Experience Counts, Even in Bell Gardens

It’s a topic that no Latino politico in town really wants to talk about. Mention the fractious Bell Gardens City Council and watch for the pained grimace or the shaking of the head.

The inexperienced council members there “don’t know the art of governance,” says Richard Martinez, head of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project.

The council’s unfortunate behavior “reflects badly on all of us,” argues freshman Democratic Assemblywoman Martha Escutia of Huntington Park, whose Southeast-area district includes Bell Gardens.

“Don’t you dare write about Bell Gardens!” pleads Antonia Hernandez, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Hernandez was half-joking when she made the remark, but her reaction reflects the thinking of many Latinos over recent events in that city: We work hard to recall an unsympathetic Anglo majority on the City Council in an overwhelmingly Latino city. Then the Latinos we help get elected in their place act like 5-year-olds. They don’t talk to each other. One council member throws a chair at another. Another makes an insensitive remark about Jews. Routine city business doesn’t get done.

They toppled the Anglo powers in Bell Gardens by the seat of their pants. Now, they’re kicking each other in the pants over political contributions and hiring practices at City Hall.

When Rodolfo Garcia, Josefina Macias and Frank Duran, along with real estate developer George Deitch, were elected to the five-member council last year, their victory raised the expectations of those clamoring for increased political power for Latinos. Bell Gardens, like other blue-collar cities southeast of downtown Los Angeles, became predominantly Spanish-speaking in the 1980s--except at City Hall.

The sudden sweep into office of a new Latino council majority prompted some to call the Bell Gardens victory a “harbinger of things to come” across the United States.

But what was touted as a victory with national implications ends up being just another example of small-town politics, not much different from dozens of suburbs across the Southland.

Rosa Hernandez, the lone holdover from the previous council, didn’t support the recall of her Anglo colleagues and has kept her distance from the new members, giving council meetings the air of a strained family gathering at Aunt Edna’s.

Even the issue they used to battle the Anglo council majority--a rezoning issue that would hurt the city’s Latino population--wasn’t the stuff of which national movements are made. It was an issue typical of those battled over in many local councils.

But none of the new Latino council members are polished leaders with political savvy. It’s not that they aren’t national trendsetters on a par with, say, a Cesar Chavez, a Gloria Molina or an Art Torres. None had ever held any elective office before.

Those who saw nationwide significance for Latinos based on the Bell Gardens story evoked the name of La Raza Unida, the activist Chicano political party that grew out of the Chicano movement in the late 1960s. But the comparisons might be drawn not only to La Raza Unida’s success at the polls, but also to its failures at governance.

The small independent party in 1970 capitalized on Latino discontent in small Texas towns where Chicanos were the majority and swept into power in such places as Crystal City, taking over city councils, school boards and elective offices, such as county sheriff.

La Raza Unida’s reign, however, was over before the Chicano firebrands gave incumbency a real thought. Without help from Democrat-controlled state and local political networks, the Chicanos were isolated and ineffective in their handling of local government and education issues. They were voted out of power within five years.

When the Bell Gardens City Council meets tonight, it might occur to someone that there are lessons to be learned about local government. Torres, who was a major driving force behind the Latino takeover in Bell Gardens, might be a good person to help with the lessons.

“Leadership requires training,” Torres said the other day. “Do they need a mentor? Everyone needs one. Clearly, they do. It’s just something they have to come to grips with. Something happens when people are elected to public office. Some handle it well. Some don’t.

“It would be presumptuous for me to go in and say, ‘I’m going to solve this problem.’ But if asked, I will come.”