No Accord on Latino Choice for 1st District

An unusual private summit of Los Angeles’ most influential Latino politicians failed Friday to produce a consensus candidate for a new district designed to give the county its first Latino supervisor.

“We’ve agreed to meet again,” U.S. Rep. Esteban Torres (D-La Puente) said after the three-hour meeting at a Pasadena hotel.

Torres was joined at the session by Los Angeles City Council members Richard Alatorre and Gloria Molina, state Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles) and U.S. Rep. Edward R. Roybal (D-Los Angeles). All have expressed interest in seeking to become the county’s first Latino supervisor in 115 years--and one of the most powerful Latino elected officials in the nation.

The meeting was hastily organized after a federal judge Thursday finally scheduled an election to replace retiring Supervisor Pete Schabarum in a redrawn, predominantly Latino 1st District.

Alatorre said Friday that he and fellow Democrats want to prevent a divisive battle in the Latino community that could mean victory for a Republican--and possibly even a non-Latino. Officially, the board is nonpartisan. But political ideology has played a role on the board, now controlled by conservatives.

With the election only 10 weeks away, a well-known Latino officeholder, backed by the Eastside political Establishment, could become an instant front-runner.

There will be other candidates. Sarah Flores, a Republican who finished first in the June primary in the old 1st District, was busy Friday getting her campaign back in gear. Three other candidates took out nomination papers Friday, the first day of filing: Esteban Torres and two losing candidates from the June supervisorial elections, Gonzalo Molina and Louis A. Chitty III.

Not all participants were willing to discuss the session. Alatorre said that they had agreed to refer questions to Roybal, who did not return calls.

But other participants described the discussions as cordial but direct, as the politicians candidly evaluated the relative strengths of themselves and others in the room.

A participant who requested anonymity said the officials agreed to consider conducting a poll in the redrawn 1st District to determine which of the five would be the most popular among voters.

Esteban Torres said that Roybal, the county’s senior Latino elected official and something of a patriarch to the others, served as mediator. Roybal said in an interview earlier this week that he would prefer to stay in Congress. But one participant in the talks said that Roybal may become the consensus candidate if the others cannot agree.

If Roybal runs, he would be seeking the same office that supporters maintain was stolen from him in a controversial 1958 election. About 12,000 votes were found in a recount several days after balloting in that supervisorial contest, and they turned Roybal’s slim victory into defeat.

Roybal went on to become one of the nation’s first Latino congressmen, but the county election has been an open wound for him and the community ever since--an issue in the trial in which U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon found that the county had discriminated against Latinos.

Esteban Torres said the private meeting was necessary, and none of the participants saw any parallels between the session and the closed-door supervisorial redistricting sessions that were at issue in the trial.

“I think our community is tired of bickering and cross-fighting,” he said, “and perhaps we’ve reached a level of maturity like the Jewish community and the black community and can . . . arrive at a consensus that is good for the whole community.”

Flores, a former aide to Schabarum, said she was not surprised to be excluded from the session: “I expected it. I think they see me as the enemy. . . . I’ll fight. I think what they are going to do is try to make it a partisan race. What I am trying to do is make this nonpartisan.”

The new 1st District stretches from El Sereno and Lincoln Heights east to Irwindale and La Puente and southeast to Santa Fe Springs. Latinos compose 51% of the voters and 71% of the population. Democrats outnumber Republicans 66% to 23%.

Even before the meeting, possible candidates had been positioning themselves for the race.

In a letter sent to supporters Oct. 25 and obtained Friday, Gloria Molina said she plans to run for the seat.

“I am confident that Judge Kenyon’s ruling will be affirmed, and our community will finally have an opportunity to elect one of our own to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors,” she wrote. “I am writing to let you know that I want to take advantage of this historic opportunity, and I need your help.

“I have decided to run for supervisor. The county seat not only allows our community important decision-making opportunities, but it also will open up county government to a whole group of people who feel left out of the political process.”

The letter was sent to 30 or 40 of Molina’s “closest supporters,” said Alma Martinez, an aide to Molina. The letter asks the supporters to serve on her finance committee and to pledge to raise a minimum of $10,000 each.

Martinez said it was necessary for the councilwoman to move before a consensus is reached because of the nearness of the election. Molina will step aside if another candidate is chosen, she said, but will run if no consensus is reached.

About 25% of the new district overlaps the old 1st District. Flores was the top finisher in a 10-candidate June primary in the old 1st District. She was scheduled to face Superior Court Judge Gregory O’Brien in a runoff last Tuesday.

But Kenyon in August threw out the results of the June primary and ordered a new primary in the redrawn 1st District, ruling that the old districts diluted the voting power of Latinos in violation of federal law.

Under the judge’s order, residents of the old and new 1st District are eligible to run. To qualify for the ballot, candidates must collect 20 voter signatures and pay $943.44, or gather 3,774 signatures. Candidates have until Nov. 30 to file papers.

O’Brien has said he will not run in the new district.

The board’s conservative majority hopes to win a review of the redistricting case from an 11-member panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals or, failing that, the U.S. Supreme Court. If the review is granted, the election could be postponed again.