Voters Get Last Word

Countless words--heartfelt and hired, meant to enlighten and meant to obscure--have gusted around the 15 statewide propositions on Tuesday’s ballot.

Voters soon will have the final word, putting a quick stop to the winds by quietly pushing styluses. Before they do, some questions not often posed during the long issue campaigns bear asking:

Are the propositions more than pet concerns that interest groups and ideologues have succeeded in elevating to the status of ballot questions? Do they really touch on the lives and direct interests of voters, and if so, how?

To get some indication of the answers, The Times invited seven voters to talk at length about the ballot issues and their own lives. All seven, most of whom live in the San Fernando Valley, had participated in a recent Times Poll. What they said has been condensed but remains in their own words.

The ballot measures they focused on as particularly meaningful included Proposition 205, which would provide $700 million in bonds to build and renovate county jails and juvenile detention facilities; Proposition 206, which would authorize $400 million in bonds for home and farm loans to military veterans (the Cal-Vet program); Proposition 209, which would abolish affirmative action in state and local government employment and state university admissions; Proposition 210, which would raise the minimum wage in the state to $5.75 an hour by March 1998; Propositions 214 and 216, which would provide closer government regulation of health maintenance organizations; and Proposition 215, which would legalize marijuana for medical use via doctor’s prescription.

Despite poring over the state-provided voter information pamphlet, all of those interviewed admitted to at least some confusion about what the ballot issues are truly about and blame misleading pro and con advertising.

Many also voiced resentment of the initiative process itself for their being called upon to make judgments about matters they don’t always entirely understand.

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DANIEL YASI, 69, a Filipino immigrant and retired engineer, is a father of three, grandfather of five, and lives in Rowland Heights.

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I’m a minority, you know. I take myself as an example.

I worked my way through college. I didn’t graduate. I washed dishes at night and went to school during the daytime, so I couldn’t take a full load, you know? But I took all of the engineering requirements, so I knew I could do the work. I was a very good draftsman and eventually made it up to where I was considered a full engineer by the company I worked for.

But it took me two years before I got a job in engineering. I’m sure it was my color. I applied for an engineering job at the gas company in Los Angeles. They were advertising for engineers. They gave you a test, not just for engineer but all kinds of levels. So I took the test and I turned it in to the guy that’s conducting the test, and he says, “Oh, you did pretty good, but we cannot hire you because you’re too small . . . [to] be carrying these big pipes from where it’s stored down to the ditch.”

He assumed that I’m applying for a job as a laborer. I said, “No, I’m applying for an engineering job.” He says, “Oh, I’m sorry but that’s all filled.” So, you know, the ad had just appeared that morning in The Times. Apparently, in his mind, he was saying, “We don’t take nonwhites into engineering.” This was back in the early ‘50s.

In my mind I was always hoping that someday somebody’s going to like me and hire me because of what I can do. I kept hoping for that, but I got married, my wife got pregnant and I became a janitor at Park La Brea Towers on La Brea.

Back at that time, affirmative action was needed to help break the curtain. But starting around the ‘60s, in the different companies I worked for, I saw more and more minorities. They’re intermingled already--the blacks and the Mexicans and the Filipinos. Very well integrated. In all those companies I saw the same transformation.

When I went into Western Gear, I was the only dark skin in the engineering department. Later on I would learn that I was hired to find out if the white engineers would accept a nonwhite. Like a guinea pig. Everybody seemed to like me. So, after that, a black man was hired. And, of course, the Mexicans were in there and everybody else. After the door was opened, race no longer mattered.

I don’t think affirmative action’s necessary anymore. Before, at Aerojet, there was a quota--so many black people, so many Asian--and in ’65 there was a big layoff in Aerojet. I was laid off and all these guys were laid off. But the blacks were not laid off because the company had to maintain a quota. That’s when I started thinking this has gone the other way now, you know?