Assembly Candidate Is Only 18, but He’s No Political Novice

There he was again, Josh Arce, working the telephone in his UCLA dorm room trying to drum up support for his campaign to represent the northwestern San Fernando Valley in the state Assembly.

He may be only an 18-year-old college freshman, but this is no political novice at work.

Last year, Arce--then a Chatsworth High School senior--became the youngest candidate for elected office in Los Angeles history, running unsuccessfully for the community college board at age 17. He was so young he couldn’t even vote for himself in the primary.

His tenacity intact, Arce, a Democrat, now hopes to oust Republican Paula Boland in the 38th Assembly District, which includes Chatsworth, Granada Hills, Northridge, Mission Hills, Canoga Park and part of Ventura County.

“I hear in my mind a phrase that my high school football coach used to say to me,” Arce says. “You can’t win the game if you don’t step out on the field.”

So what if his campaign war chest holds a mere $150?

Arce learned how to grab many votes with little money during last year’s race, when he garnered 28,753 votes on a $50 budget, spending 0.17 a cent for each vote--well short of, for example, the $2.11 per vote that it cost Barbara Boxer to win a U. S. Senate seat.

And so what if he can’t count on his own family for support?

When his grandmother not only refused to loan him the money to pay for his filing fee, but also informed him that she plans to vote for his rival Boland, Arce turned around and found someone else to spot him the cash.

Never mind that his best friend and campaign manager, Jason Sattler, lives two counties away in Santa Barbara, where he’s attending UC Santa Barbara.

That’s what telephones are for.

And never mind that Arce has yet to complete his first year at UCLA.

Why just study politics when you can practice it instead? Arce says. Besides, he reasons, if he is elected, he could finish up his degree going part-time to UC Davis, which is near the state capital.

In addition to Boland, Arce is vying with Ventura Democrat Donald Cocquyt and Green Party member Charles Wilken in the primary election. And although he has yet to win the Democratic Party endorsement over Cocquyt, it’s clear that Arce views incumbent Boland as his chief competitor.

“I’m going to show people that I can be more effective than Boland,” Arce says.

He points to a survey published in this month’s issue of the California Journal, in which Boland ranks 71 out of 78 Assembly members for effectiveness.

“I’m going to suggest that on Jan. 17, we hit a crossroad,” Arce says. “It’s time to decide: Are we going to continue what we’ve been doing in the past? Or are we going to look at what happened during the earthquake and take it as a sign that change is needed?”

Arce is running on a platform calling for cutbacks in fees at community colleges and universities and for breaking up the Los Angeles Unified School District into smaller districts. He also proposes slapping harsher penalties on businesses that hire illegal immigrants.

He and a couple of friends from high school have already collected 400 signatures to qualify for the June primary and the endorsements of the California Democratic Council and Local 660 of the Service Employees International Union, which represents 42,000 county employees.

He plans to spend his summer vacation walking the San Fernando Valley in search of votes.

Arce talks about his plans at his dorm room desk, cluttered with papers, bottles of vitamins, an orthodontic retainer and a couple of trophies from his high school football days. Posters from the Chatsworth movie theater where he was once an usher hang alongside a picture of actress Sharon Stone.

“Last year I wrote her and asked for an endorsement and a contribution, but she sent back an autographed picture instead,” he explains with a smile.

Arce’s books about conspiracy theories surrounding the John F. Kennedy assassination also sit on a nearby shelf. At least one trait that the former high school homecoming king and his presidential idol seem to have in common is their appeal to women.

On a recent afternoon, four college women offered to vote for Arce in the five minutes it took him to buy a temporary parking permit at his dorm office. (When he asked, however, it turned out only one of the women lives in his district.)

The encouragement he receives from his peers, however, is offset by his staunchly Republican family’s response to his campaign.

“For them, if the worst thing I’m doing is running for political office, then that’s not too bad,” Arce says. “I could be out selling drugs.”

Yet he acknowledges that he found it more than just a little discouraging when his grandmother, who belongs to the Northridge Republican Women’s Club, refused to loan him the $400 filing fee.

“It’s not that I don’t love him, but politically we don’t agree” says Jane Bergquist, Arce’s grandmother, who lives in the Chatsworth house next door to the one where Arce grew up. “This is kind of a funny thing--but I’m so proud of him anyway.”

Bergquist let out a chuckle when asked if she would really pass over her own grandson’s name on the June ballot in favor of Boland.

“Well, we never know, do we, what we’ll do when we get to the polls?” she said.