Ouster Mirrors a City’s Conflicts

Last week’s successful recall of a high-profile Latino school trustee was both a signal that Santa Ana’s City Hall and business interests remain powerful and an illustration that even in a heavily Spanish-speaking city, Latino voters do not follow a single political agenda.

Nativo V. Lopez, an immigrants’ rights activist, was ousted Tuesday in a lopsided election that stripped him of a school board seat he had used as a bully pulpit for six years.

Precincts across Santa Ana, even neighborhoods perceived to be Lopez strongholds, voted heavily in favor of removing him and replacing him with a well-connected political veteran.

Observers, however, say the meaning behind the election returns runs deeper than a citywide repudiation of a confrontational school board member.

Though 76% of Santa Ana’s population is Latino -- and the city has more Spanish speakers for its size than any other in the nation -- those residents typically account for less than half the voters. And that vote is often divided among an array of interests, including sometimes conflicting visions for Santa Ana.

The recall began as a referendum on bilingual education in a district where 65% of the students speak mostly Spanish. But the movement seemingly collected issues as it rolled forward, taking residents back to long-running debates between Lopez and the city’s establishment-minded mayor, Miguel A. Pulido, between the district and City Hall, and between the needs of low-paid immigrants and officials’ desires to boost the city’s image.

Rob Richardson, the white former city councilman who will replace Lopez, said the election turned on leadership and direction for the city.

“I was not alone in being deeply disturbed by what was happening in our district,” Richardson said. “Whether Hispanic or Vietnamese, black or Anglo, people knew [the school district] was broken and they wanted it to be fixed.”

Richardson was backed by City Hall and Chamber of Commerce leaders. Though Lopez has been effective in reaching out to immigrants, those who watch regional Latino politics said he faced an uphill battle once he was targeted by the city’s establishment.

Lopez is a “lightning rod for anyone who wants to fight the powers that be,” said Frank Quevedo, a longtime Orange County activist and Southern California Edison vice president.

“The powers that be do not want someone firing up immigrants, most of whom are not naturalized.”

Quevedo said Lopez “is not Gandhi or Cesar Chavez. But he’s important because there are few people who [care] about the most disenfranchised in Santa Ana.

“This was a fight to keep the old guard in power.”

The recall was launched last March by Latino parents who complained that Lopez was encouraging them to get waivers to Proposition 227, which sought to end bilingual education. Some said they were unable to find a public school to teach their children in English.

Lopez’s supporters denied the assertion, noting that only 10% of the district’s 61,000 students had sought waivers. Meanwhile, Ron Unz -- a Northern California businessman and Proposition 227’s chief promoter -- donated $150,000 to the recall campaign.

Other opponents questioned the board’s pace in trying to relieve crowding. Why, they asked, had the district not been able to build a single school since voters approved a $145-million school construction bond in 1999? Lopez countered that the city threw up barriers to acquiring appropriate school sites.

Then, two days before the election, district Supt. Al Mijares announced that Lopez and board ally John Palacio had “coerced and threatened” staffers, forcing them to choose certain contractors to work on bond-funded projects.

Feelings were strongest in the city’s wealthiest enclaves, where Lopez and his backers planned a school on land the city wanted for a housing subdivision. Voter turnout in those north Santa Ana neighborhoods -- and Lopez opposition -- was higher than anywhere else in the city.

“I feel good that we stood up to them,” Lopez said after the election. “But I’m still standing. They never knocked me down.”

UC Irvine professor Caesar Sereseres said Lopez’s views might have intimidated those residents who wonder: “If it really becomes a Latino town, what happens to business? What happens to property values? People are concerned and they try to find accommodating Latinos who don’t threaten that system.”

City Councilman Jose Solorio, who backed the recall, said there is room for diversity, even within the Latino community.

“I’m opposed to dwelling on negatives,” he said. “The politics of exclusion are not going to be tolerated in this city.”

Lopez, director of the immigrants’ rights organization Hermandad Mexicana Nacional of Santa Ana, has been a city activist for years, most recently protesting immigration officers in the Anaheim City Jail and advocating driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants.

He ran successfully for the school board in 1996, the same year Loretta Sanchez defeated conservative incumbent Robert K. Dornan for the 46th District congressional seat in central Orange County, seemingly a watershed moment in Latino political participation.

But Latinos have widely varying views.

“It’s fallacious to think Latinos are liberal on 100% of the issues,” said Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, based in Claremont.

Arturo Lomeli, a Mexican-born dentist who came to Santa Ana in the 1960s and is president of the Downtown Business Assn., is among those who voted against Lopez.

“You don’t come to the United States and say, ‘I’d like to live in a city that looks like Mexico.’ ... You want nice things. You don’t get them with a Nativo Lopez,” said Lomeli, whose organization has been assailed by other merchants who fear that the group and the city want to eliminate those merchants who cater to immigrants.

Both the city and chamber leaders have championed creation of an Artists Village and cultural district for the downtown, and frequently talk of “diversifying” the downtown -- reducing the number of immigrant-oriented stores.

These practices, Sereseres and others say, reflect the reality that Santa Ana’s politicians must get support from the city’s white minority, who tend to vote in larger numbers than Latinos.

Elected officials, particularly those on the City Council, “still have to depend on the non-Latino vote to get elected,” Sereseres said.

“They have to worry about those who vote or those who have money.”

After the 2000 election, a study of those who voted in Santa Ana showed that 40% were Latino. With more Latino voters, Lopez -- whose organization has worked to help immigrants gain citizenship and registered voters -- might have fared better.

Now, however, at least three of the five school board members are allied with the City Council. To many residents, that means smoother interaction between two government bodies that have traditionally fought.

Neighborhood leaders say that with Lopez gone, the city’s future is brighter for everyone.

Paul Giles, president of the French Park Neighborhood Assn., said he was heartened by the election’s outcome. In an e-mail to a group offering to recruit volunteers to repair schools, Giles wrote: “I’ll be at the school board meeting next Tuesday evening; who’ll be there with me?”

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Times staff writers Claire Luna and Daniel Yi contributed to this report.