Vladimir and the Ex-Grand Wizard Duke

Maybe you think the Cold War is over, the good guys won and the Evil Empire is history. But listen a while to Glenn Spencer and you’ll learn how the Commies have established a foothold right here in the San Fernando Valley.

Spencer, you may recall, was a local leader of the winning Proposition 187 campaign who claimed that the Mexican government is conspiring to reconquer the American Southwest. As part of this plot, Spencer suggests, outside agitators of the pinko persuasion are conspiring to discredit Proposition 209, the anti-affirmative action measure, by bringing former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke to Cal State Northridge for a debate.

Maybe you think this smacks of paranoia. Spencer would note that the president of the Northridge Student Senate, the individual most responsible for inviting Duke, immigrated illegally to the USA from El Salvador.

His name is Vladimir Cerna. That’s right--Vladimir.

Spooky, isn’t it?

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It wasn’t Spencer who first made the accusations of conspiracy. That was no less a figure than University of California Regent Ward Connerly, chairman of the Proposition 209 campaign. In a weekend news conference, he told of a secret informant, a former No on 209 insider, who had revealed to him a “conspiracy” by affirmative action fans to quietly orchestrate the Duke travesty.

Connerly was quoted as calling Duke’s invitation “one of the sleaziest things to have happened in California political history.” This was not, he declared, “some act of innocent, misguided students who had this great brainchild of an idea.” Connerly said his informant “knows exactly when the No on 209 people were involved and when they got involved.”

Connerly didn’t suggest that the dirty tricksters were Commies. That was Spencer, a few days later. A fax promoting a Tuesday-night meeting of his group, Voices of Citizens Together, promised data about “the infiltration of Cal State Northridge by Chicano radicals and Communists,” with Cerna listed as a prime suspect.

“Come to this important meeting and help expose the Chicano/Mexicano agenda,” the message implored.

A colleague of mine covered this gathering at St. Innocent Church in Tarzana. Spencer and others expounded on the enemy within. Downtown businesswoman Linda Griego, a former mayoral candidate who now heads the riot-recovery effort known as RLA, was described as a “dangerous radical.” Cerna was called a “rising star” of the movement.

Somebody said that Cerna happens to be the name of a prominent leftist in Nicaragua. And that country, you know, is right down there by Vladimir’s homeland.

By then I had already decided to drop by Cal State Northridge and size up this Vladimir Cerna for myself. First, I did a little reading.

He’s a clever one, all right. Cerna, now 22, was already active in student government when, at the peak of the Proposition 187 furor, he made headlines by disclosing that his family had entered America illegally in 1986. While his mom cleaned houses and his stepfather worked at a carwash, Cerna had become a standout sociology student while tutoring junior high kids in algebra and geometry.

The disclosure of his illegal status prompted a barrage of hate mail, but the following July, facing deportation, Cerna and his parents were granted legal residency status by a federal judge who had reviewed testimonials from professors and the family’s landlord.

The more I read, the more I was impressed by Cerna’s cunning. Exploiting his illegal-immigrant-as-poster-boy status, he decided to run for student body president last spring. In a brilliant move, he recruited a frat member as a running mate.

“My friends were asking how could I run with a Greek while his friends were asking him, why are you running with this radical?” he said. The radical/Greek ticket won endorsements from 30 groups. Their platform called for reduced student parking rates and more security guards for night students.

Promise cheaper parking. Deliver David Duke.

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When I met Cerna, he didn’t seem too scary. He coolly denied this ambivalent white male’s suggestions that the student legislature, in inviting Duke and paying him a $4,000 honorarium, was rather transparently trying to make a political point that so angers Connerly. Likewise, he denied that student activists, being student activists, were just trying to stir up controversy.

The former Klansman, Cerna noted, is a duly elected member of the Louisiana Legislature who got an anti-affirmative action measure passed with support from African American colleagues. Whatever people think of his past and his politics, Cerna argues, certainly Duke has proven himself qualified to participate in a debate on the subject.

It occurred to me that Cerna, like Duke, doesn’t seem terribly troubled by the “radical” label. And though their backgrounds are hardly moral equivalents, they both know how it feels to be personas non grata.

Cerna rolled his eyes and laughed at suggestions of “conspiracy” and outside influence. The fact is, he said, that long before Ward Connerly offered himself as a substitute for Duke, Connerly had turned down an earlier invitation to speak. And he said that people should know that the decision to invite Duke passed by the thinnest of margins. The vote was 11-11 before Cerna, as president, cast the tiebreaker.

Yet some dare call it conspiracy.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to Harris at the Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311. Please include a phone number.