In Bell Gardens, Soap Opera Has a Terrible Plot

Since last year’s Latino political revolution in Bell Gardens, things have pretty much gone to hell there. Consider the most recent meeting of the City Council as only the latest example.

Victor Vaillette, a self-appointed watchdog who churns out a newsletter on city politics, stands and blasts Councilman George Deitch, accusing him of living outside Bell Gardens in the city of Downey. Although the mayor, Frank Duran, repeatedly warns Vaillette to pipe down, he persists with the barbed harangue. Eventually, the mayor boots him out of the meeting.

Rather than simply skulk away, Vaillette waits outside for the session to adjourn, where once again, he and Councilman Deitch trade heated words. Several onlookers hold their breath, thinking the two might actually begin trading punches. Instead, Deitch walks away in disgust, telling his tormentor: “You are a total joke.”

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Such is the stuff of small-town politics, not political movements.

It was only little more than a year ago that the national media descended upon the 2.4-square-mile, blue-collar city, trumpeting it as a harbinger of growing Latino political involvement and empowerment in Southern California. Voters in Bell Gardens, where 93% of the residents are Latino, had recalled four white city councilmen, replacing them with three Latinos and a white.

The changes that swept tiny Bell Gardens represented a kind of watershed for L.A.-area Latinos, who despite their vast numbers, had never really been marshaled into a formidable voting force. The victories in Bell Gardens not only showed what could be done with some intense grass-roots organizing but sent a warning to white politicians that the needs and muscle of their many Latino constituents had best not be ignored.

But sadly, during the past months, the folks who are now controlling Bell Gardens look as though they are better suited for “Family Feud” than for City Hall. The architects of the revolution are learning that it is sometimes easier being on the outside lobbing hand grenades than on the inside, running things.

“We’re going through growing pains,” admits Councilman Rodolfo Garcia, one of the chieftains of the City Council takeover. “None of us knew anything about city government. Hey, we’ve had our obstacles. At times, the media has amplified our little problems. And people might say, ‘Ha, you see what happens? Latinos take over something and they can’t handle it.’

“But we’re still plugging away. After the dust settles down, we’re going to be operating the city the way it should be.”

Trouble set in almost from the time the four new council members--Deitch, Duran, Garcia and Josefina Macias--took office. One of their first orders of business was to fire Claude L. Booker, Bell Gardens’ longtime city manager, who stood as a symbol of the town’s old political order. Creating a new one, however, has proven to be something else. The council has wrangled over one appointment after another, hiring and dismissing city managers, city attorneys and others in short order.

At one closed-door meeting, two councilmen got into a shoving match. One hurled a chair at the other. Yet another councilman was accused of anti-Semitism when he publicly said he favored the hiring of Latinos over Jews for key city appointments. The councilman insisted his comments were taken out of context.

The municipal mess prompted one white Bell Gardens businessman, sensing vulnerability, to mount his own recall against the new council members. But that effort quickly faded when it was discovered that many of the signatures collected were invalid, including some apparent forgeries, which set off yet another donnybrook.

All of this is not to say that the new council has recorded no achievements. Among other things, a Latino has been hired as police chief and new, innovative programs have been created to help steer kids away from street gangs. But these victories have been lost in the ongoing city soap opera.

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There’s a City Council election coming up in April, another test for the Latinos who took over in Bell Gardens. At stake will be two seats.

The activists who spearheaded the revolution in Bell Gardens aren’t saying who they will support or whether they will throw their hearts and souls into this year’s election. Maria Chacon, whose group, No Re-Zoning, was the driving force behind the recall, will say only: “We don’t know what we’re going to do yet.”

The one thing I hope she and others can do is help move the city away from the shenanigans that have dulled the luster of a Latino victory in Bell Gardens, one that reverberated well beyond its borders. The struggle for ethnic political power becomes even tougher when it gets tangled up in pettiness.