Hayden Declares Candidacy for Governor

Standing outside a cafe made famous by a federal corruption investigation, state Sen. Tom Hayden on Thursday formally declared his candidacy for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination on a platform of “renewal through reform.”

In a surprise move a month ago, the Santa Monica lawmaker said he would seek his party’s nomination in the June 7 primary unless the other Democratic candidates, Treasurer Kathleen Brown and Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi, embraced his political reform agenda.

On Thursday, Hayden said that Brown and Garamendi have failed to publicly champion the reform cause, so it’s up to him to raise the issue of undue influence by special interests at the Capitol. The winner of the Democratic primary is expected to face Republican Gov. Pete Wilson.

Hayden made his announcement outside Pennisi’s Cafe, located a few blocks from the Capitol, where former Sen. Joseph Montoya (D-Whittier) was secretly videotaped in June, 1988, receiving a $3,000 check from an undercover FBI agent in exchange for his help on a bill.

Hayden said that videotaped breakfast meeting “was not an isolated case but part of a larger pattern of activity” that has prompted convictions in an ongoing federal political corruption probe. Montoya was convicted of corruption charges and is serving a six-year federal prison sentence.

The same cafe was the site of a 1987 meeting at which then-Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Van Nuys) demanded an illegal payment from a San Diego hotel developer. Robbins subsequently was convicted of corruption charges.

Hayden, 54, was a leader in the anti-war and civil rights protest movements of the 1960s. He served in the state Assembly for a decade before his 1992 Senate victory.