POWER HUBS

Reported by Times staff writers Ted Rohrlich, Richard LEE Colvin, Doug Adrianson and Beth Shuster

FABIAN NUNEZ

Wouldn’t it be nice if, in the 21st century, we had enough decent jobs to close the widening chasm between rich and poor?

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“Your parents work two jobs and yet you open the refrigerator and there’s still nothing to eat. There’s something wrong with that.” *

FABIAN NUNEZ: As political director for the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, the local AFL-CIO, this 33-year-old is a key to mobilizing 750,000 members into pressuring big business and government to “play a more responsible role in making sure that we have a better distribution of wealth.”

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Born in San Diego. Grew up there and in Tijuana, where his father moved the family of 14 to stretch paychecks from his job as a gardener in La Jolla. Nunez graduated from Pitzer College. He and his wife, a nurse, live with their two children in Claremont.

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Toward that end, Nunez scans the horizon for desirable candidates and lobbies legislators. “We find that the same issues that motivate union members also motivate new Latino voters.”

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Before becoming a union man, Nunez helped organize L.A.’s biggest street demonstration--a protest in 1994 against Prop. 187. He still fights for immigrant rights as president of the board of One Stop Immigration and has close ties to Hermandad Mexicana Nacional and the Central American Refugee Center.

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During the war with Pete Wilson, Nunez ran the field for Gil Cedillo, the ex-county employees union chief who had first recruited Nunez for union work. The unions had tapped Cedillo to stand up to pro-187 Wilson by mobilizing thousands of newly registered Latino voters for an L.A. state Assembly race.

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Labor’s Boogeyman

Unions owe Republican former Gov. Pete Wilson big time. He galvanized them by trying to restrict their political activities. He then sent their way a new wave of first-time, immigrant, mainly Latino voters--prime targets of union organizers--with his fiery campaigns against illegal immigration.

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It’s hard to talk “living wage” to manufacturers--and unionization to workers--when employers can pull up stakes and move to Asia and pay workers $5.75 a week instead of a minimum $5.75 an hour.

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In a nonunion town like L.A., labor still wields political clout because of the relatively large number of unionized public employees, who vote often enough to keep politicians on their toes, and by the absence of a well-organized countervailing force. Referring to the 15-member L.A. City Council, Nunez says: “If the issue is important, we can count [on] 8.”

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But you can’t win them all. Labor backed a loser, Victor Griego, in this year’s race to replace longtime City Councilman Richard Alatorre.

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What’s the Belmont Learning Center got to do with it? David Koff, a hotel workers union researcher, fanned the controversy that toppled the LAUSD school board. One of the ill-fated school’s builders owns the New Otani, where the union is in a dispute.

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The Mission

Form alliances with civil rights, civic, religious and immigrants’ rights groups to turn the corporate world on its head. As Nunez says, “You talk about a minimum wage. How about a maximum wage? Wouldn’t it be nice if we put a cap on what we paid CEOs?” *

Nunez et al. have many enemies to choose from. Take George Mihlsten, a leading L.A. lawyer-lobbyist. He supervised Madeline Janis-Aparicio during her short-lived career as a corporate lawyer, before she became director of L.A. Alliance for a New Economy and its Living Wage Coalition. Now he is an adversary, representing clients fighting a “living wage” in Santa Monica hotels, at LAX and at Universal Studios.

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Nunez’s boss, Miguel Contreras, met his future wife, Maria Elena Durazo, when she took over a troubled hotel workers union as an insurgent after he’d taken it over as a trustee. She horrified business when, as a bargaining chip, she circulated a video on L.A.’s dangers to the tourist industry as the city tried to recover from the 1992 riots.

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Contreras works alongside MADELINE Janis-Aparicio, director of L.A. Alliance for a New Economy and its Living Wage Coalition, which persuaded the city and county to require government contractors to exceed the minimum wage. “Our vision is to not only raise the standard of living for working people but to empower them,” Contreras says.

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Local AFL-CIO organizing director Jon Barton presided over a banner year in which 90,000 members were added. The bad news: 80,000 were public employees, including 74,000 home health care minimum wage workers. To force economic change, Barton knows, unions must achieve critical mass in private industry, where only 11% of workers are members.

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John Sweeney became national AFL-CIO president four years ago, deposing an old guard that had grown content servicing a declining membership. His message: Labor needs new blood to survive, and the way to get it is to return to 1930s-style militancy.

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Several L.A. mayoral candidates for 2001--including undeclared Zev Yaroslavsky and declared James K. Hahn and Antonio Villaraigosa--covet labor’s backing. Villaraigosa may have the inside track. A former teachers union organizer, he is an unabashed liberal who talks openly about the need to abate poverty. He is also Cedillo’s high school buddy and college roommate, and preceded Cedillo to the Assembly, where Villaraigosa became Speaker.

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LYDIA H. KENNARD

Wouldn’t it be nice if, in the 21st century, we could drive to the airport, board a plane and take off in less time than it takes to fly to Seattle?

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LYDIA H. KENNARD: As interim executive director of the city department that owns and operates the Los Angeles, Ontario, Palmdale and Van Nuys airports, this 45-year-old is in the eye of the storm over how to handle the more than 100 million passengers expected in the region annually by 2020.

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“No matter how you cut it, airports are controversial. They are unattractive neighbors, just like sewage dump sites. No matter what we do, people who live next to airports are not happy with us all the time.” *

Grew up in Los Angeles, graduated from Hollywood High, Stanford University, Harvard Law School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she earned a master’s in city planning. She lives in Altadena with her husband, stepson and daughter. Her brother is Federal Communications Chairman Bill Kennard.

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Jack Driscoll, a consummate City Hall insider for 35 years, talked up his airports department to Kennard in ’92 when she joined a group of city officials and local business execs on a trip to Asia. Driscoll and Kennard became friends, and two years later he tapped her to be one of his deputies. She took over the top job after Driscoll’s retirement in August, vowing to continue driving her 4-year-old daughter to preschool.

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Until Mayor Riordan tapped her in 1991 for the city Planning Commission,

Kennard operated in the private sector as a real estate and construction attorney and, before that, as president of a construction consulting company.

Robin Friedheim of the Alliance for Regional Solutions to Airport Congestion can raise hundreds of homeowners at a moment’s notice to oppose expansion.

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By itself, LAX, the nation’s third busiest airport, serves about 63 million people a year. It will handle more than 90 million over the next 15 years. From Orange County to San Bernardino to Playa del Rey, city officials, politicians and community activists generally agree that a regional approach to the influx is the only solution. The proposed El Toro airport in Orange County could ease the burden, handling 30 million a year, but opponents have kept it from getting off the ground.

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Overbooked

Think of a CEO answering to multiple boards. Kennard must balance the interests of her boss, Mayor Riordan, with those of 15 City Council members and the community. The Board of Airport Commissioners also oversees her department, and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors weighs in since Ontario falls on its turf. Also chiming in are the airlines and the airports’ neighbors, who, particularly around LAX, tend to be loud and aggressive.

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The Strategy

Sell decision-makers on an LAX expansion plan, with a capacity for 92 million passengers annually, that’s cheaper (no new runways, saving $360 million in land acquisitions) and less offensive to surrounding communities (generating less traffic, creating less noise) than earlier versions. “The question is,” Kennard says, “do you want an airport that functions well or an airport with increasing delays and problems? It’s already crazy, and it’s going to get worse.”

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El Segundo mayor Mike Gordon, founder of a coalition of more than 65 cities opposing LAX expansion, can rattle off a dozen reason why he thinks L.A. should be looking elsewhere--particularly El Toro--to relieve congestion, and he turns to the courts when necessary.

Ruth Galanter, the city councilwoman whose district includes LAX and who chairs the council committee that oversees airport issues, opposes LAX expansion. The council member who replaces Galanter when her term expires in 2003 likely will dog the airports department.

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Whoever replaces Mayor Riordan in 2001 will decide first whether to keep Kennard--and then how to advance air traffic issues.

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A recent computer run from the airports department spit out 367 open contracts. While some represent technical support, many others are for public and community affairs consultants, marketing experts, lobbyists and lawyers. A city Ethics Commission report shows that the department spent more than $115,000 for consulting services on the LAX Master Plan and paid nearly $11,000 to one of City Hall’s busiest lobbyists, Steve Afriat, for PR assistance.

Meanwhile, United Airlines, which wants to enlarge its cargo facility at LAX, paid lobbyists nearly $67,500. “It’s a cast of thousands,” says one city official involved in the department. “Everybody in town at some point has a contract at the airport.”FYI: Kennard can’t tell a 737 from a 767.

Miguel Contreras, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County AFL/CIO, also sits on the Airport Commission. The unions count strong numbers at the airports and many of those workers live near their jobs. Contreras could be a great help to Kennard--or a great hindrance.

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John J. Agoglia, Airport Commission president, was persuaded by Riordan to get an LAX expansion moving. He’s a former NBC executive, a deal maker and tough negotiator who was involved in the decision to hire Jay Leno over David Letterman for the “Tonight Show.” “There are some people whose goal in life is to see LAX become the world’s largest golf course,” Agoglia said recently. “That’s not going to happen.”

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Bill Kennard, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and Lydia Kennard’s brother. He is key to Riordan, who advocates “open access” legislation that would require cable television franchise holders to open their cable lines to Internet service providers. It is a hot issue; a decision in the city’s favor from the FCC could help Riordan.

STEVE BENNETT

Wouldn’t it be nice if, in the 21st century, earthmovers showed some discretion, cities grew more livable and the people spoke louder than campaign bankrolls? *

STEVE BENNETT: As co-founder of Ventura County’s successful Save Open space and Agricultural Resources (SOAR) initiative, which until 2020 requires voter approval before farmland or open space can be rezoned, this 48-year-old is showing sprawl-busters across the country how it’s done.

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“One of my earliest memories is thinking, ‘How are we going to deal with all these neighborhood kids and all this activity?’ I did a lot of organizing: ‘How do we change this game so the 10 people who just showed up can play, too?...’ ”

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“I’ve always passionately believed that the average citizen felt one way, but development money was taking the city another way, and if we ever got organized, we could change that.”

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Grew up in an Indianapolis neighborhood full of big families. Senior class president of his Catholic high school. Majored in economics at Brown University, where he captained the football team and avoided campus protests. Earned a master’s in education at Butler University. Moved to California in 1977. Bennett is assistant principal and an economics teacher at Nordhoff High School in Ojai. He and his wife, also a teacher, live in Ventura.

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Frustration over farmland development in Ventura County ignited Bennett’s political fire: “By ’88 I was going, ‘This place is becoming another Los Angeles.’ *

Working as precinct coordinatoR for then-state Sen. GARY K. HART (D-Santa Barbara) in 1988, Bennett saw the machinations of the local political network. A year later, he and his wife went to a planning meeting for an anti-sprawl initiative. She pointed to a city council election six weeks away and said they ought to try to get some people elected. As Bennett recalls, “Everybody said, ‘Good idea. Why don’t you do it?’ . . . . We were just one piece of why our three candidates won. But we were the part that had the potential to grow into something else.”

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FYI: Bennett built a computer database of potential supporters before it was standard practice.

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Trail Mix

Bennett turned to Kevin Sweeney, the former press secretary to the other Gary Hart (the senator from Colorado whose presidential campaign was sunk by his own Clintonian libido) to help cull precinct voter lists. The public affairs director for Ventura-based Patagonia Inc., an environmentally conscious maker of outdoor gear, Sweeney also directed Bennett to Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard, who sank $15,000 in the council race. Sweeney eventually returned to Washington as aide to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.

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In the long term, slow-growthers know they must find creative ways to accommodate more people within the existing urban area, as Los Angeles is now attempting through downtown redevelopment.

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But this fall, three cities in the eastern part of the Bay Area rejected measures that would have subjected practically every new housing development to a vote. *

In 1998, SOAR took the power to approve or reject development from elected officials and shifted it to the electorate. In November, Agoura Hills approved an even stricter ordinance, requiring the support of two-thirds of the voters to rezone open space. *

The Strategy

Run for office! Bennett served on the Ventura City Council from 1993 to ’97 and currently is running for the Ventura County Board of Supervisors. His biggest challenge: overcoming people’s “perception that urban sprawl is inevitable.”

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The usual suspects lined up to shoot down SOAR. Besides the Building Industry Assn. of Southern California, the opposition included the county Farm Bureau and the Economic Development Corp.

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SOAR relied on stalwart environmental lobbies, from the Audubon Society to the Surfrider Foundation, as well as such mainstream groups as the League of Women Voters, to get out the vote on slow growth. Up-and-comers in the sprawling grass-roots brigade include Linda Parks of the Thousand Oaks City Council; Diane Bentz and Kevin Conville of Simi Valley; Ventura Councilman Brian Brennan, and SOAR coordinator Lisa Burton. Bennett also points to Michael Shapiro of Ojai; Joy Kobayashi, political action chair of the Sierra Club Sespe Group; Kate and Bill Faulkner, both national park rangers, and Paul MAGIe, administrator of the California Conservation Corps office in Camarillo.

CAPRICE YOUNG

Wouldn’t it be nice if, in the 21st century, our classrooms weren’t packed tighter than Tokyo subways and students received an education that wasn’t a laughingstock?

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CAPRICE YOUNG: As a member of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s board of education, this 34-year-old is charged with building middle-class support for the massive, and massively dysfunctional, school district. Finding nontoxic sites for new schools is a top priority.

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At age 7, Young licked envelopes for George McGovern. While editor of the Sepulveda Junior High paper, she marched alone into her local city council office and demanded a new stoplight for a dangerous corner. Her journalism teacher, Joanne Banarer, recalls: “She wasn’t intimidated. She said, ‘This is wrong. We’ve had too many accidents there.”’

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“[Coro] is all about integration.... recognizing that government is not just about politics, it’s about all sectors of society.” ’I have a tendency to say, ‘I’m going there’--wham--and not be too concerned with process. I think we’re in real trouble as a democracy if we can’t speed up the decision-making process. [But] how to have a process that’s speedy and inclusive? Boy, that’s hard.”

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Sixth-generation Los Angeles resident. Graduated from Yale and received a master’s in public administration from USC. Worked at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and at City Hall, where she oversaw the building of computer networks. Now works three days a week managing an IBM team that produces new online businesses. She and her husband, Mark Dierking, live in North Hollywood with their two young daughters, who sometimes tag along to board meetings.

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The suburbs are out, as are private schools for Young’s kids, and not just because she’s a product of the public schools. Says Young: “If you have three kids in private school, that’s $30,000 after taxes--that’s ouch, way ouch.”

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Volunteers at Hollygrove, a home in Hollywood for neglected and abused children. Before that, she was a grants panelist for the Unitarian Universalist Fund for a Just Society. Young says that seeing what a grant of even $5,000 can accomplish “makes me value every penny in the school district.”

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Young wrote the state Democratic Party’s platform plank on children. Husband Mark Dierking is an ex-president of the California Young Democrats. Before becoming an aide to City Councilman Alex Padilla, he worked for state Sen. Richard Alarcon. Dierking’s Sacramento cohorts include Tal Finney, Gov. Gray Davis’ chief policy advisor. *

The Coro Connection

Young really got to know L.A. via a fellowship with Coro, an organization that preps potential leaders to move and shake in the public affairs arena. Ex-Coros make up Young’s network of informal advisors: Robin Kramer, formerly of Mayor Richard Riordan’s staff and now with the California Community Foundation; Richard Lichtenstein, a powerful City Hall lobbyist on development issues; City Councilman Alex Padilla, and on and on. “We’re kind of everywhere,” Young says.

Last fall, an old boss, Mayor Riordan, rings up Young: “Who would make a good school board member?” Her answer: “Me.” He helped her campaign raise more than $600,000. Now two of her chief aides are ex-Riordan aides.

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The Strategy

Think big: Make the schools full-service centers open around the clock, offering swim lessons, foreign languages, computers. “School is supposed to prepare our kids for society and our solution is to lock them up in buildings for 12 years. The world in the next millennium will no longer be siloed.” To meet 21st century demands, Young says, “We need to have really good relationships with the business community. They’re our end-users. They’re the ones who are going to define what is success for our kids.”

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Young’s defeat of Jeff Horton in last spring’s election left some old-school liberals seething, most notably Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, who backed Horton and who employs his partner, Larry Pickens, on her staff. Young’s vote to dump Zacarias stoked the ire of Gloria Molina, Richard Polanco, Antonia Hernandez and other Latino activists.

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Young and her reform-minded colleagues on the school board set in motion events that this fall drove out Supt. Ruben Zacarias. Many Latino leaders are enraged by the power shift. Now the board must choose a leader with the vision and skills to restore faith in the district.”I don’t bring to the table a lifetime of activism in progressive politics. . . . I haven’t even begun to develop the relationships that I [need] to bring together everyone who has to be involved in our decisions.”

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It’ll take at least eight years on the board to make a difference, Young figures. Then, who knows? “The biggest influence on education is the state. The governor is really the superintendent of schools.” Does she plan to run for governor? “That’s not on my radar screen right now,” she says. “But I do have to be able to call him up from time to time.”

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FYI: Young sometimes works on her laptop at CyberJava in Hollywood. For staff meetings, it’s Eagles Cafe & Newsstand in North Hollywood.