Eu Comes to ‘Flores Territory,’ Keeps Campaign Guns Holstered

Secretary of State March Fong Eu arrived late, took the podium for barely half an hour and never mentioned her campaign for reelection against challenger Joan Milke Flores, the Los Angeles city councilwoman from the harbor area.

But none of that seemed to matter to the Wilmington residents who gathered Monday night at the VFW Hall on Anaheim Street. They listened attentively to Eu, vigorously applauded her remarks about voter registration and interrupted the brief visit only to insist on a few photographs.

“If she came to prove a point that she can come into Joan Flores’ territory, that is her business,” said Jo Ann Wysocki, one of several residents who welcomed Eu in a parking lot behind the meeting hall. “I am just grateful that she came.”

Leaders of the New Wilmington Committee had invited Eu to draw attention to their group’s effort to break away from the city of Los Angeles and incorporate Wilmington as an independent city. They also hoped to embarrass Flores, who has represented the community since 1981, by showing Eu that all is not well in her opponent’s own back yard.

Eu said in an interview last week, however, that the visit was intended to encourage voter registration, not to promote her bid for a fifth term. Although her campaign director accompanied her Monday night, Eu stuck to her pledge and steered clear of reelection politics.

“I am here today to help you in launching a frontal assault on one of the major tragedies of our time, and that is the decline of voter participation in America,” Eu told a crowd of about 75 people. “The degree of voter participation in America, or really the lack of it, has become really a national shame.”

Eu promoted her toll-free voter registration telephone number--(800) 345-VOTE--and explained several changes she has made to the ballot pamphlet for the Nov. 6 election. She also chastised residents throughout Los Angeles County for “opting out of democracy” by not voting in the June primary.

“We estimate 23% of those people who were eligible to register and vote actually turned out at the polls,” said Eu, who serves as the state’s chief elections officer. “With 5.5 million eligible voters, 4.2 million voters decided not to vote.”

When the New Wilmington group invited Eu, her office insisted that she would respond only to written questions and only to those unrelated to her reelection campaign, Flores or the city of Los Angeles. One question about city services managed to slip by the censors, but Eu, caught slightly off guard, ducked it anyway.

Question: “If your elected officials are not providing basic city services, what state agency can be contacted for recourse?”

Eu: “Well, if the city is, uh, if you want services from the city, the best thing to do is talk to your city officials. If you are in the county, then you talk to your county officials, because that is generally the way you go to get what you want on the local level.”

Joe Mendez, the New Wilmington leader who arranged Eu’s visit and read the written questions to her Monday night, said after the meeting that it was “probably a boo-boo” to have allowed a query about city services. One of the group’s biggest gripes about Los Angeles’ and Flores’ stewardship of the community has been inadequate services.

“We had to get one of (those questions) in,” Mendez said. “There were a lot of them. But being that she is unfamiliar with our cityhood effort, it was kind of the wrong question.”

No one from Flores’ campaign attended the meeting, although Flores said Monday during a campaign appearance in San Diego that she would show up if her schedule permitted. Bernie Evans, Flores’ campaign manager, said the councilwoman did not return to Los Angeles until well after the meeting was over.

Outside the VFW Hall, Eu momentarily answered reporters’ questions about the campaign before being escorted to her car by Miyun Lim, her campaign director. Asked if her appearance in “Flores territory” was meant to send a message to her opponent, Eu responded tersely: “The whole state of California is my territory.”