Secession, Gender Take Center Stage in Race

Gender moved to center stage Monday in the race for a City Council seat in the Valley as Corinne Sanchez boasted of support from “very powerful women” and lambasted her main opponent as the product of the political old boys’ network.

Supporters said Sanchez, as a woman, would bring a fresh insight to the Los Angeles City Council, where two-thirds of the seats are held by men.

At a rally in the district in which 53% of registered voters are women, Sanchez was supported by influential backers such as Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina, Councilwomen Laura Chick and Cindy Miscikowski and United Farm Workers co-founder Delores Huerta, whose union has endorsed Sanchez.

Speakers called Sanchez uniquely qualified, having run a large nonprofit health agency, El Proyecto del Barrio, in the northeast Valley district for more than two decades.

“It’s very important to have a woman’s voice at the City Council, another woman’s voice,” Huerta said. “Corinne is just the person that can bring that different type of energy, that different type of insight, to the City Council.”

The other front-runner in the race, Alex Padilla, discounted the rally.

“It’s not a gender issue,” Padilla said. “It’s a leadership issue.”

That opinion did not impress Barbara Perkins, another candidate.

“If Alex is saying that gender doesn’t count, Alex is in for a rude awakening,” said Perkins, who has the backing of County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and other prominent women.

“Gender is very important,” Perkins said. “Gender does count if you don’t have a balance on a governing body. You are missing out on a critical voice.”

Sanchez is one of six candidates seeking the 7th District seat. Others are legislative aide Padilla; Perkins, a training consultant; youth services director Tony Lopez; nonprofit housing agency manager Ollie McCaulley, and civil engineer Raul Godinez II.

Sanchez said her candidacy has the support of “very powerful women” who she said “have pioneered and fought the fight that has now afforded me the opportunity to run.”

“As we know as women and minorities, I’m up against a machine,” Sanchez said of Padilla. “But I’m with the community and the community is behind me.”

The lively event saw some of the region’s top women politicians praise Sanchez.

Molina said that in her experience, many women lawmakers look beyond traditional solutions and surface issues to solve problems. She cited crime, in which the traditional response of government is to get tough and put people in jail.

“I have found that in working with women on the issue of crime, we sort of want to deal with it as a larger issue of what’s going on in the community,” Molina said. “Sometimes it’s dilapidated communities, schools that don’t work, resources that aren’t there, that can lead to a huge element of crime.”

Chick cited the “remarkable” growth of Sanchez’s health agency, from a $500,000 budget to a $10-million budget, at a time when many other nonprofits are cutting back.

Chick has two years left in her term, and she noted that Sanchez’s agency is about to open a new clinic in her West Valley district.

“I want this woman at my side for my last two years,” Chick said. “Corinne Sanchez, her entire adult life, has devoted herself fully and personally to trying in many ways to make this district, this city, a better place in which to live and work.”

Miscikowski said Sanchez’s success at building El Proyecto qualifies her for office.

“What she has done successfully here I think is going to work very well on the City Council,” Miscikowski said. “She has had to fight for funds. She has had to build community support.”