City Councilman, 26, Not as Young as Wyman Was

Even at 26, Alex Padilla isn’t even close to being the youngest person elected to the Los Angeles City Council.

That record is still held by Rosalind Wyman, who was elected in 1953 when she was just 22 and right out of college.

“He’s an old-timer at 26,” joked Wyman, a Bel-Air resident who is now a member of the Democratic National Committee and was on the committee that picked Los Angeles to host the party’s 2000 convention.

Wyman’s advice to Padilla: Work hard, be open to compromise and be patient when confronted with resistance from much older elected officials and bureaucrats.

“I had a lot of problems,” Wyman recalled. “Most of the people at City Hall were old enough to be my father or grandfather. You have to prove yourself to them and get along.”

Padilla will face a similar age difference with some council colleagues.

City Council members John Ferraro, 74, and Joel Wachs, 60, have been on the council longer than Padilla has been alive.

Councilman Hal Bernson, 68, refers to himself and the other veterans as “graybeards.”

Padilla said he is not at all intimidated or worried about how his youth will be viewed at City Hall, noting he goes to the office with a clear mandate from voters, 67% of whom picked him Tuesday.

“I know I have the community’s support,” Padilla said Wednesday. “I know it’s going to take some work to adjust, but I’m up to that challenge.”

Wyman was not just young, but also a woman entering what was still a male-dominated world.

“I couldn’t walk in the front door of the Jonathan Club because I was a woman,” Wyman said, referring to the exclusive downtown private club.

Padilla also has the advantage of endorsements from much of the political establishment, including Mayor Richard Riordan and the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

Wyman ran against the establishment candidate, she said.

Like Padilla, Wyman was living at home at the time and won the election largely on a youth campaign. She was president of USC’s chapter of the Young Democrats Club. “On weekends, young Democrats from all over the state would come to Los Angeles to campaign with me,” she recalled.

Eleanor Roosevelt also traveled to Los Angeles to support Wyman.

At City Hall, Wyman said, she faced skepticism when she was first elected from West Los Angeles’ 5th Council District.

“They weren’t sure of me,” she said. “I had just come off a college campus.

“I learned that compromise is very important. If you can get a little bit done the first year, you can build on it in the next year. I thought like a lot of young people. I wanted to get it all the first year.”

She recalls being humbled a few months after taking office when she decided to fight a mayoral appointment to the city Library Commission, a person she characterized as “someone who wanted to burn books.”

“I got one other vote,” Wyman recalled, laughing. The appointment was “overwhelmingly” approved by the council.

“All of the old-timers were laughing at me because I decided to take on this issue,” Wyman said.

She wasn’t discouraged. She was reelected twice.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and the late Kenneth Hahn were also elected to the City Council when they were 26.

Yaroslavsky’s advice: “Don’t forget where you came from and be your own man.”

The former councilman said Padilla should do fine, if he remembers one other thing.

“Regardless of his age, Alex Padilla has the same number of votes on the council as John Ferraro has,” Yaroslavsky said.