Floyd Seeking a Political Comeback

If you were to ring up Central Casting and ask for someone to play a chain-smoking, glad-handing politician who sprinkles his conversation with occasional four-letter words, you might end up with someone like Richard E. Floyd.

Floyd is the kind of politician who epitomizes the consummate backslapping, deal-making legislator who knows how to work a crowd as well as get a few laws passed. And he’s the kind of person who doesn’t intend to let one surprise defeat keep him out of the Assembly for long.

After losing the Democratic primary to Juanita M. McDonald in 1992 in the 55th Assembly District, newly created by reapportionment, Floyd, best known for sponsoring the motorcycle helmet law, is attempting a comeback in the district, which covers the heavily Democratic areas of Wilmington, Carson, north Long Beach and part of Compton.

“I think I can contribute something up there,” Floyd explained while puffing on a cigarette and sitting in his bare-bones campaign headquarters in Wilmington. “I miss the action.”

Floyd is hoping that name recognition will win him new political life. His challengers include Joseph Mendez Jr., a Wilmington activist and labor organizer with close ties to the Harbor area’s union members, and McDonald’s son, Keith. Juanita McDonald is running for the congressional seat vacated by Walter Tucker III (D-Compton).

There are some who say that Floyd had been in the Assembly too long the first time around. And there are those who maintain that the Legislature needs people like the 65-year-old Democrat, who has 12 years of Assembly expertise and can adroitly shepherd a bill through the Legislature’s back rooms.

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Not surprisingly, his sharpest critics are motorcyclists. Paul Lax, a Century City attorney and opponent of the helmet law, prefers that Floyd’s shadow never grace the Legislature’s halls again.

“He’s probably a great guy to drink with and play cards with, but he doesn’t belong in the Assembly,” said Lax, executive director of ABATE, a motorcycle group that opposes the helmet law. “He’s a throwback [to the old days].”

Lax maintains that Floyd bends the truth to get a bill passed, such as when he estimated that taxpayers paid $65 million to $100 million a year to cover the medical costs of uninsured motorcycle riders. Floyd said his numbers were correct.

“His campaign funding comes from people who thrive on the weakness of the masses, such as alcohol, tobacco and gambling interests who support him,” said Mike Osborn, chairman of ABATE’s political action committee. “Returning Dick Floyd to the Assembly would be like turning back the clock to 1950.”

Floyd has been closely associated with gambling casinos, who have contributed heavily to his campaigns, including this one, and horse tracks. He is a consultant to several medium-sized card clubs and for one year he was executive director of the California Card Club Assn.

But Floyd also has been touted as the champion of the blue-collar worker, veterans and organized labor. A soldier in the Korean War, he got a bill passed to establish a Vietnam veterans memorial on the Capitol grounds in Sacramento and sponsored a law that required the state insurance commissioner to publish an annual comparison of insurance rates beginning in 1989.

None of his Democratic opponents in the Assembly race has much political expertise. Keith McDonald, 32, who failed to win a seat on the Carson City Council but successfully ran his mother’s campaign. Mendez, 35, a pipe fitter, lost a bid for the 37th Congressional District a few years ago and has never held political office. Carl E. Robinson, a retired postal worker from Carson and a congressional representative for former Rep. Tucker, is a perennial candidate who has never won. The Republican primary has only one candidate, Ronald Hayes of Long Beach.

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Floyd is a no-nonsense kind of guy who feels comfortable talking to the meat-and-potato workers who make up his district, which is 80% minority--half of them African Americans. One of the issues he is championing is a $1 an hour increase in the $4.25 minimum wage.

“We’ve got to establish a living wage for people or otherwise we’re going right to the toilet,” he said between swigs of coffee and puffs of his filterless cigarette.

McDonald, a businessman, is campaigning to bring manufacturing jobs back to a region hit hard by reductions in the aerospace and defense industry. He says Floyd’s time has come and gone. “People tolerated Floyd, but I don’t know if they respected him,” he said. “They say he was unresponsive.”

Mendez, who also wants to see more jobs return to the area, said Floyd would just be more of the same old thing. “I think we’d fall back into the mode of non-representation again,” Mendez said.

Floyd certainly made his share of bad impressions while in the Assembly. Steve Thompson, vice president of government affairs for the California Medical Assn., remembered that when a group of doctors went to Floyd’s office to promote an anti-smoking law, Floyd puffed on a cigar during the entire conversation. When his helmet bill was vetoed by Gov. George Deukmejian in the late 1980s, Floyd denounced the Republican as “the most hardheaded [expletive] in this building.” He later apologized after being threatened with censure.

Floyd had raised about $40,000 for the March 26 primary, mostly from card clubs and labor unions, according to papers filed in February. He says he now has raised a total of $100,000. The second-biggest fund-raiser is Keith McDonald, who says he has raised about $25,000, including $15,000 from his mother.