SUPERVISORIAL ELECTION : Flores Throws Her Support to Torres in Race : Politics: Conservative says she feels he will patch up San Gabriel Valley fragmentation that resulted from creation of new 1st District.

State Sen. Art Torres, battling Los Angeles City Councilwoman Gloria Molina to become the first Latino on the County Board of Supervisors this century, Thursday won the backing of conservative Sarah Flores, the third-place finisher in last month’s 1st District primary.

Molina and Torres, both liberal Democrats, had courted Flores in hopes of attracting the votes of Republicans and women. Flores captured 20% of the vote and led in a number of conservative-voting San Gabriel Valley communities. Molina and Torres face off in a Feb. 19 runoff.

Torres’ political strategists said the endorsement will be featured along with those of GOP elected officials in mailers targeted to Republican homes.

Molina, who won 35% of the primary vote to Torres’ 26%, said, “I think he needs all the endorsements he can get.”

At a press conference outside the County Hall of Administration, Flores said that while Molina and Torres are similar ideologically, “Art will work to correct the fragmentation of the San Gabriel Valley that occurred as a result of the redistricting case.”

Torres, standing beside her at the press conference, vowed that he would seek to place the San Gabriel Valley in a single district through expansion of the board.

The area was split during the voting rights trial that led to creation of a predominantly Latino 1st District. The election in the redrawn district was called by a federal judge who ruled that the old supervisorial district boundaries denied the county’s 3 million Latinos representation on the board.

In another campaign development Thursday, Molina and Torres clashed in their first debate of the runoff campaign. The two agree on such issues as board expansion, political reform and affirmative action. So they spent most of their time attacking each other’s ties to special interests.

Molina attacked Torres for accepting more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from labor unions. “When you have over $100,000 from unions, you’re talking about an awful lot of involvement from special interests,” she said at a taping of KNBC-TV’s “News Conference.”

Torres responded, “If we’re going to talk about ethics in government, does that mean your husband is going to withdraw his $100,000 contract with the county?” Molina’s husband, Ron Martinez, later said in an interview that his company, Peopleworks, would not be seeking renewal of its employment training contract with the county.

Torres said that he, like Molina, supports campaign contribution limits for county races. But Molina remarked, “It was Mr. Torres’ supporters who filed a lawsuit” that resulted in lifting of a cap on political donations in the 1st District race.

The liveliest exchange occurred when Molina accused Torres of drawing his support from “insiders like (Los Angeles City Councilman) Richard Alatorre, (Assemblyman) Mike Roos and (labor leader) Jim Wood.” That set off the following exchange:

Torres: “But you worked for (Assembly) Speaker Willie Brown, and I can’t think of a bigger insider.”

Molina: “I also worked for you.”

Torres: “And I certainly didn’t have any control over you. . . . The fact of the matter is you’ve relied every step of your career on insiders to help you and then you’ve discarded them.”

Meanwhile, Flores, a former aide to retiring Supervisor Pete Schabarum, said that she would join conservative Supervisor Mike Antonovich’s staff as a deputy working in San Gabriel Valley neighborhoods added to Antonovich’s district by the court-ordered redistricting.