Group Seeks to Boost Support for Aerospace

A group of business, social service and academic leaders, decrying a lack of political support for California’s aerospace industry, announced on Thursday a coalition that plans to hold legislators accountable for their votes concerning one of the Southland’s biggest employers.

The coalition, calling itself Californians for Aerospace Leadership, is sending a compact to members of California’s delegations in Sacramento and Washington, urging them to support aerospace firms through legislation.

It also plans to publicize politicians’ voting records in newspaper ads, said the group’s chairman, Ron Cedillos, president of a Long Beach aerospace firm, during a press conference at the California Museum of Science and Industry.

Concern about California legislators’ votes on aerospace issues has become more acute with the decrease in U.S. defense spending and a slow exodus of the Southland’s big-name aerospace companies to other states. Both are especially troubling to the many small firms tied to the industry.

Gov. Pete Wilson--who some defense executives criticized as unsupportive when he was a U.S. senator--joined the press conference via a television hookup from Sacramento. Wilson pledged to support the industry.

Cedillos singled out a comment by Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-Greenbrae) as an illustration of how many California politicians turn their back on the aerospace industry.

“It is not the role of a congressional delegation to be a chamber of commerce,” the liberal House Armed Services Committee member has said.

“I stand by that entirely,” responded Boxer on Thursday. “We need the best defense at the best price. . . . But to say that is the first thing we do--in other words to pork barrel--I don’t believe in it.”

Representatives of social service groups, educational organizations and small business said at the press conference that the health of their organizations was intertwined with that of the Southland’s major aerospace corporations.

The coalition had claimed support from organized labor, but no union groups had confirmed their involvement Thursday. And the region’s major aerospace contractors also did not participate.