7 Latinos Among 10 Candidates in City Council Special Election : Politics: Shift of power seems assured as hopefuls seek to replace four Anglos ousted in recent recall.

December’s historic recall of four Anglo City Council members has left control of Bell Gardens up for grabs and created one of the largest fields of candidates the city has ever seen--including an unprecedented number of Latinos.

Ten residents--seven of them Latino--have qualified to run in the March 10 special election in which all but one member of the council will be replaced. Mayor Robert Cunningham and council members Letha Viles, Allen Shelby and Douglas O’Leary were voted out of office Dec. 10 after a long, bitter fight over a zoning plan that critics said was designed to run Latinos out of town.

The recall has been heralded as a new power movement by Latino activists who say that the council was unseated by a group of Latinos who two years ago did not know what a recall was.

But while the recall has turned tiny Bell Gardens into something of a national symbol, it also appears to have left city politics in disarray.

Two candidates, who asserted throughout the recall campaign that the City Council was racist and did not represent Latinos, now claim that ethnicity was not a factor. Candidates Josefina Macias and Rodolfo (Rudy) Garcia said it was the recall’s victims who turned the drive into a war between Latinos and Anglos.

“What we started with was homeowners who were upset about the zoning, and they (the council) started to point the finger and say it was racial,” Macias said. “I think they blew it all out of proportion. . . . The Latino movement was coincidental because we are the majority in the community. It wasn’t just a racial issue.”

Said Garcia: “The real reason for the recall was because the council was rotten, corrupt and not working for the best interest of the entire community.”

Though several recall supporters have tossed their hats into the ring, the field also includes three Latinos who saw the ouster as an unnecessary experience that left residents confused, suspicious and scared.

“There is quite a bit of division within the community. It’s not like all Latinos are (recall supporters),” said candidate John Sanchez, a real estate agent and well-known council ally. “I think what is happening is that others in the community are saying, ‘Hey, this is not right, and I’m going to stand up and run for office.’ ”

Sanchez, 30, is one of three candidates vying for a single two-year seat on the council. He will face the 40-year-old Macias, a Montebello Unified School District employee and recall leader, and 48-year-old Jesus (Jess) Zuniga, a quality-assurance inspector at McDonnell Douglas and a recall critic.

The remaining seven candidates are facing off for three seats they would hold for only 30 days until the regular April municipal elections open the field again.

Those candidates are:

* Garcia, 56, a longtime Latino activist who runs a League of United Latin American Voters office in Bell and who moved to Bell Gardens about a year ago to help lead the recall;

* Yolanda Quintana, 41, a homemaker, mother of four and recall critic who has lived in Bell Gardens for 13 years;

* Richard Webb, 47, a retired Bell Gardens police officer who left the force two years ago after 21 years;

* Frank B. Duran, 56, a 12-year resident and a manager of a Long Beach welding supply company who was a recall committee member;

* George T. Deitch, the owner of more than a dozen Bell Gardens rental properties who spent about $25,000 campaigning for the recall;

* Victor Vailette, 43, who has had a series of disputes with the city’s housing code office and has called City Manager Claude Booker an overpaid bully,

* Danny Rico, 34, a pest-control technician who has lived in Bell Gardens for 29 years.

Because most of the winners’ terms of office will be short-lived, the contest for the two-year seat is expected to be the most exciting.

Two of the three candidates for that seat, Sanchez and Macias, have a long rivalry. Sanchez served as campaign treasurer on the committee to fight the recall drive that Macias vocally supported. Each accuses the other of being opportunistic, selfish and wishy-washy. Both have run unsuccessfully for a council seat in the past and are campaigning on basically the same platform: better communication with the community and more services and programs for senior citizens and youths. Macias said she wants to establish term limitations for council members. Sanchez wants to form community-based organizations to strengthen the relationship between City Hall and the neighborhoods.

Zuniga, the third candidate, is the unknown in the race. He has lived in Bell Gardens for about 25 years, has worked at McDonnell Douglas since 1966 and is a Vietnam veteran. He supports rent control, better housing for senior citizens and further redevelopment within the city. He is a staunch critic of the recall.

“I think it stinks,” he said. “A community should never have to go through what we are going through. We elected those candidates. The community put them in office. A recall just freezes the city. It creates big chaos. People are still scared. They don’t know what direction we are moving in.”

Despite their differences, every candidate interviewed said the council’s first priority should be to improve communication between City Hall and the community. The recalled council members were roundly criticized for ignoring residents, in particular Latinos who make up about 90% of the population.

“I think that with a new council we have a chance to straighten everything out, and this is going to happen by sitting down and listening to everybody,” candidate Webb said.