Race for Eastside Seat Boils Down to Difference in Candidates’ Styles

Los Angeles City Council candidates Victor Griego and Nick Pacheco agree on many things they think would improve the 14th District, a diverse community that stretches from the hilly streets of Eagle Rock to the barrios of Boyle Heights.

The two Democrats both want to create more after-school programs and jobs to keep young people out of gangs. They both say they will push for new Dash shuttle bus lines and try to revive the stalled Red Line subway to the Eastside. They both support neighborhood councils and want to clean up contaminated industrial sites.

In fact, as the race to replace veteran Councilman Richard Alatorre heads into its final lap, the difference between two contenders who share similar political leanings and policy stances mostly has come down to one thing: style.

A longtime community organizer and consultant who got his start working with farm labor activist Cesar Chavez, Griego is a political veteran who says he would use the City Council seat to involve residents in their neighborhoods. He leads his rival in political endorsements and powerful union support.

Pacheco is an ambitious deputy district attorney and elected City Charter reform commissioner who wants to create public-private partnerships to deal with many of the district’s urban problems. He has a strong base in Boyle Heights, where he grew up, and is supported by a coalition of local mothers who have organized on his behalf.

The two candidates have little more than a week left to get their message out in a district where more than 60% of the voters cast their ballots for one of the other 11 candidates in the April primary. Although Pacheco came in first by 536 votes, there is no clear front-runner, and both men are scrambling to reach undecided voters.

A Promise to Get Things Done

Victor Griego walked door to door in Highland Park on a warm Saturday afternoon, trudging up hills and steep staircases with his message. At one house, a woman complained about graffiti scrawled on a wall next to her home.

“Call my number and we’ll take care of it,” he told her.

“Wonderful!” she said. “That’s what we need, someone who will actually do something.”

That’s Griego’s election promise, as basic as they come: If elected, he’ll get things done. As he walked through the neighborhood, he pointed to a sidewalk, broken and raised by a tree root, and said he will push to use federal funds for sidewalk improvements. He nodded to a house with peeling paint and said he wants the city to do better outreach and educate people about low-cost home loans.

“It’s easy to say we have programs for this, programs for that,” he said. “What good is it if nobody knows about it?”

During the primary, Griego set up a toll-free number for residents to call with concerns, and he vows to keep it if he’s elected. He promises to put the majority of his staff out in the field and set up a community convention in August to organize residents around different issues.

He also put together six community cleanups during the primary, efforts that critics labeled as publicity stunts. But Griego insists they reflect his philosophy.

“Government is supposed to provide services, and leaders are supposed to provide hope,” he said.

Griego, 43, says his passion for connecting citizens with their government stems from 25 years of community involvement--fighting for farm workers, running campaigns for the United Neighborhoods Organization and heading voter registration drives.

The oldest of seven children in a Boyle Heights family, Griego got his start in politics as a state youth commissioner while at Whittier College. He was an intern for Mayor Tom Bradley and worked on the newly formed Hispanic Caucus in Washington, D.C., with then-Rep. Ed Roybal.

But it was after he graduated from college and began helping striking farm workers led by Cesar Chavez that he found his calling, he said.

“I got hooked on public service,” he said. “I saw tremendously bright, smart people give their lives . . . for those who weren’t empowered.”

Back in Los Angeles, he worked as a field deputy for then-Assemblyman Alatorre, launching a career of political involvement and lobbying that has made him a well-connected insider.

He has helped many powerful Los Angeles players get elected, including union leader Maria Elena Durazo, school board member Vicki Castro and Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti. He boasts that he has worked on every Democratic campaign for governor and president since 1976. In 1990, he started a business called Diversified Strategies for Organizing, a public affairs and political consulting firm that has played a role in projects ranging from the Staples Center to the new Home Depot on the old Lawry’s site in Cypress Park.

Griego’s connections have garnered him a host of endorsements from political leaders, including Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, state Senate Majority Leader Richard Polanco--both Los Angeles Democrats--and county Supervisor Gloria Molina. Eight of the candidates who ran against Griego in the primary have endorsed him, many citing his experience.

Griego likes to say people come to him to get things done. In fact, Pacheco and several other candidates asked him for advice about their campaigns before he decided to run.

But in December, when he surveyed the crowded field of 14th District hopefuls, Griego says he decided he had to throw his hat in.

“I didn’t feel like after 25 years I was going to let one of these folks have it, because I didn’t think they were prepared,” he said. “I didn’t think the community would get the representation it deserves.”

Griego, who with his wife and two children has lived in South Pasadena for four years, has acknowledged that he moved to his brother’s home in Highland Park to run for the council seat--something many have criticized. He insists that he has lived and been active in the community for years and that his family is looking for a house to buy in the district.

On one recent afternoon, Griego stood in front of the old Sears tower on Soto Street, a landmark in the community. He used to buy clothes there as a kid when the large building housed the company’s catalog center. Much of it is vacant now.

The facility and the empty land around it represent one of the district’s toughest challenges, Griego said--and one of his top priorities.

“This is the perfect example of what the city needs to do: reinvest in our old buildings that were the core of our economy,” he said.

Griego said he will pull together investors to come up with a new project for the unused space and push the federal Environmental Protection Agency to clean up the dozens of contaminated acres in the industrial area.

Creating alternatives for youths and better transportation are his other two top priorities, he said.

But his biggest goal is to inspire public involvement, and he said he is not discouraged by the frustration voiced in a district that has been buffeted by scandals involving Alatorre, who tested positive for cocaine use and faces federal investigations into his finances.

“There’s nothing wrong with cynicism,” Griego said. “It shows that people care. What you’ve got to do is turn that anger into hope. . . . We’ve got to get people engaged.”

People Want ‘a Safe Place to Live’

Nick Pacheco stood at the edge of a sloping green field nestled in the hills of El Sereno, observing the park where he used to play football as a kid. The sound of laughter and shouts floated across the baseball diamond, where about a dozen children practiced ball in the late afternoon sun.

But down the road, ominous graffiti marred the peaceful scene. “WELCOME TO THE KINGDOM OF DOOM,” read the words scrawled on a curb. When dusk falls, residents say, this park is taken over by gang members from the nearby housing project. They shoot out the lights shining down on the fields. Fearful, parents of the young baseball players keep them inside.

For Pacheco, Rose Hill Park symbolizes one of the toughest challenges facing the 14th District: giving youths a place to turn besides gangs.

“What people want for their community is a safe place to live,” said Pacheco, who has been a criminal prosecutor for four years. “That’s key to everything.”

Born and raised in Boyle Heights, Pacheco is positioning himself as a local candidate who will make safety his top priority if elected. He admits he has no new philosophy about how to stem the crime and gang activity that dogs much of the district, but says he wants to give more resources to efforts already in place. He advocates creating more after-school programs, increasing police patrols and setting up a multi-agency task force to target the most violent offenders.

Most of all, when Pacheco talks about making the community safer, he speaks nostalgically of his childhood.

“I want to bring the community back to the level of pride we had when I was a kid, when I could walk from my house to the Sears on Soto without worrying about getting jumped,” said Pacheco, 35.

Pacheco grew up in a small pink house behind Hollenbeck Junior High School, the middle child in a family of five. His immigrant parents, a steelworker and seamstress, scrimped to send him to Catholic school, where he excelled in sports. “I was your typical quarterback/point guard/pitcher,” he said.

As a student at UC Berkeley, Pacheco joined MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan) and was elected executive vice president of the student body. He had his first taste of campaigning and liked it.

Back in Los Angeles, Pacheco worked with the Madres del Este de Los Angeles to fight the proposed construction of a prison in the community. He helped raise money for homeless shelter programs run by Dolores Mission, the poorest Catholic parish in the archdiocese of Los Angeles. And he worked on political campaigns for now-Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles), Supervisor Molina and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Kathleen Brown. Two years ago, he won a seat on the city’s elected charter reform commission.

Pacheco thought about running for the City Council in 1991, then concluded he wasn’t ready. This year, he decided, was the right time. Alatorre has neglected the community in recent years, Pacheco says, and he vows to change that.

“The need in the community now more than ever is to back away from the traditional machine politics and to get someone out there who will be independent,” Pacheco said. “The perception of the past 14 years is that it wasn’t about the community--it was about what developments are going to benefit which contractors.”

Much of his philosophy about the role of local government--getting corporations to help sponsor public programs--echoes that of Mayor Richard Riordan, who has endorsed him. He has also received backing from Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Los Angeles) and Becerra.

When asked about his favorite place in the district, Pacheco points to the Puente Learning Center, a nonprofit center in Boyle Heights that provides job training, tutoring, English classes and other services. The center receives its funding from an assortment of donations and grants.

“This is the type of program we need to have all over the district,” he said. “It’s really not about the government handing out stuff. As we head into the next phase of Latino leadership, it’s not about the old ways. . . . ‘I need this, I need that.’ We need a partnership with the community.”

Pacheco, whose license plate reads ELA2ESQ (East LA to esquire), has been embraced by what he calls the “mothers network,” residents who see him as a local success story. He has emphasized his local roots during the campaign, often referring to his opponent as a carpetbagger.

He turned his childhood home, which he now rents from his parents, into his campaign headquarters. (Pacheco’s 12-year-old daughter, born during a college relationship, lives in San Bernardino County with her mother and stepfather.) In the garage, 10 phones have been set up on folding tables, where volunteers, mostly students, sit in the evenings and call voters. Cars slow down as they pass him on the street, and drivers yell hello or ask for a lawn sign.

At Rose Hill Park on a recent day, Pacheco was greeted warmly by a few men leaning against the fence watching the baseball game. At their urging, he took a turn at third base, the position he played as a kid. He chatted with a supporter who noted that Pacheco’s brother is his doctor.

The men tell him the park needs new lights, the holes in the field filled and a fence in the outfield. Pacheco suggests that many of the improvements could be funded by a corporate sponsor.

“This is a place we should be reinforcing,” he said, looking at the children racing across the green field. “Here, we have an opportunity to do something.”