’s campaign catches fire before conducting a voter registration drive in the district, according to Richard Martinez, executive director.

Because of limited resources, the group ties its registration efforts to Latino candidates who have a chance of winning, Martinez said.

Tovar, who held a number of appointed posts in the administration of former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., has picked up the endorsements of a number of prominent Latino officeholders from Los Angeles’ Eastside and from the city of San Fernando.

In San Fernando, which adjoins the district, backers include Councilmen Jess Margarito and Daniel Acuna.

Prominently missing from Tovar’s ranks of supporters, however, are the Los Angeles City Council’s two Latino members, Richard Alatorre and Gloria Molina. Alatorre was ill and unavailable for comment, but a spokesman said he plans to stay out of the race. Molina said she supports Bernardi because he has been supportive of her programs.

According to Al Avila, an aide to Alatorre who lives in the northeast Valley, Tovar faces the same problems as other little-known, poorly financed challengers to a well-entrenched incumbent.

A Latino, as any candidate, will have to appeal to a cross section of voters, Avila said. ‘With an incumbent that is fairly strong, it is going to be difficult to build coalitions with other groups,” he added.

Avila likens the northeast Valley to Los Angeles’ Eastside, where Arthur Snyder, a red-haired Irishman, stayed in power in a Latino district for 18 years on the strength of his service to constituents. Alatorre was finally elected after Snyder stepped down.

Bernardi has worked hard to win over his new constituents, including hiring Spanish-speaking aides, assisting immigrants in applying for amnesty and sending out bilingual mailers about city services. Earlier this week, he co-sponsored a proposal, approved by the council, to establish a hiring hall in Pacoima for day laborers, to get immigrant workers off street corners. The site of the hall has yet to be determined.

Tovar said she is not relying solely on the Latino vote. “I’m not just trying to pull the support of the Hispanic community,” she said. “I am also running as a candidate who can best represent the interests of the district--the entire district.”

Seeks Broad Support

“I am seeking support from not only my community but also from the black community and the non-minority community,” she said. “It has to be that kind of coalition-building that will get me elected to the council.”

Nevertheless, so far, a non-Latino, Lyle Hall, has emerged as Bernardi’s leading challenger.

Hall, a former president of the Los Angeles city firefighters union, has been endorsed by the County Federation of Labor, which has about 13,000 members--including many Latinos--in the district.

Dolores Huerta, first vice president of United Farm Workers, said the group has not taken a stand but regards both Hall and Tovar as friends of the union and will probably endorse both.

Tovar, pointing out that most of the district is new to Bernardi, said she believes that she has a shot at winning.

She said she decided to run because Bernardi opposed the redistricting. “He has never really wanted to represent this district,” she added.

Bernardi has said he merely opposed the political maneuvering that led to the remapping.

Tovar lost her only other try for public office--a 1969 campaign for the Los Angeles Community College District board.