First Lady Tests Bush’s Rhetoric in Boyle Heights

First Lady Barbara Bush made a quick campaign visit to a largely Latino housing project in Boyle Heights on Wednesday, starching her customary homespun comments with stiff new phrases straight out of her husband’s campaign lexicon.

But campaign slogans don’t translate well in places like the Estrada Courts, a 50-year-old federally subsidized housing project where Spanish is the first language and Democrats the party of choice.

When she got to the part about the “Democrat-controlled gridlock Congress,” an otherwise dutiful Spanish-speaking interpreter couldn’t help but cast a quizzical look her way. Finally, he settled for “Democrats in Congress.”

Still, the First Lady’s visit, part of her first solo campaign swing since last week’s convention, went off without a hitch--even though few of the project’s 1,400 residents knew she was there. Managers said that when they were informed of her visit Monday, they were asked not to distribute flyers or publicize the visit for security reasons.

“There are more TV people here than residents,” complained resident Susie Sanchez, one of 30 who heard about the visit on the radio Wednesday morning only to show up and find herself kept behind a new fence. “I guess this was only for the press.”

About 15 residents were invited to meet the First Lady, some of them the same people who greeted Gov. Pete Wilson at Estrada during his 1990 gubernatorial campaign.

The First Lady greeted the 15 with handshakes, embraces and a smattering of Spanish. Residents, in turn, were consummately courteous, greeting her with smiles and unwavering respect recorded by a wall of TV cameras.

Andres Castellon, a longtime resident and maintenance man who works at the complex, said he had met with Wilson on his last campaign too. Asked why he thought politicians visit the project, Castellon said, “Just to show the nation that they are trying to do something.”

But, he admitted with some reticence, he doesn’t believe in his heart that they were trying.

Why, then, did he go along with the show?

“Maybe in the future if we show respect for politicians,” he said, “they will show respect for us.”

Of all public housing projects west of the Mississippi, Estrada Courts shows the most promise of success in a Bush Administration initiative aimed at helping inner-city renters manage and ultimately buy their units, said Marshall J. Kandell of the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles.

Abraham Paez, project coordinator for Estrada’s Residents Management Corp., said Estrada has come to be a favorite of visiting politicians.

“They (politicians) like to come here because Estrada Courts is always the nicest one (project), the best-looking one,” he said.

During this visit, for example, Mrs. Bush publicly called on private enterprise to donate to a $1.5-million community center at Estrada Courts. Her words, Paez said, will be used by fund-raisers currently seeking more than $1 million to complete the project.

During her brief visit, the First Lady also fielded press questions about recent Republican criticism of Hillary Clinton, wife of Democratic nominee Bill Clinton. Mrs. Bush stressed she is not critical of Mrs. Clinton’s choice to be a working mother and pointed out that many of the women who live in the project are working mothers.

She also said she would not call Hillary Clinton a “radical feminist,” as Republican Patrick J. Buchanan labeled her last week. “I don’t know her,” she said, adding that there is no reason for her to “get off on these nit-picky things” when she could be talking about “positive” things--like her husband’s policies.