San Gabriel Valley Becomes the New Power Base of Latino Voters

In the old days, Anglo politicians went after Latino voters by staging photo opportunities in East Los Angeles, posing in Belvedere Park in mariachi sombreros or downing tacos on Brooklyn Avenue.

But the real voting strength of the county’s Latinos has shifted to the southern San Gabriel Valley, Latino politicians say. The communities spread out along the Pomona and San Bernardino freeways now represent “the greatest bloc of potential Latino voting strength in the southwestern United States,” contends Richard Martinez, executive director of the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project.

Map makers drawing up potential district configurations of the Board of Supervisors in the current federal suit have recognized the Latino voting strength of the area, making the banana-shaped swath of the San Gabriel Valley the heart of several would-be Latino districts.

There are about 781,000 people in the area, which stretches from Monterey Park to West Covina and meanders down to Montebello and Pico Rivera. Three out of five of its residents are Latinos, ranging from high-powered “huppies” (Hispanic yuppies) to struggling homeowners to recent immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

It is a big, diverse community, with little of the overpowering Latino flavor of the urban enclaves from which many of its residents have fled.

“Hispanics swim more easily (than other minority groups) in the Anglo sea,” said Alan Heslop, director of the Rose Institute, a Claremont research center, explaining the dispersal of Latinos into the suburbs.

Unlike the densely Latino community in and around East Los Angeles, where almost 97% of the population is of Latino origin, the southern San Gabriel Valley is a varying mix of Latinos, Asians and Anglos. In Monterey Park, the nation’s first suburban Chinatown, Asians have supplanted some Latinos, but in El Monte and South El Monte, Latino immigrants arrive daily.

“It’s everybody’s dream to buy a home,” said longtime La Puente resident Estella Romero. “A lot of us came out from what was then the teeny metropolis of Los Angeles to the wide open spaces of the San Gabriel Valley.”

They’re still coming, whether they settle in tile-roofed hillside villas in Hacienda Heights or in cramped bungalows on the flats of South El Monte. Taco stands and salones de belleza (beauty parlors) have popped up on Garvey Avenue and Valley Boulevard, and Latino-owned manufacturing plants have opened in the City of Industry and South El Monte.

Latinos are taking control of the area’s politics, too. The San Gabriel Valley is the only region in the country with side-by-side congressional districts represented by Latinos--Rep. Esteban E. Torres (D-La Puente) and Rep. Matthew G. Martinez (D-Monterey Park)--and its cities are sprinkled liberally with Latino elected officials.

In the 1980s, the region, together with heavily Latino electorates in adjoining communities in the Southeast, elected two Latino state senators and two assemblymen. There are newly elected Latino city council and school board members in communities all across the San Gabriel Valley, including the cities of South Pasadena and Pomona, where they are a minority.

“The San Gabriel Valley is really a hidden success story of Latino politicians at the municipal level,” said Harry Pachon, head of the National Assn. of Latino Elected Officials. “This has gone largely unnoticed under the larger currents of what’s happening in Los Angeles.”

It is also an area of hard-edged political concerns, where the old sombrero routine won’t fly, said political strategist George Pla. “Candidates better talk to middle-class voters about crime and jobs and housing--issues of that sort,” Pla said.

Many area residents resent that there has never been a Latino on the county board. “Hispanics have been here for more than 200 years,” fumed Henry Barbosa, a Monterey Park attorney who is active in Democratic politics, “yet, with all of that strength, there’s been no opportunity to participate.”

But parts of the southern San Gabriel Valley still suffer from the electoral indifference and neglect that afflict other minority communities, political leaders say.

“Elected officials pay attention to areas of high registration,” said Ernest Gutierrez, the only Latino city councilman in El Monte, where more than three-quarters of the population is Latino. “That’s been the history of politics. It’s not fair, but that’s the way it is.”

Besides the “huppies,” many of the Latinos in the San Gabriel Valley are recent immigrants from Mexico and Central America who are not qualified to vote.

There also people like U.S.-born Armando Mercado, 23, a manufacturing production engineer from El Monte who doesn’t vote. “What’s the difference?” said Mercado, as he picked through some videos in a rental store recently. “You elect them and they do whatever they want.”

Mercado cited Proposition 103, the measure approved by voters last year to restrain auto insurance premiums, as one reason for his disenchantment with the process. He expected the measure to cut his insurance bill. “They never did it,” he said. “In fact, my insurance bill went up.”

Others talk about the failure of major candidates to speak directly to them. “I’ve never voted because no candidate ever came to me and said I should vote for them,” said Myrna Rodriguez, a naturalized citizen from Guatemala.

Local political leaders agree that the region has frequently been ignored by candidates for state and national office. “Partly it’s because we’re a collection of small municipalities,” said Barbosa, who is city attorney for Montebello and Lynwood. “That tends to structurally focus people’s attention. Rosemead looks at Rosemead, and Glendora never looks at Arcadia.”

And state and national candidates have often skipped the San Gabriel Valley.

But the valley’s deep pool of 650,000 voters is forcing political strategists to take a closer look, Pla said. Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley lost his bid for governor in 1982 by fewer than 100,000 votes, he noted. “If he had campaigned in the San Gabriel Valley, he would have been governor,” Pla contended.

Political activists say that having a Latino on the Board of Supervisors could be crucial in overcoming indifference in the San Gabriel Valley. “The question is, ‘Why should we get into the process and vote when the results are negligible?’ ” said Gutierrez. “If people don’t see their votes making a difference, fewer and fewer will vote.”

Young Latino voters like Bertha Ramirez, 19, an El Monte waitress, are beginning to ask the same questions, both about their cities and about the county government.

“It’s really weird that there’s only one councilman who’s Latino in this city,” she said, standing at the counter of her father’s Mexican luncheonette on Garvey Avenue, where the clientele had just watched a report in Spanish about the redistricting trial in federal court. “Almost everybody here is Mexican. I don’t think they (Latino candidates) have been given a chance.”

LATINO VOTING STRENGTH

VOTER REGISTERED CITY POPULATION REGISTRATION LATINOS % 1. Irwindale 1,044 525 421 80 2. Baldwin Park 57,427 17,830 8,067 45 3. West Covina 89,019 44,411 8,887 20 4. La Puente/Valinda 49,099 21,589 9,906 46 5. Industry 707 217 46 21 6. Hacienda Heights 54,548 25,195 5,618 22 7. El Monte 89,600 23,707 9,740 41 8. South El Monte 18,300 5,383 3,294 61 9. Montebello 56,850 22,616 11,878 53 10. Pico Rivera 56,857 24,034 16,147 67 11. Monterey Park 59,256 24,077 7,520 31 12. Alhambra 69,704 29,385 7,884 27% 13. Rosemead 45,431 14,823 5,765 39 14. San Gabriel 31,735 14,100 3,627 26 15. Temple City 30,735 16,309 1,653 10 TOTAL 710,312* 284,201 100,453 35 Boyle Heights/ Lincoln Heights 99,413 16,852 13,052 77 East Los Angeles 161,111 29,748 25,069 84 TOTAL 260,524 46,600 38,121 82

* At least 460,715 of the total population are Latino.

Source: Pactech Data Research, 1988 General Election; Los Angeles (City) Community Development Dept.