Election Flurry : The Pace Is Hectic in 10-Week Race for Supervisor

The sign on the door announces the “Dreikurs Relationship Center.”

Inside, the room resembles a warehouse, with rolls of fiberglass insulation and ceiling tiles scattered about the floor and a dozen heart analysis machines crammed into a corner.

Welcome to the campaign headquarters of Gloria Molina, candidate for Los Angeles County supervisor. With only 10 weeks until Election Day, Molina’s staff is tolerating the less-than-ideal conditions in a South El Monte office simply because there isn’t time to look for anything better.

So it goes in the race for the 1st District seat--a mad dash of a campaign that has caught a growing field of candidates with precious little time to open headquarters, mobilize volunteers, decipher demographic data, plot strategies, hustle endorsements and, most importantly, raise cash.

U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon ordered the special election only last Thursday. Closed-door talks Friday and Sunday between the county’s top Latino Democratic politicians failed to produce a consensus candidate. Molina announced she would run Monday, followed on Wednesday by Sarah Flores, state Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles) and U.S. Rep. Matthew Martinez (D-Monterey Park). Four other contestants also took out campaign papers this week; the filing period ends Nov. 30.

Molina opened her South El Monte campaign headquarters Wednesday morning. Torres for now is operating his campaign from the garage of his mother’s home in Monterey Park. Flores, a former aide to Supervisor Pete Schabarum, did not have time to establish a new campaign office to replace the old one in a West Covina shopping mall. Opened in mid-July, before Judge Kenyon redrew the 1st District boundaries, the West Covina office is now in the 5th District.

All the candidates have been looking for ways to accelerate the campaign process.

For instance, Molina’s campaign manager, Alma Martinez, decided to forgo ordering signs and posters Thursday and concentrate instead on calling potential donors.

“We’re more concerned with getting the funding to bring in good staff,” Martinez said. “Everything has to be speeded up and intensified.”

Most candidates estimate they will need about $500,000 to run a viable campaign.

Not everyone in the field managed to break quickly from the gate.

While Molina, Flores and Torres were off and running Thursday, Martinez remained in Washington, his incipient campaign at a standstill until he returns to Los Angeles on Monday.

By contrast, Torres already has lined up key endorsements from City Councilman Richard Alatorre and Supervisor Kenneth Hahn.

The state senator met with Hahn and Supervisor Ed Edelman shortly after announcing his candidacy Wednesday. Torres drove directly from the Montebello High School press conference to meet downtown with Edelman and Hahn. Edelman has not yet announced whom he will endorse.

“When I come on the Board of Supervisors I will be an ally and a colleague to Supervisor Hahn,” Torres said at a press conference Thursday.

Torres said he plans to begin walking door to door in the sprawling district, home to 1.78 million residents.

“I intend to take my campaign to the front porches of this district,” Torres said. “People think that government has lost touch with them. I think it is important to bring a personal touch back into government.”

Ironically, a political expert testified during the recent voting rights trial that “if a candidate walked door to door talking to each constituent for 10 minutes, it would take him or her over 50 years.”

Political analysts have said that because of the district’s huge size and the short 10-week campaign, the election may be won through the mail box--political mailers replacing television commercials as the weapon of choice.

Also crucial will be endorsements from the mayors and council members in the 19 cities that dot the new 1st District, ranging from tiny Vernon (pop. 152) to El Monte (pop. 104,189) and parts of Los Angeles.

South Gate Mayor Bob Philipp said he received last-minute calls Monday and Wednesday from harried aides to Molina and Flores, asking him to make a tacit endorsement by posing with a candidate at televised press conferences.

Philipp, who has not announced whom he will endorse, declined both requests. “I had other things to do,” he said. “They called me an hour before. That’s kind of rude.”

Several candidates have courted Mayor Tom Bradley’s support, despite the fact that he is in Mexico City, 1,600 miles away, meeting with the president and attorney general of Mexico.

“The mayor’s office has received a number of calls this week,” said Bill Chandler, the mayor’s spokesman. “But the mayor has asked to hold off on having conversations about a possible endorsement until next week.”

So rushed is Flores for endorsements that she sent letters to her supporters this week saying she considers their endorsements from the last supervisorial election still valid, unless they write her back to tell her otherwise.

Leida Erickson, a Flores campaign worker, explained the difficulties of getting an office started in the 1st district on short notice.

“It takes a week to get phones installed after you put a certified check deposit,” Erickson said. “And it took us three weeks start-up time to have the capacity to do things in this office. With a 10-week race, it looks like we’re going to keep this campaign office.”

Still, Flores has arranged to set up a file office at Realty World in East Los Angeles, Erickson said, well within the 1st District boundaries.

Molina’s campaign workers were still adjusting Thursday to their new headquarters at a South El Monte business park. The office was formerly home to the “relationship center” and was also used as storage space for a medical firm.

“One of the reasons we were able to move in quickly is that we told (the landlord) that we would move in regardless of the condition of the office,” Martinez, the campaign manager, explained as she surveyed the medical equipment cluttering the office.

Telephones were also a problem.

“We don’t have all of the phone equipment yet because the phone company won’t be here until this evening,” Martinez explained. “So I brought in my own phone from home and plugged it in.”