Nomination Is Latest Fight for Hermosillo : City Hall: Activist’s sometimes incendiary remarks have sparked a fiery debate over post on Fire Commission.

So aggressive was Xavier Hermosillo the police reporter that he once nabbed an ax murderer and drove the dying victim to the hospital.

So intense was Hermosillo the public relations man that he thrust himself into crisis cases like that of a local company battling reports of a human finger found in its menudo.

And so controversial is Hermosillo the public figure that his nomination to a citizens panel has sparked a fiery debate before the Los Angeles City Council, dividing the body along racial lines and prompting colleagues to take snipes at one another.

From his childhood to his confirmation hearing, Hermosillo, 43, has always loved news--whether he was reporting it, shaping it or, now, making it.

It is his public pronouncements as chairman of the NEWS for America activist group that the council will focus on today when it considers for the second time this week his nomination to the Fire Commission. The outcome of today’s vote is a tossup, with Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr. deciding Thursday to withdraw his support and the eight votes needed to confirm Hermosillo not at all solid.

“My constituents in huge numbers have made their views very clear that they are not in support of Mr. Hermosillo--and I mean huge numbers,” Svorinich said.

As an activist, Hermosillo has boldly warned the city that Latinos are taking over. He has used the word mayate , the Spanish word for a black insect, to refer to African-Americans. He has told the entire city--and country--to “wake up and smell the refried beans.”

Yet the council debate will probably not touch on Hermosillo’s colorful life.

A former gang member who grew up in a San Pedro housing project, Hermosillo was raised by his mother and sent into the work force at an early age. He began writing sports stories for local newspapers at age 14, later worked in radio and today is a commentator for KCOP Channel 13.

Hermosillo weighs 320 pounds--down from 550 at his peak--and still winces when people jeer him about his weight. “It hurts,” he says, his voice full of emotion and his bold public persona evaporated.

Hermosillo came close to death in 1977 when an escalator malfunctioned and other riders tumbled backward on top of him. After emerging from a coma, he says, his view of life changed. He took more chances, spoke out a little more, and took fewer things for granted.

As a young reporter at the San Pedro News-Pilot, Hermosillo once took a photograph of a grieving mother as she discovered that her daughter had been killed by a car. A public outcry resulted.

Twenty-two years after the picture was published, Hermosillo still has one letter in which the girl’s aunt accused him of sensationalizing and exploiting the death.

“Sometimes, you can do your job so well and be out of touch with other people’s realities,” he said in an interview, remarks that could just as well refer to his public controversies today. “You can hurt people.”

He has no regrets about another scoop: the time he arrived at the scene of a San Pedro ax murder as the suspect was heading out the front door. He chased the man in his car, directing police along the way. He later drove a baby who was critically injured in the attack to the hospital.

As a public relations man, Hermosillo took pride in taking on the tough cases. He conducted his own investigation into the finger allegedly found in the menudo and persuaded the press that it was a hoax. He became the point man for a Riverside County potato producer accused of violating hazardous waste laws.

He was the spokesman for Irwindale when the city was seeking to lure the Raiders from Los Angeles. Earning a top consultant’s salary, he was thrust into the public eye during the tumultuous negotiations and criticized by local officials when the deal failed.

Hermosillo’s nomination to the Fire Commission is not his first step into government. He has been chief of staff to former Assemblymen Gerald Felando and Vincent Thomas He ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the Los Angeles County Community College District and briefly campaigned for the 15th District City Council seat, which Svorinich eventually won.

It was when Hermosillo gathered with other Mexican-Americans to form NEWS for America that he earned the most acclaim. As the group’s spokesman, Hermosillo dished out strident quotes, arranged news conferences and thrust the organization into the public eye.

Some followers considered him the kind of leader the community needed--strident, vocal, willing to take anybody on. “Not since Cesar Chavez have we had a leader like this,” said Molly Dip, an activist who is on the group’s board of directors.

But his sharp tongue and confrontational ways rubbed others the wrong way.

Attorney Manuel Hidalgo said he quit the group when Hermosillo began focusing his wrath on African-Americans, contending that they were out-muscling Latinos for jobs and political offices. “The blacks have their own problems,” Hidalgo said. “Who the hell am I to pick on them? What’s it going to get me?”

Although all three Latinos on the council are expected to support Hermosillo’s confirmation, the city’s largest Spanish-language newspaper, La Opinion, has urged the council to reject him.

“Neither Latinos nor the community of Los Angeles needs this type of leadership,” the paper said in an editorial Thursday. “There is already enough divisiveness in this society.”

Hermosillo says he simply has sought to point out that Latinos are underrepresented in the city’s power structure compared to Anglos and African-Americans. He has also angrily protested attempts by Brotherhood Crusade president Danny Bakewell to shut down construction sites where no African-Americans are working.

Hermosillo says that other issues he has been involved in have not come up during the debate over his nomination. He says he played a behind-the-scenes role in resolving the hunger strike over a Chicano studies department at UCLA and worked with Los Angeles police officers to solve homicides involving Latinos in South-Central Los Angeles.

“I know how reporters think,” he said, criticizing all the attention on his controversial remarks. “If it doesn’t bleed, it doesn’t lead.”

It was while Hermosillo was the Irwindale spokesman that he first met Riordan, who was negotiating to keep the Raiders in Los Angeles. On opposite sides of the negotiating table, they did not become immediate allies.

But Hermosillo, a registered Republican, actively campaigned for Riordan during the mayor’s race, promoting his name among Latinos. In return, he won his now infamous nomination to the commission.

Riordan, who has stuck by Hermosillo even as the appointment has come under attack, said this week that he knows the activist’s rhetoric can often go too far. But Riordan said he was confident Hermosillo the commissioner would hold his tongue. If not, the mayor said, he will pull him off the commission.

As he prepared for today’s council debate, hand-delivering notes to his council supporters, Hermosillo acknowledged that he was in the midst of his most challenging crisis yet.

“This is one of the more difficult situations I’ve found myself in,” he said. “How do I fight massive demographic change, the impact of the recession, the fear of cultures, and the jockeying for political power? That’s what this is really all about.”