Politics His Way

Brash and self-confident, Albert Robles, the 33-year-old city treasurer of South Gate, is making his own history, creating his own image of the emerging Latino politician.

One of a new breed of young Latino politicians, Robles did not bide his time, working for senior politicos and waiting to be anointed to run for office. He has cut his own path to the political fast lane.

From a bitter childhood in which he bounced from one Los Angeles County foster home to another, Robles finished second among three Democrats in the June primary for state treasurer, taking a surprising 37% of the vote.

Although he spent no money and was virtually unknown outside his southeast Los Angeles County base, Robles got 948,000 votes. That means more people voted for him for treasurer than voted for Al Checchi, the failed candidate for governor who spent $40 million in pursuit of 748,000 votes.

“I pride myself in my independence,” said Robles, who in his mid-20s moved from Westwood to South Gate so he could run for the City Council. “People ask me what my politics are. I say I am a progressive pragmatist. I will try anything that works.”

In that respect, Robles is part of an emerging generation of young Latino lawmakers who aren’t playing by the old rules, said political scientist Fernando Guerra, director of Loyola Marymount University’s Center for the Study of Los Angeles.

Latino political powers in many cases get together and handpick who will run for office. Alliances have formed locally around such potent officeholders as Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina, Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre and state Sen. Richard G. Polanco (D-Los Angeles).

But there are those today, like Robles, who prefer doing it their own way. “I am not your conventional party hack,” Robles said, “so I am not going to be the person endorsed by power brokers.”

Guerra said such independent courses will become more common. “You now have over 100 Latino city council members in Los Angeles County. The idea that they would all be deferential to the existing alliances, like Alatorre or Molina, or the older generation, it just couldn’t happen,” Guerra said. “There are just too many unique personalities . . . too many guys and gals who don’t want to wait around.”

Rather than being deferential, noted Guerra, Robles has a talent for upsetting entrenched powers.

“He makes other elected officials uncomfortable, which is good,” Guerra said. “He clearly has a sense of who he is and who he wants to be.”

Robles was so blase about the state treasurer’s race that he spent election day vacationing in London.

“A reporter for the Associated Press tracked me down and asked, ‘Can you explain how you took more votes than Al Checchi?”’ he said, amused.

He wished he knew.

“I still don’t understand how I won counties like Kings County, where I have never been in my life,” said Robles, who ran second among Democrats to Phil Angelides, former director of the California Democratic Party.

Political observers believe Robles’ vote tally resulted primarily from two things: a name that established identification with Latino voters and his ballot designation--”city treasurer.” State Treasurer Matt Fong is running for the U.S. Senate this year, so the office doesn’t have an incumbent, adding importance to Robles’ identification as a treasurer.

Still, the vote drew attention to Robles.

Since the June primary, the two major party candidates running for treasurer--Democrat Angelides and Assemblyman Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove)--have sought Robles’ endorsement. Robles, under heavy pressure to support Angelides, still hasn’t made up his mind about an endorsement.

Robles has run almost nonstop for one job or another since he was elected to the South Gate City Council in 1992 when he was 26. He served two terms as mayor, a job that gets passed back and forth by the five members of the council, and won the city treasurer’s job by defeating a long-term incumbent. He also found time to run for the State Board of Equalization in 1994, when he finished second to Democrat Brad Sherman, and later won election to a local water board.

As he jumped from one local political controversy to another, he picked up his share of critics.

“The kid is articulate. He is very smart. But he has no principles,” said South Gate Mayor Henry C. Gonzalez, a labor leader with whom Robles has been waging an acerbic public feud. “He does get a lot of votes, but that is because no one knows him.”

At the end of July, Connie L. Troesh, a former administrative assistant, filed a lawsuit against Robles, claiming he made sexually offensive comments to her and asked her to alter test scores for job applicants he wanted to hire. Robles strongly denies the allegations, saying they are “all lies.”

In 1994, just after he was appointed mayor for the first time by other council members, Robles financed his home through a city-sponsored program subsidizing home purchases for first-time buyers. At the time, Robles was earning $28,000 as a schoolteacher and another $10,000 for being mayor. He argued that he was just the kind of person who deserved a housing break.

On another occasion, Robles misreported a $5,000 campaign contribution when he ran for the Board of Equalization, listing the donor’s father instead of the donor himself, a mistake later corrected.

Robles generated more controversy in 1997 when he waged a bruising campaign against longtime incumbent Treasurer Martha Hunter that rankled many in the city, though it won him the job.

One public dispute with Gonzalez flared into a physical altercation, with Robles hitting Gonzalez so hard with his elbow that it bruised the older man’s ribs.

“I told him, ‘You stand for everything I stand against.’ I have no respect for him,’ ” said Gonzalez, 62, a high-ranking member of the United Auto Workers union and longtime member of the Democratic State Central Committee.

“Henry Gonzalez? His biggest criticism of me is that I don’t let grass grow under my feet,” Robles replies. “I feel it’s a compliment because that means I am not stagnating.”

Robles nearly always dresses formally, usually wearing a dark blue pinstriped suit and highly polished wingtip shoes.

When he isn’t feuding with other officeholders, Robles has a politician’s natural affability that is sometimes difficult to match against his troubled background.

The son of immigrant parents from Mexico, he was once so badly bruised from his father’s punishments that school and police authorities intervened to remove Robles from his home. He bounced from foster home to foster home, with stopovers at group homes like the county’s MacLaren Hall in El Monte, until he was 18.

Robles said he was angry and rebellious during those years, often running away from foster homes. “I was incorrigible,” he said.

“I was on my own,” Robles said. “I did whatever needed to be done to survive.” That included selling steamed corn on the cob in downtown Los Angeles’ garment district, he said.

But Robles received support, such as scholarships from a group called Friends of Foster Children, that helped get him through Pasadena City College and then UCLA. He also said he kept in constant touch with his mother, Catalina Robles, as well as his brother and two sisters, who gave him emotional support.

At UCLA, Robles caught the political bug and landed a job as a community coordinator for former Assembly member Marguerite Archie-Hudson, who represented South Gate and other cities.

“You are either going to end up in prison or the governor’s mansion,” Robles said Archie-Hudson told him.

These days, Robles takes advantage of every opportunity for political advancement, including getting elected to an obscure water agency, the West Basin Municipal Water District, which sets policy on water matters for four southeast cities and gives him a broader political base than South Gate.

Among his local allies are a sister, M. Susan Carillo, whom he helped get elected to the Southern California Water Replenishment District when she was 23, and another water board member who shares the same name but is not related, Albert Robles. The two Robleses are so close they had signs made up--”Albert Robles for Water Board”--that they both use.

On Friday, Susan Carillo’s water board hosted a breakfast for Assemblyman Cruz Bustamante (D-Fresno), the former Assembly speaker and current Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor. The breakfast drew more than 400 people, which Bustamante said was the largest community gathering he had seen in several years. South Gate’s Robles began the event by leading the Pledge of Allegiance.

“When I decided to run for treasurer, people said, ‘Don’t do it. You are crazy.’ ” Robles said. “Then, after seeing all the votes I got, they said, ‘It’s the best thing you ever did.’ ”