Polanco’s Efforts Bear Fruit With Latino’s Rise in Assembly

No one relished the election of Cruz Bustamante as the first Latino speaker of the California Assembly more than the deep-dimpled fellow who seemed to be everywhere at once, state Sen. Richard G. Polanco.

Amid the Democratic celebrants in the festive Assembly chamber earlier this month, no one wore a smile wider than Polanco’s. No one seemed to pump more hands or bearhug more colleagues than this Los Angeles Democrat.

This was the payoff moment for Polanco, who had worked for six years with almost single-minded determination to elect more Latino Democrats to the Legislature. It also highlights his own rising political career, whose next milestone, he hopes, will be becoming the president pro tem of the state Senate in two years.

“Richard has a vision of power in the Latino community, and he is making it a reality,” said Assemblyman Louis Caldera (D-Los Angeles), who describes himself as independent of Polanco politically, but a friend even so.

For Polanco, the elevation of Bustamante as speaker “wasn’t just about him. It was about empowering Latinos,” Caldera said. “I think the credit for Cruz’s ascension to the speakership really belongs to the groundwork Richard laid.”

With Bustamante’s selection, Latino hands were at the controls of arguably the second most powerful political office in California, ranking only behind the governor. Democrats rejoiced at recapturing power from the Republicans at the Nov. 5 election. Latino Democrats, in particular, celebrated Bustamante’s speakership.

“This was really accomplishing a dream,” Polanco said in an interview. “We have worked toward this over the last six years.”

It was Bustamante, then an obscure district office aide to a retiring Fresno legislator, whom Polanco helped to recruit and finance as a candidate for the Assembly in 1993.

Bustamante recently described Polanco’s help as a fund-raiser and political tactician as “instrumental” in winning the election.

“We won that race and, lo and behold, we continued to build. We gave Cruz the basis from which to mount a very successful speakership [effort],” Polanco said.

By virtually all accounts, Bustamante was the only Democratic contender for speaker who could produce enough support in the Democratic caucus to strip the speakership from Republican Curt Pringle. His core votes came from the 13-member Democratic Latino contingent.

Bustamante counts himself among at least 10 Democrats of Latino ancestry who have been elected to the Legislature since 1990, when Polanco became chairman of the Latino caucus.

But lately, it is Polanco, considered moderate to liberal politically, who is being talked about--as a successor to Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward), who must leave in 1998 because of term limits.

“When Lockyer decides to move [on] and up, absolutely I will mount the campaign” to succeed him, Polanco said. “I know there will be other [competitors], but that is the beauty of democracy.”

So far, no other Democrat or Republican has publicly declared for the Senate’s No. 1 leadership post.

Although his is not exactly a household name, Polanco is a power in electing Latino and non-Latino Democrats to both houses, specializing in Latinos for the Assembly.

Polanco, 45, who grew up in East Los Angeles, is an upbeat, high-energy man whose infectious smile masks what colleagues say is the toughness of a bulldog.

“The only mistake people make with Richard Polanco is to underestimate him,” said state Democratic Party Chairman Art Torres.

Colleagues say that if Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina and City Councilman Richard Alatorre are the most powerful Latino politicians in Southern California, then Polanco is their counterpart in Sacramento.

Defeated for the Assembly in 1982 by Molina, Polanco--then an aide to Alatorre--ran again and was elected in 1986.

In 1986, there were only four Latino members of the lower house. A decade later, there are a record 14, all but one a Democrat. Ten years ago, there were three Latino senators; now there are four.

No one claims that Polanco was unilaterally responsible for electing all of them. And some of his high-profile candidates have lost. But Polanco is at the front line of change as the state’s Latino population becomes more energized politically.

“He is driven by the notion that the ‘glass ceiling’ for Latinos must be broken,” said Assemblywoman Escutia, a longtime ally.

One Polanco recruit, Assemblywoman Diane Martinez (D-Monterey Park), was virtually plucked from an unemployment line by Polanco in 1992 to run for the Assembly. She ended up defeating three Latino men for the Democratic nomination.

Martinez, who had been beaten in a 1990 Assembly race, had just been laid off as a telecommunications manager at her downsized company. .

Shortly before leaving for the unemployment office, Martinez received an urgent message to call Polanco.

“I called Richard on my cell phone,” she said. “ ‘How would you like to run for the Assembly?’ ” he asked.

She said Polanco was backing an array of other unlikely candidates as well. “He plucked us from obscurity. He saw something that nobody else saw. He saw winners.”

Running in newly reapportioned districts in 1992, six of seven Polanco-backed Latino candidates were elected to the Assembly.

Two years ago, Polanco was elected to the Senate. Lockyer picked him to chair the Democratic Caucus, a leadership post with both campaign and policy responsibilities.

Separately, the California Latino political action committee, which Polanco helps direct, spent about $300,000 on general election races this year, he estimated. In addition, Polanco and other Latino lawmakers spent about $700,000 from their own sources.

Not everybody is enthusiastic about Polanco and his election campaigns.

Assemblyman Jim Morrissey (R-Anaheim) defeated Lou Correa, a Polanco-backed challenger Nov. 5 by a wafer-thin 93 votes. He says the Democrats misjudged the Latino voters in his predominately Democratic district.

“Mr. Polanco and Mr. Correa assumed that everybody that had a Latino name was a Democrat and would vote for [Correa],” Morrissey said. “Latinos do not vote in lock step. . . . They are going to vote for someone who matches their views regardless of their last name.”

Polanco and his allies deny any such assumptions. For ethnic minority politicians to practice such tactics would be “a fatal mistake,” Democratic chairman Torres said. “It would play right into the hands of those people who seek to divide communities.”

Polanco’s own debut in the Assembly 10 years ago proved divisive, at least temporarily. Only two days after he was elected, he cast the crucial vote in committee to locate a controversial new state prison in an adjoining East Los Angeles Assembly district.

The prison was sponsored by Republican Gov. George Deukmejian and bitterly opposed by many Eastside activists. Polanco denied that he favored the Eastside site over an alternative spot in Riverside County, saying he voted for the bill to keep the site selection process moving forward. The Eastside prison was never built.

Polanco, the married father of three children, graduated from East Los Angeles Community College and attended the National University of Mexico and the University of Redlands. He said he left Redlands six units short of a business degree to immerse himself in politics.

He worked as an assistant to former Los Angeles County Supervisor Ed Edelman and to former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. He also served as executive director of a redevelopment housing program in East Los Angeles.

Recently, Polanco, a full-time legislator, dropped his status as a part-time student at a Sacramento law school to devote himself to the elections. But, he said, he plans to enroll again.

“I’m a very high-energy person,” he said. “I don’t need a lot of sleep.”