Alatorre’s Fall Belies Early Promise, Achievements

On the day in 1985 that he was sworn in as city councilman, Richard Alatorre bore the aspirations of Los Angeles’ emerging Latino majority.

Hundreds cheered him at City Hall, where he took his place as the new representative and the new hope of the city’s Eastside, then the heart of the Latino community.

No Latino had held a council seat for nearly a quarter-century. Although it was clear at the time that Latinos would soon be the city’s largest ethnic group, they had been excluded from political power by gerrymandering of council district lines.

Now, Alatorre, a proven, big-league state legislator with a track record of breaking open doors for Latinos and championing rights for the poor, stood in the marbled council chambers pledging to “make a difference in providing leadership for . . . this great city.”

Many felt he could be the first modern-day Latino mayor of Los Angeles, an exhilarating vision for Mexican Americans whose predecessors helped build the city.

Because so much hope was riding on him, his political and personal downfall has been all the more tragic.

Dogged by scandal and diminished as a political force, he announced Friday that he is not seeking reelection after nearly 30 years in office.

The seeds of Alatorre’s undoing, it now seems clear, were already sown during the time of his triumphant Los Angeles inaugural.

He himself has admitted that he was battling cocaine and alcohol abuse about that time.

And Alatorre had become involved in what turned out to be his first big public scandal--improperly funneling money from his state fund-raising operation to his local race.

Now, he may face criminal charges in one of the biggest political corruption cases in recent city history--a wide-ranging probe being guided by the U.S. attorney.

As Alatorre’s career spirals downward, the great unanswered question is: How did it happen? Especially to someone both friends and foes regard as being so smart?

Even as he grays at 55 and the facial crags become more pronounced, Alatorre has the lordly stride of a teenager who runs the neighborhood--or perhaps of the Eastside jewelry store debt collector he once was. Shoulders back, expensive suit coat flying open, he typically greets others with a quick nod and a “Hey, man.” Once he gets warmed up, profanities tend to tumble freely and frequently.

“Some have said that my style is not appropriate,” he told supporters Friday. “But it is that bare-knuckles, that no-nonsense style, that I have that has helped to solve [problems].”

In council chambers, he is bored by windy speeches of his colleagues. He knows deals aren’t made on the council floor. “As a pragmatist, Richard knows how to count. When I started, his longest speech was: ‘I ask for an aye vote,’ ” said Robin Kramer, his former chief of staff.

But when Alatorre has to tangle at a council meeting, he is a master, engaging in parliamentary moves far beyond the comprehension of some of his less-gifted colleagues.

His personality and brains helped make him a power. And, in many ways, he has used his power to do good.

As a state assemblyman, from 1972 to 1985, Alatorre was an author of the landmark labor law that gave collective bargaining rights to migrant farm workers. And he oversaw the 1982 redistricting that increased the number of Latinos in the Legislature, which cleared the way for the election of a Latino Assembly speaker.

He later did the same with City Council districts.

In Sacramento, where he mastered his political skills, he was one of 120 legislators whose individual ability to deliver for special interests was diluted.

In Los Angeles, he joined a far smaller and more closely scrutinized group of 15 powerful lawmakers. He now held more direct way over an array of taxpayer pork, lucrative public contracts and coveted development rights.

Alatorre was straddling two paths. He remained a passionate advocate for the disenfranchised. But he also became a political patron for a network of business supporters looking for a way into the lucrative world of public contracts, including a cadre of Eastside cronies.

“He continually struggled with that duality: Richard Alatorre the politician and Richard Alatorre the idealistic legislator,” said Michael Gonzalez, a former aide who made the transition to City Hall. “He was in the middle of this new arena where he was representing this community that had not had a voice in nearly 25 years. Yet, his attention was constantly distracted by those wishing to become part of the stable of government contractors. . . . The pressure was tremendous.”

In the end, Alatorre’s cavalier handling of his personal and financial ties to some of the business interests helped cut short his career.

His life began in a tough neighborhood in East Los Angeles, where many boys his age joined some of the state’s oldest street gangs. Thanks to a determined mother and father who placed a premium on studies, young Alatorre hit the books instead of the streets.

His political promise began to show at Garfield High School in the early 1960s. He was elected student body president and joined a vanguard of idealistic young activists committed to changing the political system. It was a time when there was far less cynicism and apathy toward government.

For Alatorre, the flame was lit on a rainy day at East Los Angeles College as he waited several hours to hear a man who would become his political idol, John F. Kennedy.

“Here was a presidential candidate, the first one, that had come to my community and was asking for my support and was asking for the vote of the Chicano community,” Alatorre said Friday. “He represented the hope for me, for my community.”

Several years later, after he earned his degree from Cal State L.A., Alatorre, by then a community organizer, showed up in Long Beach to help students set up a Chicano studies program. He was a charismatic presence. People flocked around him, recalled Fernando Hernandez.

“You could tell he was going places. . . . He just had a magnetism that was unreal,” said Hernandez, now head of educational foundations at Cal State L.A.

Community activism led to a job as a legislative aide and, in 1972, election to the state Assembly. He was 28 and one of its youngest members.

There were a handful of Latino lawmakers. They worked at the fringes and had little clout. Alatorre was different.

He was immediately popular and accepted by some of the Legislature’s political and social leaders, including future Speaker Willie Brown, Mike Roos and Ken Maddy. They ate, drank and partied. They also thrived on political plots.

Alatorre figured out the game and pushed through the law benefiting migrant farm workers. It was an effort inspired a decade earlier when Alatorre first met legendary organizer Cesar Chavez at a South-Central Los Angeles social action session.

Alatorre played a decisive role in helping Brown seize the Assembly speakership in 1980.

From then on, Alatorre operated at the highest levels of the state’s political power curve. He got choice chairmanships and tapped into a rich vein of special interest contributions.

His most far-reaching legacy was redrawing state political districts, which, political experts say, is responsible for newfound Latino power in the Legislature today.

“It was monumental . . . it remobilized Latino politics,” Loyola Marymount University political scientist Fernando Guerra said of the redistricting.

When he arrived at City Hall, Alatorre again tackled political representation for Latinos.

The U.S. Justice Department had sued the city, accusing it of depriving Latinos of their voting rights by dispersing them among several council districts. Alatorre stepped in and persuaded his colleagues to abandon plans to contest the lawsuit.

He oversaw the creation of a second Latino council seat. “His mark and leadership was truly felt and continues to be felt there,” said former aide Kramer.

The councilman also improved his own position. He extended his district across the Los Angeles River into downtown, where he became a key player in lucrative development projects.

But at the same time, he got into trouble with political campaign regulators.

Less than a year after coming on board, Alatorre agreed to pay a record fine of more than $140,000 for improperly financing his City Council campaign with money he raised as a state lawmaker. He said it was an oversight.

In 1988, he was caught again--this time violating state conflict-of-interest laws. He was fined for attempting to steer a $722,000 contract to an Eastside firm, The East Los Angeles Community Union (TELACU), which was headed by a longtime friend. TELACU had earlier flown the councilman to a meeting at Lake Tahoe and paid him a $1,000 speaking fee.

“Richard was more a throwback to the old-time politicians, who got things done in back rooms,” said Fred Woocher, then an attorney for the political watchdog group Common Cause and one of those who helped focus official scrutiny on the councilman’s early violations.

“That’s a system that is more suited to a large legislative body in which compromises are forged and where that is an acceptable process. He grew up in that system.”

Following his divorce from his second wife, Alatorre also began having financial problems, according to his former City Hall secretary, who handled his checkbook in the early 1990s. She painted a picture of a man living beyond his means, maxing out his credit cards and struggling to make ends meet between paychecks.

Alatorre began mysteriously producing wads of $100 bills, she alleged in court papers. Some of the money came after meetings with businessmen, the secretary claimed. Alatorre later said he had saved cash from his days in the Legislature.

His political career appeared to be peaking. He abandoned a race for mayor. And he was being eclipsed by another rising star in Latino politics, Gloria Molina. Now a county supervisor, Molina bested Alatorre’s candidates in the very Assembly and City Council seats he created with his redistricting efforts.

Alatorre turned his sights toward the biggest public works project in the West. He became the first chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which is in charge of Los Angeles’ multibillion-dollar subway and light rail system. His poor and working-class constituents are the most transit-dependent people in the city, but they had no rail lines and Alatorre believed they got the worst bus service.

The MTA also was a magnet for lobbyists and contractors, all big campaign contributors.

Alatorre tapped the contributors to help raise more than $500,000 to benefit a new children’s charity he helped create.

Even though the gala was for a good cause, it nevertheless ended up raising more questions about conflicts of interest.

The charity exclusively hired an event planning firm founded by the councilman’s third wife, Angie, eventually paying it tens of thousands of dollars in fees. After a Times investigation, the councilman was fined $8,000 by state and local watchdog agencies for improperly intervening on behalf of the firm before a city licensing agency. It was the maximum fine allowed under state and local laws.

Federal authorities are looking at Alatorre’s real estate dealings, including whether he purchased his Eagle Rock home with the help of a businessman dealing with the city.

Both Alatorre and the businessman have said they did nothing improper.

Federal authorities are also investigating whether Alatorre improperly accepted a $13,000 roof financed by TELACU, the Eastside business and social agency run by the councilman’s allies.

In the backdrop of Alatorre’s political ups and downs was an issue that would prove perhaps the most damaging: cocaine.

He quietly entered a rehabilitation program for cocaine and alcohol abuse in the late 1980s, according to former aides. The councilman acknowledged that his cocaine use extended into his early years at City Hall.

Witnesses alleged in court documents and told The Times that the councilman repeatedly used the drug with an old friend and businessman from about 1992 to 1995. They said Alatorre, at times disheveled, would show up at the businessman’s Vernon office in the early mornings and on weekends, where he was seen snorting white powder or leaving with white residue on his clothes and nostrils.

Alatorre and the businessman denied using cocaine during that period.

Records and interviews show that Alatorre helped the man win government contracts, sometimes over the concerns and objections of civil servants.

When Alatorre and his wife Angie went to court to fight for custody of her niece, Alatorre admitted under questioning that he was a recovering addict. But when the judge ordered the councilman to take a drug test, he failed it.

That failure was devastating. Looking back on the guardianship hearing, Alatorre’s supporters say he was brought down by his determination to fight for the 10-year-old girl in proceedings that led to the drug test.

During Christmas week last month, almost 13 years to the day after his heralded entrance into City Hall, a trusted council of advisors somberly gathered with the councilman. He confided what he would later tell the rest of the city: He would not run for a final four-year term.

Now, as the councilman serves out his final months, much about his future is uncertain, including what will become of the criminal probe.

To some, he has become a symbol of a bygone political era of laxer ethical standards. Others say he has been eclipsed by a growing and increasingly sophisticated Latino community that no longer has to rely on a handful of elected leaders.

But for Alatorre loyalists, he is likely to be most remembered for giving a voice to those who had none and for opening doors of opportunity for a generation of Latinos who are assuming new political and economic power.

“His history is yet to be written,” said Hernandez, the Cal State L.A. administrator who marveled at the potential of the young man who came to his campus 30 years ago.

“He has a hell of a record. . . . One of the things Richard was able to do was to teach people that you might not get everything. But if you got something, then you move on and make sure you get some more.”