Politics Powers ‘Retired’ Activist Lacayo

In the office of his Thousand Oaks home, longtime labor activist and Democratic Party leader Hank Lacayo displays his memories like museum pieces.

The walls are packed with old photos of him and the party faithful, candid shots with Presidents Clinton and Carter, Govs. Pat Brown and Jerry Brown and Gray Davis.

There he is, as a high-ranking leader of the United Auto Workers, marching with Cesar Chavez, interviewing Ralph Nader, draping an arm around Jesse Jackson.

The sea of photos is interrupted only by a greater number of awards and commendations--collected in such quantity during 40 years of union and political activity that they spill off the walls, over his desk and pool in knee-high piles on the floor.

But there is one honor that rises above the rest in this tribute to power and politics, a handmade certificate thanking him and his wife, Leah, for their work on behalf of the Newbury Park High School band boosters.

“This is the one I’m really proud of,” says Lacayo, 68, who as chairman of Ventura County’s Democratic Party will lead local delegates next week to Los Angeles to take part in the Democratic National Convention.

“It didn’t have anything to do with politics,” he says. “It’s about real life.”

For so many years that it’s a wonder Lacayo can keep them straight anymore, life and politics have been one and the same.

That was a time when he played on a larger stage, first as president of what was the largest union local west of the Mississippi, then as administrative assistant to three UAW presidents, where he headed the union’s national political and legislative activities.

He was an advisor to the U.S. Department of Labor under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, served in 1976-77 on Jimmy Carter’s presidential transition team, and became Bill Clinton’s California deputy campaign director during his 1992 presidential run.

His was a politics practiced in smoke-filled rooms, an era when the party bosses had nicknames like “Big Daddy”--a reference to Lacayo’s old friend Jesse Unruh, regarded as the most powerful Assembly speaker in California history. It was a time when unions were at the top of their game in mobilizing members and money to shape the social and political fabric of the state and the nation.

With his mix of tough-talking swagger and compassion, his allegiance to bettering the lives of Latinos and blue-collar workers, Lacayo exercised influence far and wide over that political landscape. A behind-the-scenes guru, he dispensed advice, traded favors and helped launch the careers of mayors and governors, congressmen and presidents.

By his own admission, he has slowed down since moving to Ventura County in 1985, due in part to a heart attack about that time that put him under doctor’s orders to ease up. But those who know him best say he isn’t the kind to stay down for long.

“He was a guy who could meet privately with Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson, the Kennedys--any of the big Democrats, he was there and he had their ear,” said former U.S. Rep. Esteban Torres, a longtime friend and union colleague who retired in 1998 as the senior Latino in Congress.

“I don’t believe it whenever anyone says he’s slowing down,” Torres said. “He’s like an old fire horse. He hears that bell and he just rears up and goes.”

Doesn’t Look Much Like Retirement

Lacayo is supposedly retired now.

But all you have to do is visit his home to know that isn’t so. The phone rings every five minutes--Democratic candidates wanting advice, or some old friend hoping he will referee a labor dispute. The business cards on his office desk reveal only a handful of his regular activities: private political consulting, first vice president of the Congress of California Seniors, western states field director for the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement.

His latest endeavor, president of the board of the Latino advocacy group El Concilio del Condado de Ventura, consumes the biggest chunk of his time these days.

His wife jokes that he can’t go to any club meeting without coming back as the new chairman or director or president.

In fact, as a warmup to the Democratic National Convention, he is headed to Chicago this week for the annual convention of the Latin American labor council, a nationwide organization he helped launch nearly three decades ago to push Latino trade unionists toward political office.

He served as the group’s national president from 1978-86, one of only five leaders it has had. He is the only one ever to be named president for life.

“His ability and influence stretched a long way,” says South Gate City Councilman Henry C. Gonzalez, a former union colleague and the labor council’s current national president.

“It’s like that old saying: When Hank spoke, people would listen,” Gonzalez continued. “But whatever he preached, he followed up with hard work.”

Even back in Lacayo’s early union days, Hernandez recalled, photos of dignitaries and political heavyweights stretched wall-to-wall in his UAW office in Los Angeles. The office also always had a smattering of more personal symbols--a serape, a sombrero, a clutch of chili peppers--to remind Lacayo and others where he came from.

Those roots extend back to East Los Angeles, where he was born the oldest son of a Mexican seamstress and Nicaraguan hat maker.

Although raised in Chihuahua, Mexico, for a time, the family eventually settled in South Los Angeles. There, a young Lacayo ran head-on into the kind of racism and discrimination--covenants to prevent Latinos from buying houses in certain areas of the city, ridicule because of his accented English--that would later fuel his desire as a union leader to even the playing field for working people.

After graduating from Fremont High School in 1949 and serving a short stint in the Air Force, he was hired as a precision tool grinder at North American Aviation in El Segundo and joined UAW Local 887.

Lacayo was one of the few Latinos working in the aerospace plant. His job skills--he collected favors by making personal tools for many of the employees--made him a shoo-in come election time as he climbed the union ranks from shop steward to committee man to editor of the union newspaper.

“It was the most powerful machine in the whole building,” Lacayo recalls with a snort. “My opponents used to say, ‘We can get the votes to beat Lacayo, but we can’t beat that damn tool machine he runs.’ ”

Lacayo won the union’s top job in 1962, and under his leadership the local grew from 24,000 members to more than 32,000 when he left a decade later to take a job as political director for the UAW’s western region.

It was then his political activity shifted into high gear.

He was a key member of Tom Bradley’s successful 1973 campaign for mayor of Los Angeles.

A year later, he helped an up-and-coming Gray Davis, the controller in Bradley’s campaign, make his first bid for statewide office. That run for state treasurer was unsuccessful, but Lacayo said he helped plug Davis into Jerry Brown’s successful 1974 race for the governorship of California, out of which Davis was appointed the governor’s chief of staff.

“My local was a pit stop for every major and minor politician coming into Los Angeles,” says Lacayo, who is fond of recounting how then-Gov. Ronald Reagan would hold press conferences at LAX and point to his UAW office as he railed against the evils of big labor.

“We’d be able to turn out hundreds of supporters for any of the Democratic candidates, and the more we did, the more important we became,” he says. “Pretty soon I didn’t have to go to Sacramento to lobby. I’d just pick up the phone and talk to the man.”

His reach intensified in 1974 when he moved to the UAW’s national headquarters in Detroit to become administrative assistant to the president and national director of the union’s political and legislative arm.

When he finally “retired” in 1986--after launching a Latino voter registration project throughout the Southeast and Northwest and helping expand the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement into a nationwide powerhouse--Lacayo had collected a slew of awards, had plenty of photos to fill the walls of his Thousand Oaks home and even had two buildings named after him, one in Van Nuys and the other in Detroit.

“Not bad,” he says, “for a kid from East L.A.”

Working to Reverse Democratic Losses

The kid isn’t done yet.

Elected in 1998 to lead Ventura County’s Democrats, Lacayo says he is scrambling to end a 40-year slide in local party registration and chip away at the Republicans’ widening lead in that area.

He said he is also trying to find ways to prevent local Democrats from bolting from the party to become independents, a problem that has plagued both major parties.

So while the upcoming Democratic National Convention may lack the drama of past conventions--Lacayo was hanging out with presidential nominee Hubert H. Humphrey at the 1968 Democratic National Convention when Vietnam War protesters clashed with Chicago police--he calls the event an important opportunity to re-energize the party faithful.

“I think the patient was alive but barely breathing a few years ago, but I think we have brought some life back into it,” Lacayo says of the county party. “I think I’ve helped build some confidence, but we are just scratching the surface of what we can do. Our biggest task is to bring in younger Democrats and to continue to build on our tradition of being the party of diversity.”

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) said he believes that under Lacayo’s leadership the local party will be able to do exactly that.

“Hank is a real grass-roots guy; it’s not like he’s been to the mountaintop and now he’s not willing to work at it anymore,” said Sherman, who is scheduled to attend a fund-raising barbecue today at Lacayo’s home. “He’s the first one to say we’re going to walk precincts, we’re going to go door-to-door, and I think the results in November are going to reflect his hard work.”

Even those on the opposite end of the political spectrum have good things to say about Lacayo’s ability to get things done.

“If there’s any way to help, he’s right there ready to make it happen,” said Ventura rancher and Republican stalwart Carolyn Leavens, who works with Lacayo on an advisory group guiding creation of Ventura County’s first public four-year university.

Her initial introduction to him, however, came a few years ago when they sat on a commission to shield the county’s military bases from closure. Lacayo’s contacts in Sacramento and Washington proved invaluable to the lobbying group.

“Who cares what your political affiliation is? What you do is become a member of the community and give what you’re able to give,” Leavens said. “And Hank is always ready to give 100%.”

Thinking About Slowing Down

Lacayo is talking these days about retiring. Again.

But this time, he might mean it. Health problems, highlighted last year by a five-day hospital stay to find the source of internal bleeding, have made him think more seriously than ever about slowing down and spending more time with family and friends.

In the hallways next to the office at his Thousand Oaks home, a collection of fishing poles stands at the ready.

He says he is thinking of spending more time trying his luck at the fishing holes in the eastern Sierra.

And of spending more time on activities outside the political arena, like he did back in 1986 when the father of four threw himself into the Newbury Park High School band boosters, running bingo games and raising money like never before. As club president, he helped raise enough money to install a new marquee at the entrance to the high school.

Lacayo served as coordinator for the project. Needless to say, the labor was donated.

“You know, it’s hard to break away; I always feel I’m going to let somebody down,” he said. “Maybe the big challenges I’ll have now will seem like small potatoes compared to what I’ve done in the past. But I just feel like I’ve got more to do.”

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