HispanicVista Columnists

Chicano Representation in California (1985-1992)

HISTORY

By John P. Schmal/HispanicVista.com

 

From 1962 to 1985, the Chicano community of California had witnessed a revival of its political representation, this following a period of many decades during which Hispanic Americans had little or no representation anywhere in the State. In 1985, seven Chicanos were seated California State Legislature, making up 6% of the total membership of that political body: Chacón, Alatorre, Calderon and Molina served in the Assembly, while Montoya, Ayala and Torres occupied seats in the Senate. At the same time, three Chicano Congressman continued to serve as delegates from California in the House of Representatives.

 

Arthur K. Snyder and the 14^th Council  District

The most important events affecting Chicano representation in California during the mid-1980s were taking place in Los Angeles. Between 1950 and 1980, the Hispanic population of Los Angeles County had increased dramatically from 6.9% to 27.6% of the total county population.  And yet, at the beginning of 1985, no Latino sat on the Los Angeles City Council or the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

 

In the Los Angeles City Council, Councilman Arthur K. Snyder continued to represent a significant portion of East Los Angeles’ Chicano community. Serving since July 7, 1967, Snyder had presided over the heavily Latino 14^th District and survived four regular election and two recall votes against younger Chicano challengers. As a result, no Latinos had served on the Los Angeles City Council since Edward Roybal’s departure in 1962.

 

By 1985, the 14^th District, with a population of about 200,000 residents, was roughly 75% Latino and ready for a change in the political landscape to match its own demographic evolution. However, only about half of the 14^th District’s 60,000 registered voters were Latino, with the most significant voter strength based in the district's mostly Anglo, conservative Eagle Rock area. The other principal neighborhoods of the district were Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights, El Sereno and Highland Park, with larger numbers of non-citizen immigrants.

 

The stage was set for political change at the beginning of January 1985, when Councilperson Snyder announced that he would retire later in the year. Although Snyder later changed the date of his resignation, he finally left office on October 4, 1985, unleashing a rush of candidates interested in succeeding him.  The City Council scheduled a special election in December to fill the position.

 

Richard Alatorre Joins the City Council

In the special election held on Tuesday, Dec. 10, 1985, Assemblyman Richard Alatorre won 60% of the vote against six opponents, including City Planner Steve Rodriguez, who obtained only 16% of the votes.  With this victory, Richard Alatorre thus became the first Latino in 23 years to be elected to the Los Angeles City Council. He took office on December 20, 1985.

 

Alatorre seemed to be a logical replacement for Councilperson Snyder, given that his Assembly District shared the communities of Lincoln Heights, El Sereno, Highland Park and Eagle Rock in common with Snyder’s domain.  While Snyder’s Councilmanic district also included Boyle Heights, Alatorre’s Assembly district also included South Pasadena and part of the City of Pasadena.

 

Ironically, two weeks earlier, on November 26, 1985, the United States Justice Department had filed a lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles, charging “a history of official discrimination” against Latinos. With this suit, the Justice Department sought to invalidate the City's 1982 redistricting plan as a violation of the Chicano community’s rights as a minority.  The civil complaint, filed in federal court in Los Angeles, named Mayor Tom Bradley, thirteen current City Council members and City Clerk Elias Martinez as defendants. 

 

The suit accused the City of Los Angeles of deliberately drawing political boundaries in such a way as to disperse Latinos over several council districts to intentionally splinter their political power. The Justice Department contended that the redistricting plan – approved unanimously by the City Council in September 1982 – violated Section 2 by dividing an expanding core concentration of Latinos surrounding the downtown area among seven of the 15 council districts.

 

As a result of this fracturing, only one council district contained a majority of Latinos and the strength of the Chicano voting community as a whole was diluted.  This represented a violation of their civil rights under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and the voting rights provisions of the 15th Amendment to the Constitution. The suit concluded that this redistricting plan was “... effectuated for the purpose, and with the result, of avoiding the higher Hispanic percentages in certain districts that would be the logical result of drawing district boundaries on a non-racial basis.” It alleged that their reapportionment plan – approved at a time when no Chicanos served on the Council – violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which bars any practice or procedure that abridges a person's voting rights.

 

Between 1970 and 1980, the Latino population of Los Angeles had risen from 18% to 27%. But, until Alatorre took office on December 20^th, 1985, that 27% of Los Angeles’ population was essentially without the representation of an elected Chicano official on the Council.  In contrast, three African-American Councilmen – Gilbert W. Lindsay, Robert Farrell and David Cunningham – sat on the Council, while an African-American, Mayor Tom Bradley, served as the Mayor of the entire city.

 

On Tuesday, Dec. 17, 1985, Richard Alatorre, three days before he was scheduled to take office as Los Angeles' first Latino council member in 23 years, was appointed Chairman of the Council’s Charter and Elections Committee, which would review the city's controversial reapportionment plan. City Council President Pat Russell told reporters at this time that she appointed Alatorre because he was a Latino and because he had been the Chairman of the state legislative committee that drew up the 1982 California reapportionment plan.

 

The topic of redistricting took up a great deal of the Council’s time during the first half of 1986. However, on August 12, 1986, Los Angeles City Councilman Howard Finn died very abruptly of a ruptured aorta.  Since 1981, Councilman Finn had represented the 1^st Council District, which ran through the northeast part of the San Fernando Valley, including Shadow Hills, Pacoima, Sun Valley, and Sunland-Tujunga.

 

Immediately, it was recognized that Finn's death might open the way to the eventual election of the first Latino from the San Fernando Valley to the Council. The Council had adopted and scrapped two plans before settling on final boundaries for revised Councilmanic districts.  The 1^st District, left vacant by the death of Councilman Finn, was carved from six existing districts and recreated into a new district north and west of Downtown Los Angeles.

 

Now containing a 69% Latino population, the 1^st District included Elysian Park, Elysian Valley, Chinatown, Lincoln Park, Cypress Park, Pico-Union, Temple-Beaudry, Montecito Heights and parts of Highland Park, Echo Park, Glassell Park and Mount Washington. It also had a population that was 25% Caucasian, 14% Asian and 2% Black.  However, although the district had a majority Latino population, Chicanos represented only 40% of the voters, in large part because of its large immigrant population and low voter registration among Hispanics.

 

Joan Kradin became the Chief Deputy for the newly reconfigured 1^st District, which contained a population of 200,000 residents. On October 2, 1986, the Council announced that a Special Municipal Election would be held on Tuesday, February 3, 1987 for the purpose of filling the vacancy in the First District. Soon there were four candidates vying for the 1st District seat:  State Assemblywoman Gloria Molina, Larry Gonzalez, Leland Wong and Paul D. Y. Moore, a former aide to Mayor Tom Bradley.

 

On Nov. 6, 1986, Assemblywoman Gloria Molina, backed by significant political support, announced that she would run for a seat on the Los Angeles City Council representing the newly created, largely Latino 1^st District. On February 3, 1987, Assemblywoman Gloria Molina took an early lead and went on to win with 6,711 votes, or 57% of the vote, while Larry Gonzalez placed a distant second with 3,001 votes, or 26%.  Gonzalez, who was backed by many influential members of the Eastside political establishment, failed to force a runoff election as many had expected.

 

On February 27, 1987, Gloria Molina became City Councilperson.  She was the fourth woman to serve on the Council and was its first Latina representative in history. Councilwoman Molina would serve as Councilperson for four years.  Four years later, in February 1991, Molina would resign her Council position after winning election to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. 

 

Changes in the Assembly

With Alatorre’s move to the City Council, it was necessary to have an election to fill his Eastside Assembly seat. On April 8, 1986, Richard Polanco, a former legislative aide, won 39% of the vote in the primary election designed to fill the unexpired term of Alatorre. His closest competitor, Mike Hernandez, a local bond and insurance agent, had won about 37% of the vote. Facing the Republican candidate, Loren Lutz, in the June 3^rd runoff election, Polanco won his seat as representative of the 55^th Assembly District. Mike Hernandez would later win election to the Los Angeles City Council.

 

When Gloria Molina vacated her position in the legislature in 1987, a new personality stepped forward to fill the void created in the Assembly. Born and raised in Boyle Heights, Lucille Roybal-Allard, a Democrat from Los Angeles, was the daughter of the Congressman Edward Roybal, the pioneer who had opened the door for California Chicano legislators in Congress in 1962. On Tuesday, May 12, 1987, Ms. Roybal-Allard won a special election for the 56^th District Assembly seat by a wide margin over nine opponents, easily stepping into Assemblywoman Molina’s shoes. Assemblywoman Roybal-Allard’s district consisted of the Civic Center, part of Chinatown, Little Tokyo, Boyle Heights, unincorporated East Los Angeles and the cities of Commerce, Maywood, Vernon and Bell Gardens.

 

The County Board of Supervisors

On September 8, 1988, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, charging that the County had committed political discrimination against Latinos. The redistricting lawsuit, filed under the Voting Rights Act, contended that Latinos “have been the victims of official discrimination,” and that this discrimination had effectively prevented them from being elected to the governing five-member board that controlled the budget and services for Los Angeles County’s 8.5 million residents.

 

The Justice Department declared that the County had “failed to take the action necessary to allow Hispanic citizens a fair opportunity for equal political participation” and that this neglect had “fragmented” the bulk of the Latino population over three supervisory districts, thus diluting their voting strength. The result, the suit continued, was “a disparate and injurious effect” on the ability of Latinos to participate in the political process and elect a Latino to the Board.

 

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California filed a similar discrimination lawsuit against the County around the same time. On June 4, 1990, U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon ruled that the Board of Supervisors intentionally discriminated against the county's Latinos when drawing district boundaries in 1981. When the new district was drawn up later in the year, it included Highland Park, Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles, Rosemead, El Monte, Pico Rivera and Montebello. The revised district was 71% Latino, in contrast to the 49% Latinos in the old district.  The percentage of Latino voters in the district just tipped over the halfway mark at 51%. It was decided that a candidate would have to receive more than 50% of the vote in the January 22, 1991 election.  Otherwise, a runoff election would take place on February 19 to match the two persons with the most votes from the earlier election.

 

Senator Art Torres and Councilwoman Gloria Molina were the two top winners in the January 22 election.  When they went against each other in the February runoff election, Molina won with 55% of the vote, becoming the first Hispanic to sit as an L.A. County Board member in 115 years.  She took office March 8, 1991

 

The End of the 1980s

Although their population in the State of California was growing by leaps and bounds, Latinos only constituted 7.9% of all California voters in the 1988 state and national elections.  By the end of the 1980s, the Latino community had elected ten people to represent its districts: three in Congress, three in the State Senate and four in the Assembly. But, for all the progress made in that decade, Chicanos still occupied only 5.8% of the total seats in the Assembly and Senate.

 

In February 1990, Senator Joseph B. Montoya was convicted on five counts of extortion and single counts of racketeering and money laundering. He had made the mistake of taking a $3,000 check from an FBI agent posing as a businessman trying to get legislative help for his shrimp business. With Montoya’s resignation, Charles M. Calderon of Whittier, who had served with the Assembly since November 1982, was elected on April 10, 1990 to the Senate District 26 to replace Montoya.  When Calderon left his Assembly seat in April 1990, another election was called to fill that position.

 

In the campaign to capture Assemblyman Calderon’s 59^th Assembly District, two Democratic women stepped forward as front-runners: 37-year-old Diane Martinez, the daughter of Representative Matthew Martinez of Montebello, and Marta Maestas, an aide to Calderon. However, 32-year-old Xavier Becerra, a deputy district attorney and a former aide to Senator Art Torres, also stepped into the arena, as did Bill Hernandez, a member of the Rio Hondo Community College Board of Trustees. The hotly contested ethnically diverse district included the communities of Alhambra, Monterey Park, Montebello, Pico Rivera, South El Monte and a portion of Whittier.

 

In the election that took place on June 5, Xavier Becerra received 35% of the vote, outflanking Maestas (who received 28%), Diane Martinez (who received 26%) and the other candidates. In the November elections, Xavier Becerra easily defeated his Republican opponent 61% to 35% to take his District 59 seat. Born and raised in Sacramento, Xavier Becerra was a graduate of Stanford University and had served as an aide to Senator Art Torres for several years.

 

Once the results of the 1990 census were tallied, the Census Bureau reported that the total population of California had increased to 29,760,021,which would increase California’s representation in Congress from 45 to 52 in the next reapportionment.  The Latino population had now increased to 7,687,938, which represented 25% of the total state population.  Mexican Americans made up 81% of the Latinos, while foreign-born persons represented 47% of Latinos. Many of these immigrants had not become citizens and were not eligible to vote.

 

In 1991, California’s redistricting process had to be sent to the California Supreme Court because of the Governor Pete Wilson's refusal to enact any of the legislative redistricting proposals that had been developed. In January 1992, a panel of special masters comprised of retired justices appointed by the Supreme Court presented new district lines and re-drew the boundaries for all California’s legislative and congressional districts. The new districts left many incumbent legislators without their old districts and created seven new congressional seats.

 

The Elections of 1992

After the redistricting that took place in 1992, a new generation of Chicano candidates came forth to seek political office. A total of seven Chicano legislators were elected to the Assembly, almost doubling their numbers from the four who served before the election.

 

While the incumbent Richard Polanco held on to his seat in the 45^th District, several  newcomers took their seats in the Assembly: Louis Caldera (46^th District), Diane Martinez (49^th), Martha Escutia (50%), Hilda Solis (57^th), Grace Napolitano (58^th) and Joe Baca (62^nd). Louis Caldera, a Harvard-trained attorney, had captured 73% of the vote in his 46^th District which included Boyle Heights, East Los Angeles, Pico Union and parts of Koreatown and downtown Los Angeles. Joe Baca of Rialto was elected to serve in the California State Assembly as a representative of his San Bernardino County district.

 

With a total of eleven Senators and Assemblypersons in the California Legislature, Chicanos now held 9.2% of the seats in that political body. With their new-found power, the Latino Legislators soon became known as Los Siete (The Seven). At the same time, none of the three Chicanos in the State Senate (Art Torres, Charles Calderon and Ruben Ayala) were up for reelection.

 

Even as Chicanos made their spectacular gains in the California Assembly, two more Chicanos were sent to Congress from California. Two veterans of the Assembly, Xavier Becerra and Lucille Roybal-Allard, moved on to Congress, at the same time that Lucille’s father, the renowned Ed Roybal, was retiring.

 

Postscript: Increased Representation in the New Millennium

Chicano representation would continue to make great strides during the 1990s, especially in the 1996 election. After the turn of the century, the Federal census recorded a significant increase in the Latino population, which then numbered 10,966,556, or 32.4% of the total state population. When Election Day, 2000 arrived, 1.6 million Latinos voted. The end result was that, as 2001 began, 27 Latinos took their seats in the State Legislature, while seven more went to Washington, D.C., to serve their constituency in the House of Representatives.

 

After the November 2004 elections, the representation of the Chicanos increased to an all-time high of 10 Senators, 19 Assemblypersons and seven Representatives in Congress.

 

The struggle of California’s Chicano Community in obtaining fair political representation took place over a period of half a century and, in some ways, is continuing.  In 1963, Roybal, Soto and Moreno took their respective seats in the Assembly and the U.S. Congress.  Between 1963 and 2005, California’s Chicano representation had jumped from three elected officials to 36.

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John Schmal was born and raised in Los Angeles, California.  He attended Loyola-Marymount University in Los Angeles and St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, where he studied Geography, History and Earth Sciences and received two BA degrees.  Mr. Schmal has been a life-long history buff and is also a skilled genealogist. His genealogical specialties including tracing lineages in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the Southwestern U.S.A.  He is the coauthor of "Mexican-American Genealogical Research: Following the Paper Trail to Mexico" (Heritage Books, 2002).  He has also coauthored three other books on Mexican-American themes, all of them published by Heritage Books in Maryland. He is an Associate Editor of www.somosprimos.com and a board member of the Society of Hispanic Historical and Ancestral Research (SHHAR). Presently, in addition to writing weekly columns for HispanicVista.com (www.hispanicvista.com),  he is writing a book on the indigenous peoples of Mexico and on the ports of entry along the Mexican-US border.  Mr. Schmal has a passionate love of Mexican history and has been writing short histories of each state, which are being compiled at the following link:
http://www.houstonculture.org/mexico/states.html