Lawyer Picks Up the Torch of ‘60s Activists : Francisco Leal is a successful public figure with Ivy League credentials. As Commerce city attorney, he says he’s continuing the work of those who paved the way to progress for Latinos.

Francisco Leal, 34, was born in the border town of El Paso to undocumented immigrants from Mexico and spent his early childhood in Mexico before moving to East Los Angeles with his family. The former Roosevelt High student credits the progress made by Chicano activists of the 1960s for the opportunities he has enjoyed in life. He boasts an Ivy League education from Yale and Harvard and a law career that began at the Los Angeles firm of O’Melveny and Myers . After just a year in private practice, Leal felt a call to public-sector work. His first stop was Boston, where he worked for three years litigating claims for the Environmental Protection Agency. In 1990, he returned to Southern California and worked in the successful state Assembly campaign of Xavier Becerra, a Los Angeles Democrat who in 1992 was elected to Congress. But that wasn’t enough, in Leal’s mind, to pay off the debt he owed to those activists of the ‘60s. So he and Arnoldo Beltran, his partner in the law firm of Leal and Beltran, decided to focus their efforts at the local level, signing on as city attorneys for Commerce and Bell Gardens, respectively. Leal also serves on a number of nonprofit community groups such as Mothers of East Los Angeles, Community Youth Gang Services and the National Alliance of Latino Elected Officials. “You look at Congress and there’s great good to be done in Congress,” Leal says. “But I get a lot of satisfaction when one person comes to me and says they have a problem. You feel like you’ve made a contribution to that person’s life at a very immediate level.” Leal recently shared that opinion, and others, with Times staff writer Kevin Baxter.

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Commerce isn’t that different than most cities. The demographics have changed. It used to be a mostly white community with an Anglo council. Then it turned into a Latino community with an Anglo council. Then eventually it turned into a Latino community with a Latino council. And the problem is that in these cities these elected officials, they’re like my mom and dad. They are good people, (but) they’re not that sophisticated. They want to do the right thing, but they’re faced constantly with very complex issues. The issues coming out of municipalities are highly complex. And the council members are not there full time. These are folks who have their own separate jobs and they’re told, “You gotta make this huge decision” that involves sometimes millions of dollars. And oftentimes when that happens, they rely on the city attorney to help them along. And I like to play that role.

I derive my greatest enjoyment out of my job from giving them assistance. I like the fact that I’m helping the council members do local government. Like (the late ex-House Speaker) Tip O’Neill said, “All politics is local.” The issues we get are the down-to-earth ones, like fix the potholes. Sometimes funding on special programs, such as baseball teams for the community. These are all just basic community issues.

My role isn’t to try to advise. The council is a separate entity, and they’re the ultimate decision makers. The big danger in this business, and what I want to stay away from, is being known as the sixth council member. I tend to focus on the legal implications, and I tend to generally give a very balanced view on the legality of issues. And I like to play that role, where I work with staff and work with the council in hopes that a good project isn’t going to be derailed because of politics.

I’ve told council members “no” on things they didn’t want to hear. If you’re consistent--and I think I’ve been very consistent with my council--then you get respect. They know that you’re not going to play politics for one council member over another. I develop expertise every day as I deal with my council, as I deal with staff. And I want to be able to expand on that.

I grew up in East L.A., and the City of Commerce, to me, was the perfect place to begin as city attorney. You need an emotional attachment to a community to succeed in it. That’s my view. I wouldn’t want to be city attorney for, I don’t know, a city in conservative Orange County. The conflict would be, “Am I going to consistently be doing legal work that goes against my morals or my views?” At that point, you’re in the wrong job. You really are. You want to go home and say, “Hey, I’m passing laws that are screwing my people and I’m the brown face they’re using to justify it?” Forget it! What’s the point? The beauty of it right now for me is there is a synergism of minds, a confluence of values when it comes to . . . my council.

The issues that I face constantly with my council are issues where, when it comes to race--and race is a big issue in local government--members are saying, “We’re not going to enact ordinances that hurt Latinos.” I think the whole reason for being there, my reason for being there, is to help them help their Latino constituents who have long been neglected.

My parents came to this country illegally to do something better with themselves and, hopefully, for their children. I was born in El Paso. My mom felt that my opportunities would be expanded if I was born in El Paso rather than Juarez. So I was born in El Paso, only to be taken back to Juarez within, like, two days. And then I grew up in Juarez and Durango. And they had to sneak me across the border when I was 9 years old because who would believe I was an American citizen? I knew no English; I looked like every other campesino (countryman) out there. I remember being placed in a truck or a little van, hiding in a blanket, to cross the border.

Everybody has a point of view. My point of view is, when folks come here they don’t come here for welfare. I really feel strongly about that. My mom came to this country to try to improve herself because Mexico was all screwed up. She was never quite able to do that because it’s tough to do.

We’re definitely in a battle now. There are very few people out there who are willing to stand up for immigrants. For obvious reasons: They really don’t carry a voting bloc and they don’t have any money to contribute to your campaign. I think the immigrant is the most exposed, and what flows from that flows to the non-immigrant who happens to be Latino. And to me, they’re one and the same.

I always get annoyed when I hear about the abuses that the poor supposedly commit, when it comes to social programs, or undocumented workers commit, by utilizing welfare. When (at the same time) you have an abuse in the millions of dollars in the form of tax evasion, the S & L problem and all that at a different level that somehow people have forgotten. The S & L debacle probably caused more damage to our society than what we’re seeing with undocumented workers. But no one is going to win votes by saying, “I’m going to go out and get the S & L people who put us in this financial ruin.”

I think I can be a lot of help to the Latino community, to put them in a position where they can have more control over their future and more economic and political power. I feel like I’m the fruit of the Chicano movement of the ‘60s, when people were out there fighting for more educational openings. It’s a Latino thing.