Flores’ ‘Where Was Eu?’ Campaign Develops Ironic Twist : Politics: Secretary of State March Fong Eu will speak Monday in Wilmington. That just happens to be one of the most contentious areas of opponent Joan Milke Flores’ City Council district.

In campaign stops across the state, Republican challenger Joan Milke Flores has sought to portray incumbent March Fong Eu as an “invisible secretary of state” who has refused to engage the issues.

Flores, a Los Angeles city councilwoman from San Pedro, has fashioned her underdog campaign against one of California’s top vote-getters in past elections around one basic query: “Where was Eu?”

On Monday night, at least, the answer should be simple. Eu will be in Flores’ own district at the invitation of some of the councilwoman’s biggest detractors.

Eu is scheduled to speak to a group of Wilmington residents who are leading an effort to break the community away from the city of Los Angeles. The meeting is to begin at 6 p.m. at the VFW Hall, 1130 W. Anaheim St.

Eu’s office describes the visit as a routine voter registration appearance. Among other things, the secretary of state serves as the chief elections officer, and Eu has been traveling statewide lending a hand to registration drives.

Leaders of the renegade Wilmington group, however, say they invited Eu with something else in mind: namely, to draw attention to their gripes about the city of Los Angeles and to embarrass Flores, their representative at City Hall.

“If Joan Milke Flores can’t even run a small community like Wilmington, how can she run something at the state level,” said Joe Mendez, a young father and pipe fitter who arranged Eu’s visit for the New Wilmington Committee. “I think this should probably lock up the race for Eu.”

Bill Schwab, a retired merchant mariner and longtime Wilmington activist, said Eu’s appearance is intended to shake up both Flores the candidate and Flores the councilwoman.

“We figured it would be a good way to get Flores off her back porch,” said Schwab, complaining that Flores does not spend enough time tending to the community’s problems.

Flores has a standing invitation to address the New Wilmington group but has not yet done so.

Wilmington has long been one of Flores’ most thorny constituencies. The three-term councilwoman sailed to reelection last year with more than 70% of the vote districtwide, but she was outpolled in Wilmington by a poorly funded schoolteacher who has since joined the secessionist effort.

Many of Wilmington’s 72,000 residents complain that they live in the shadow of neighboring San Pedro, are ignored by their elected officials and have been shortchanged on essential city services ranging from police protection to street sweeping. Some residents refer disparagingly to run-down neighborhoods as the Third World.

“I don’t think anything in the community is germane to the secretary of state race,” said Phil Peterson, president of the Wilmington Historical Society. “But some members of the community see this as an opportunity to put the plight of their community before a greater audience.”

Flores plans to campaign today and Monday in San Diego, but she said she may show up unannounced at the Wilmington meeting Monday night to confront Eu.

Eu has for the most part ignored Flores and has not even scheduled a formal campaign appearance aside from occasional fund-raisers. Eu, first elected secretary of state 16 years ago, has never faced a serious reelection challenge. A recent Los Angeles Times poll showed her leading Flores by a nearly 4-1 margin.

Flores charged last week that, so far in the campaign, Eu “has been hiding. She may see this as her chance to discourage me in my own back yard, but I am very secure in my district. I don’t embarrass easily.”

In an interview Friday, Eu said that she did not know that the New Wilmington Committee was a secessionist group and that she had no intention of using the appearance to attack Flores. She said her remarks will be limited to voter registration.

“I have no disguised efforts,” Eu said. “I am very dedicated to voter registration. I respond to all kinds of invitations for my attendance at these voter registration-type events because it is one of my very strong priorities.”

Regardless of Eu’s professed intentions, New Wilmington members said Eu’s staff is well aware of the political implication of the appearance. Mendez said he first arranged the visit through the secretary of state’s office in Los Angeles, but last week he was on the telephone finalizing plans with Miyun Lim, Eu’s campaign director.

“She is going to talk about voter registration, but the reason she is going to be here is because it is Flores’ back yard,” Mendez said. “It benefits her and it benefits our cityhood drive.”

Leo McElroy, a Sacramento consultant running Eu’s reelection campaign, said Friday that the visit was not a campaign appearance, although he acknowledged that it may have the appearance of one.

“She is clearly going into Joan Flores’ back yard, and that is an area that chronically has low voter registration,” he said. “But we are not sending out campaign press releases on the darn thing.”

Mendez said the New Wilmington group had originally invited Eu to spend the day in the community, touring neighborhoods and seeing some of their problems firsthand. A press release distributed by the committee last week said Eu would speak about her office’s “roll (sic) in the incorporation of new cities and the importance of voter registration in any community.”

Eu’s office eventually cut the stay to one hour and by the end of last week had recast the appearance solely as a “voter registration rally,” Mendez said. The office also insisted that all questions during the meeting be submitted in writing so that they could be screened by members of Eu’s staff and the committee.

“I was really pushing for her to be here at least part of the day, but all I could get was an hour,” Mendez said. “But we aren’t disappointed. We haven’t had somebody at that level recognize this community in a long time. I think you would have to go all the way back to President Taft, who rode through at one time.”