Hernandez Is Blaming Everyone but Himself

Mike Hernandez’s battle against alcohol and cocaine is a most public kind of rehab, conducted not in the privacy of a support group and a counselor’s office but in the unforgiving glare of the campaign trail.

After his arrest in August on felony charges of cocaine possession, the Los Angeles city councilman pleaded guilty and was placed in a diversion-treatment program that allows him to avoid jail if he completes rehabilitation and is not arrested again for drugs. If he is arrested, Hernandez told a Democratic meeting Tuesday night, he goes to jail for three years.

As Hernandez stood before 25 men and women at El Arco Iris restaurant in Highland Park, I could see the difficulties he faces in trying to rehabilitate his political reputation and himself at the same time.

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I had arrived at the restaurant before the county Democratic committee’s community forum began. Hernandez was in a booth across the room, finishing his dinner. He called me over and invited me to sit down.

I was mildly surprised. I had beaten him up in a column last week for neglecting his district in favor of cocaine and a nightly quart of tequila. But he was friendly as he talked about his political and personal future. No, he reiterated, he would not quit, as some of his colleagues have demanded. “If my constituents ask me to resign in the recall, I will gladly leave and I will go on with my life.”

Opponents are gathering signatures for a recall in his 1st District, which extends from Pico-Union, west of downtown, north through the Dodger Stadium area and Mt. Washington.

His dinner finished, Hernandez walked to the back room, where the Democrats were gathering. Garry Shay, the county Democratic chairman, introduced him, and the show began.

What was most striking was Hernandez’s clarity as he spoke. For the past several years, the City Hall crowd has become accustomed to Hernandez’s excited, rambling, disjointed speeches. In contrast, the sober Hernandez at the restaurant spoke calmly, making his points in a level voice. I was reminded of the old saying: “I didn’t know he was drunk until I saw him sober.”

The first question, from county Chairman Shay, set the tone for the meeting and, no doubt, for the recall campaign.

Legally, said Shay, you have the right to remain in office, but “people are saying you breached your trust and should resign.”

Hernandez replied that when he entered a drug rehabilitation hospital he felt that way too. But after receiving supportive letters and phone calls from “thousands and thousands” of constituents, he decided to remain on the job. Demands that he resign came from The Times, and from people in Reseda and Santa Clarita and other places far from his district, he said. He dismissed the recall advocates as people from his district who have always opposed him.

Another questioner asked how he can present himself as a role model to young people in his district. His experience, Hernandez replied, shows the young the dangers of drugs and alcohol, “the reality that the disease can take you down.”

Should we rehab every city employee arrested for drug possession? someone else asked. This reflected a view by Hernandez’s critics that a cop on the beat or a city meter inspector would probably be fired or suspended rather than gently eased into a rehab program while continuing on the job.

“I think everyone has the right to rehab,” Hernandez said.

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There were other questions dealing with local issues such as the lighting of a Little League field and traffic jams on the Pasadena Freeway.

Hernandez answered them well, citing a number of programs, including neighborhood shuttle buses, that he had initiated to improve life in the district.

But something important was missing.

Hernandez attacked me and the rest of the media for covering the Tuesday night speech and ignoring “more important questions. . . . We get them here when we have some sort of scandal, and I am the scandal.”

He blamed his genes. He blamed his grief over his mother’s death. He blamed the “disease” as if it were some plague he was powerless to prevent.

He blamed everyone but himself.

Part of rehabilitation is accepting blame and apologizing to those you’ve hurt. Hernandez alone is responsible for his mess. He should admit his blame and apologize to the constituents he neglected.