Eastside Bid for Assembly Turns Into Family Affair

The green and white sign above Lucille Roybal Allard’s election headquarters blends right in with the neighboring merchants in the East Los Angeles mini-mall. Like the rest, her sign has more the look of a long-established family business than the usual hurried lettering job of a temporary political campaign.

The tie-in to roots is perhaps fitting. Allard, 45, is the eldest daughter of Rep. Ed Roybal (D-Los Angeles), who has held local and national office since 1949. Allard grew up answering campaign phones and licking stamps as Roybal ran for the Los Angeles City Council and then when he went to Congress in 1962. He has been reelected ever since.

Always in the background in the past, Allard is now seeking to follow her father into the political limelight as she runs for office in the Eastside’s 56th Assembly District seat left vacant in February when former representative Gloria Molina won a seat on the Los Angeles City Council.

The congressman’s daughter’s campaign, conducted with the blessing of her popular, well-connected father and of Molina, would typically be expected to run like clockwork. The outcome of a Roybal running for office on the Eastside should be as predictable “as a Kennedy running for Congress,” one Roybal Allard loyalist said.

Except that: One of the Kennedys lost a congressional race last year; political losses were recorded by children of state Treasurer Jesse Unruh and entertainer Bob Hope, and the son of influential Assemblywoman Maxine Waters lost a local Assembly race last year after he spent about $800,000 trying to win it.

The measuring sticks of money and political influence still place the odds in Allard’s favor in the special election May 12. But nine challengers, including former state Sen. Alex Garcia, point to the failed candidacies in the other families as evidence that “voters reject being told that a leader has already been chosen for them,” Garcia said.

Allard and her supporters deny that they are telling the voters of the largely Latino, working-class area what to do. Rather, she presents herself as the candidate of consensus, the only one with a broad base of support among Latino elected officials. That support was based largely on hopes that the Allard candidacy would act as a salve to heal the wounds suffered in earlier campaigns, most recently Molina’s City Council race.

When Molina left the Assembly to join the City Council, yet another vacancy was created in an area that has been bombarded with a series of elections in the last few years.

Since 1982, voters in various parts of the Eastside have gone to the polls every year in every kind of race, from the usual national and state elections to a council recall and special elections. The many elections, some pitting one Latino Democrat against another, have been divisive and, in some cases, downright mean.

Molina’s victory over school board member Larry Gonzalez in February splintered once again Latino political loyalties and led to both sides spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now, “everybody’s burned out,” one political activist said. So now the big names in Eastside politics--Councilman Richard Alatorre, state Sen. Art Torres, Molina, her recent rival Gonzalez and Roybal--have united behind one candidate, Allard.

Not all believe that the “agreement” is healthy, one Latina activist said. There has been some grumbling behind closed doors as to whether the consensus amounted to what some have called “one-party rule,” she said.

The united front that formed behind Allard’s candidacy was a “peace offering,” Alatorre said a few months ago. “To carry on this insane fight doesn’t make sense.”

“It may be a marriage of convenience,” Roybal conceded in a recent interview. “But that is part of politics. The result I believe is to better serve the people of the area.”

The area of the 56th Assembly District faces a host of inner-city problems. It includes the Civic Center, part of Chinatown, Little Tokyo, Boyle Heights, unincorporated East Los Angeles, and the cities of Commerce, Vernon, Maywood and Bell Gardens. Within the district are housing projects and Skid Row, where concrete serves as the daily mattress for hundreds of the down and out and sick from all over the country.

Farther east, the blue-collar area is home to many longtime and new Latino residents, with a few spots of thriving small commerce--for example, along Whittier Boulevard and Boyle and Brooklyn avenues.

Agreement on Issues

In a district where the problems are so obvious, the candidates are not far apart on the issues. All support education and crime-fighting programs and oppose locating a proposed prison in the district.

The district is 77% Democratic with historically low voter turnouts at the polls. If no one candidate gets a majority vote May 12, a runoff will be held July 7 between the top finishers from each party. But since the area is overwhelmingly Democratic, the Democratic win May 12 is largely considered tantamount to final victory in the runoff.

There are six Democrats in the race. Allard, as the candidate with the most money and heaviest backing, is trying to fight the perception that her father hand-picked her for the job.

Allard, Roybal and Molina all said that Allard did not tell her father that she was running until she had lined up other support.

“A lot of people are under the false impression that the congressman got together with leaders and said, ‘I’ve decided my daughter is running,’ ” Molina said. “That’s not accurate. I selected the congressman’s daughter, as some say, although I don’t like that term. Lucille brought the issue up to me first. I was somewhat surprised, delightfully. She was not one of those people who had always been trying to draw attention to herself. I had always known her as a behind-the-scenes person.

Working Hard

“The Roybal name is wonderful, and that does help her but there is a segment out there not tolerant of the status quo,” Molina added. “Just as much as that will help her, it can hurt her. I would not be supporting her if she was just waiting around to get elected as ‘the daughter of.’ She is working for it, and working hard.”

The soft-spoken Allard, who is on leave as a planner for United Way, “couldn’t be more different in approach from Gloria,” one Latina political activist said. “Lucille is this nice, Pasadena matron type who I can’t imagine would offend anyone and Gloria is this fireball, ‘I-relish-a-good-fight type, and if you don’t like it, tough.’ ”

“I always have dealt with issues, not personalities,” Allard said. “I work real hard and concentrate on my objective. I don’t work in a manner that closes doors on me permanently. My style is not confrontation, it’s more diplomatic, respectful.”

Allard said her father “warned me . . . we knew people would say he put me up to it. And if I achieved anything, people would say, ‘What do you expect? She’s Roybal’s daughter.’ I told him I can handle it if you can.”

Allard said that, like Molina, she will continue to fight the proposed Eastside prison and cuts in education.

A Familiar Road

For Alex Garcia, 57, the campaign road is a familiar one. Starting in 1968, he was elected to three terms in the Assembly and two terms in the state Senate in the district now represented by Art Torres. Garcia lost a stinging reelection battle in 1982 to Torres, a campaign that at the time set a $1-million-plus record for total spending in a California legislative race.

After he lost his seat, Garcia was considered for three state-appointed jobs, but failed to get them. His quest for a state job sparked controversy when Senate President Pro Tem David Roberti (D-Los Angeles) discussed Garcia’s “drinking problem.”

“Alex has always handled his drinking problem discreetly and I don’t think he has a problem right now,” Roberti was quoted as saying in 1983.

Garcia recently denied that he ever had a drinking problem, saying the widespread rumors “were never proven.” Then referring to a drunk driving trial that resulted in a hung jury for former Eastside Councilman Arthur K. Snyder, Garcia added: “Our people are a lot more critical of their own. Snyder went to trial and they didn’t keep harping on it.”

Although he has worked as a consultant in and out of Sacramento, Garcia has not been active in politics since he left office. He said he is running now “because when I saw the number of people running I saw no one with experience in state government. . . . We don’t have time to train them on the job.”

Value in a Name

Garcia has raised only $7,696 and spent $7,877 as of last week. Money is important, he said, “but not as important as name I.D. I’m the only one the voters know and that will make the difference.”

Garcia opposes an Eastside prison and suggested that surplus federal land be used as a prison site instead. He favors raising the minimum wage and opposes cuts in education funding.

Democrat James B. Dimas, 46, has experience in government at the local level. A Los Angeles County deputy sheriff for 19 years, he also has been a councilman on the Commerce City Council for 14 years.

“The main issue is that people have the right to select the candidate they want,” Dimas said.

Dimas said he would fight the proposed prison and would push for more redevelopment in the district. He has the endorsements of several elected officials in Commerce, Vernon, Maywood and Bell Gardens. His strength in this election, Dimas said, is that residents in Commerce traditionally vote in higher numbers than most of the district “and they know I’m a no-nonsense guy, I work hard, and would be bossed by no one.”

‘New Perspective’

Another Democrat, Monica Delgadillo, is a former aide to Rep. Matthew G. Martinez (D-Monterey Park) and now a contract compliance representative for the Southern California Rapid Transit District. Delgadillo, 37, said she is running “because I bring a new perspective, new leadership, new blood. I’ve heard comments that this district is a gift to Lucille from her father. People would at least like to have a choice.”

Delgadillo, who recently received the endorsement of the Mexican American Political Assn.’s metro chapter, said she would stress providing information about amnesty under the new federal immigration law, would push for legislation outlawing insurance redlining, and establish regular “town hall” types of meetings.

She said she has had trouble raising money because “everyone thinks it’s locked up by Roybal . . . but we have to give the people a choice.”

Democrat Craig Freis, 43, the vice president of a Nebraska-based Catholic newspaper who ran for Los Angeles County tax assessor last year, said he would give back his salary at the end of a term if he could not reduce crime by 50%. Lowell (Ernie) Akui, who also has run for office before, could not be reached for comment.

On the Republican side, Tomas Alvarado, 39, is running for office for the first time. A former legislative aide in Sacramento, he said he is seeking the seat “because I felt it was wrong of a bunch of people to get together and decide who the next representative would be.” He said he is targeting Republicans in the cities of the district in the hopes that they will be more likely to vote. He opposes sex education clinics on school campuses and would seek solutions for traffic problems, he said.

Victor Chuck Valencia, a 49-year-old businessman, would like to make changes in the welfare system, “weed out people who don’t deserve it, abusers, and make it available for people who deserve it (but) can’t get it.”

Concern Over Machines

Hank Ramey, a 22-year-old college student, said he is “tired of machine politics.” He would oppose RTD fare increases and birth control clinics on campuses, he said.

Gloria Garcia, 32, is the Peace and Freedom Party candidate and a socialist. She opposes current immigration policies and said she is “appealing to the people who are fed up with the Republicans and the Democrats.”

Alatorre said he believes that voters were fed up only with the in-fighting among Latino Democrats.

“I think we all are together on Lucille’s campaign, and have shown we can work together,” he said. Asked if that cooperation will last, he replied: “I hope so, only time will tell. When you’re together, you’re together . . . until the next campaign.”