Alarcon looking to play underdog role one more time.

RICHARD Alarcon has thrived in the role of the underdog.

Starting in the shadow of a pack of better-known candidates, he emerged as the first Latino elected to the Los Angeles City Council from the San Fernando Valley. Later, he took on a heavily favored state legislator for a Senate seat and eked out a victory after a tough campaign.

Now, as he runs for mayor of Los Angeles, Alarcon is once more the underdog. Except this time, despite what many regard as impressive showings in mayoral debates, the odds against him may be just too great.

He's the least financed of the five major candidates, with a mere $356,000 cash on hand, and in the first major independent poll earlier this month, he pulled in 3 percent support.

"He's a sharp guy and there's nothing wrong with his campaign. But it just doesn't appear to be in the cards for him," said Raphael Sonenshein, professor of political science at California State University Fullerton and a longtime observer of L.A. politics.

He was the first major candidate to challenge incumbent Mayor James Hahn, but before he could get off the ground, former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg entered the race, giving Alarcon competition for the San Fernando Valley vote. Then Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa announced his candidacy, depriving Alarcon much of his hoped-for Latino support. Finally, the city's labor unions--his only other potential base--sided with the incumbent Hahn. Campaign donations dried up.

"It's become a vicious circle. He's got little money to increase his name identification and he has little name identification to increase his money," said Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.

Populist themes

Alarcon doesn't see it this way. He maintains that media polls have never captured the true extent of his support and that he fully expects to make the May runoff. "People mm out for me that don't vote in other elections and they will turn out for me again," he said.

In the state Senate and on the campaign trail, Alarcon sounds populist themes. Two years ago, he formed the Senate Select Committee on Ending Poverty in California and held hearings around the state, even asking the state Chamber of Commerce to join in his crusade.

"People thought the war on poverty was over with the Johnson administration. Not Richard Alarcon. His hearings proved otherwise," said Miguel Contreras, executive secretary of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor.

In the mayoral debates, he attacks "special interest" lobbyists and contractors that he says dominate City Hall. His solution: have voters pass a ballot initiative banning contributions of more than $100 from contractors, developers and lobbyists.

He also joined in a lawsuit seeking to rescind the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars from the Department of Water & Power to the city's general fund, and he vows to give neighborhood councils the power to approve or reject development projects.

Alarcon has a long history of advocating for change.

In Sun Valley, where his father ran a furniture upholstery shop, he became student body president at John H. Francis Polytechnic High School. Drama teacher Enrique Duran remembers how Alarcon lent his support to a classmate seeking to become the first Latina homecoming queen. She won. "He wanted the underdog to get a piece of the pie and he was very effective in making his case," Duran said.

Alarcon also reached out to neighboring high schools to create an informal alliance of Latino activists during the height of the Chicano power movement. Those networking skills came in handy a dozen years later when Alarcon, then a local chair for the Mexican-American Political Association, fought for redistricting-reform to bring greater representation for Latinos, both on the L.A. City Council and on the L.A. Unified School District Board of Education.

After marrying and graduating from California State University, Northridge, he took a job in then-Mayor Tom Bradley's office managing an anti-gang contract.

"We were really impressed with his commitment to working directly with the community," said Mike Thompson, the program administrator who hired Alarcon. "He was energetic, enthusiastic and very serious about what be was doing."

Family tragedy

Another colleague at the time, L.A. City Councilwoman Wendy Greuel, described the young Alarcon as "very passionate about his work, about his ideas."

In 1987, tragedy struck when the youngest of his five children, three-year-old Richie Alarcon, was killed in a crash caused by a drunk driver. The boy's grandmother, the mother of Alarcon's wife, Corina, was also killed.

"He took his grief and directed it towards other things. He became active in Mothers Against Drunk Driving and he became even more committed to the youth and gang prevention programs he was working on," said Rose Ochi, Alarcon's boss in Mayor Bradley's office of criminal justice planning.

Alarcon's perseverance soon caught the attention of Bradley, who in 1989 appointed him deputy mayor for the San Fernando Valley. This gave him a springboard for elected office, providing a base of prominent business and community officials. "He was everywhere, talking to everybody," Greuel said.

As Bradley's final term wound down, Alarcon filed to run for the northeast San Fernando Valley district seat being vacated by retiring Councilman Ernani Bernardi. He faced a crowded field that included the widow of former Councilman Howard Finn, a popular fire captain and one of Bernardi's deputies.

Although he lagged in fundraising, Alarcon made the most of his contacts and placed second to fire captain Lyle Hall.

To win the 1993 runoff in a district with a majority Anglo electorate, Alarcon focused on what would become his election trademark: registering thousands of new Latinos who made up 70 percent of the district's population. He also courted the union vote, meeting with Contreras who was then the County Federation's political director.

"I remember very clearly my first meeting with him," Contreras said. "I was caught off-guard by his youthfulness. He also looked like a character right out of one of those old Zoot Suit plays, with his slicked back hair. But he impressed me during the interview and we ended up supporting him in the runoff."

Alarcon won by 130 votes in one of the closest city council races in L.A. history.

Alarcon's introduction to the council was hardly auspicious. He had to fight to claim his seat at one end of the alphabetically arranged council horseshoe.

"He displaced Richard Alatorre at the end of the horseshoe, but Alatorre wouldn't move down a seat until (then Council President John) Ferraro made him do so," said former City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter.

Once seated, Alarcon focused on bringing home more resources for his district, which had suffered decades of neglect. "He was tenacious in getting a fair share," Galanter said.

Just a few months before Alarcon took office, General Motors Corp. had closed its Van Nuys plant, throwing 3,000 employees out of work. Alarcon worked with Mayor Richard Riordan's business team to craft a redevelopment plan for the 100-acre site.

They finally arrived at a development agreement calling for a mixture of retail and light industrial tenants--with the city kicking in $4 million for local infrastructure improvements. The project opened in 1998 with three dozen retail stores, including a Home Depot and a cinema megaplex. Private sector investment in the site eventually totaled $75 million.

Alarcon considers the GM project the crowning achievement of his tenure on the council. However, the new jobs pay much less than the high wage jobs they replaced--and that Alarcon says the city needs to add to its economy. On the council, he also reached out to new constituencies.

"Richard was annoyed that the League of Conservation Voters did not endorse him in his run for council. So he decided to go prove to them that he was an environmentalist," Galanter said.

Alarcon handily won re-election in 1997. Then, just months later, he announced plans to run for the state Senate seat vacated by termed out Herschel Rosenthal. He was taking on former state Assemblyman Richard Katz, who had been the Assembly Democratic leader and had shown the ability to raise impressive amounts of money. Again, Alarcon was regarded as an underdog.

The primary campaign was bitter, and will be remembered for what happened in its closing days. A mailer was sent to every registered voter with a Latino surname linking Katz to an infamous incident in Orange County in 1988 when Republicans had hired security guards who forcibly shooed away Latino voters from the polls. The letter was signed by Democratic then-Sen. Richard Polanco, an Alarcon supporter, and paid for by a Polanco-controlled committee.

The allegation was false: Katz was helping the Democratic candidate in the race, and actually exposed the poll guard incident and pressed for a federal investigation.

Local Jewish leaders accused Polanco--and by extension, Alarcon--of intentionally seeking to fan racial flames. After the election, Alarcon said that the mailer was drafted by his own campaign consultant, Richie Ross.

The election itself proved a nail-biter. Alarcon won by 29 votes, making it one of the closest races in state history. Although he was entitled to ask for a recount, Katz decided against it.

In Sacramento, Alarcon quickly won appointment to the powerful Labor and Industrial Relations Committee and within a few months was appointed chair. With constant clashes between labor and business interests, the committee was highly polarized.

Alarcon soon had a reputation for running a tight ship.

"Woe betide anyone who came before his committee unprepared. It didn't matter if it was a university president, a corporate titan or a labor leader. He let them all have it," said Pat Henning, now director of the state Employment Development Department.

Alarcon also was seen as treating business fairly, despite his philosophical tilt towards labor.

"I've worked with him representing employers and found him to be willing to listen and not to come in with a predetermined view," said Lori Kammerer, who lobbies on workers' compensation issues.

Yet Alarcon pushed through an increase in unemployment insurance benefits, despite intense opposition from business groups, and legislation requiring all public works construction projects to pay prevailing wages.

Each year, Alarcon also succeeded in getting bills passed that increased benefits for injured workers. For the first three years, the centrist-leaning Gov. Gray Davis vetoed Alarcon's legislation, saying it would drive up costs for employers. Then, in 2002, Davis decided he needed to shore up his Democratic base as he prepared for re-election. He agreed to sign the same benefit increase he vetoed months earlier.

Employer groups, who were left out of the negotiations, protested. They faulted Alarcon for refusing to wait for studies on the financial impact of benefit hikes.

Less than two years later, after Davis was recalled, Alarcon proved flexible in negotiating with Republican leaders. "He was willing to go after the cost-drivers, even if it meant going against some of his supporters," Kammerer said.

While Alarcon was in Sacramento, his family life fell into disarray. His marriage collapsed in early 1999, just as Corina--then a city commissioner--was launching a bid for her husband's old seat on the City Council. She withdrew her bid, saying it was at her husband's request. The marriage ended up in divorce proceedings the following year.

Later, Corina Alarcon declared bankruptcy, pointing to a lavish lifestyle beyond the couple's means and combined debts that ran into the tens of thousands of dollars.

The marriage fallout also had political consequences. In the race to replace him on the council, Richard and Corina Alarcon endorsed different candidates--she supported Alex Padilla while he endorsed longtime community activist Corinne Sanchez. Padilla ultimately won, and to this day, the two Alarcons remain on opposite political sides: Corina is a police commissioner supporting Hahn for re-election.

Two years after his marriage breakup, Alarcon faced a new political dilemma: the San Fernando Valley secession movement. As one of the most prominent elected Valley officials, he had been courted furiously by both sides. Secession proponents saw him as a leader in the eyes of thousands of voters, which is why the opponents tried to keep him out of the fray.

For a few months in early 2002, Alarcon toyed with the idea of running for mayor of a proposed Valley city, but ultimately decided against it, choosing to run for re-election to the state Senate. He now maintains that the prime reason was because the secession documents were poorly drafted and had loopholes that could prove difficult for a fledgling city.

Alarcon, facing term limits in 2006, was expected to run for a statewide post or for state Assembly. But he also cast an eye towards the upcoming L.A. mayor's race.

In early 2004, as the "pay-to-play" investigations began to rock City Hall, Alarcon saw the prospect of Hahn being weakened and decided to jump in. A year later, Hahn's favorable rating had dropped to 50 percent in a recent Los Angeles Times poll, but Alarcon's hopes have been virtually dashed as first Hertzberg, then Bernard Parks and finally Villaraigosa entered the fray.

"Villaraigosa's entry was the key blow," Sonenshein said, weakening Alarcon's Latino base. "For months, no one was sure whether he was going to go to Washington as part of a (John) Kerry administration."

But even if Alarcon fails to make the runoff, he could still come out ahead politically.

"He may very well be going back to voters for some other position in the future and they will remember his name and that he ran a decent campaign," Sonenshein said. "That can only help him."

Richard Alarcon

Born: Sun Valley, Nov. 24, 1953

Residence: Sun Valley

Career: After stint as a teacher, became an activist in the San Fernando Valley, pushing for redistricting reform to give Latinos more representation on the L.A. City Council and at the L.A. Unified School District. In 1990, then-Mayor Tern Bradley appointed him San Fernando Valley deputy. In 1993, Alarcon won a crowded race to replace Councilman Ernani Bernardi. In 1998, he won a bitter campaign for state Senate, besting the favored candidate Richard Katz by 29 votes. Re-elected in 2002, was named chair of Senate Labor Industrial Relations Committee and, more recently, majority whip.

Fundraising: Raised $445,300 in contributions and received $140,500 in city matching funds through Jan. 31. Reported $355,000 cash on hand.

'Rebuild Trust Between the City and the People'

STATE Sen. Richard Alarcon met with Business Journal editors and reporters to discuss his candidacy for mayor of Los Angeles. Here are excerpts from that interview.

--Howard Fine

Question: How do you plan to overcome low name recognition and low fundraising in this race?

Answer: First of all, my name recognition is high. We started at 55 percent name identification. And I've been able to grow that to nearly 80 percent in the San Fernando Valley and 70 percent citywide. I've also got high name recognition among Latinos we have polled.

Q: But you've been polling in the low-single-digits.

A: The voters who come out to vote for me aren't in the polls. And as for the money, it's not about how much money you raise, it's about how many votes you get on Election Day.

Q: What is your message?

A: I'm the only candidate who wants to give planning authority to neighborhood councils. I'm the only candidate who has a ballot measure to eliminate contractor and developer contributions. I'm also a voice from the San Fernando Valley that's calling for unity.

Q: During the secession campaign, you were considering running for mayor of a separate San Fernando Valley city. What changed your mind?

A: The thing that finally convinced me not to run was the documents. I realized we would have had no control over the DWP, for example. If as mayor I wouldn't have control over the DWP, what kind of situation was that?

Q: But did you support the concept of secession?

A: No, I did not. But voters in the Valley transcend the issue of secession. They want to know what you can do for them. They're happy that I was able to redevelop the General Motors plant and bring 4,000 jobs to the Valley. They're happy I was able to redevelop the Panorama Mall, which was falling apart, and bring the first Wal-Mart into the city. So people know what I've done.

Q: Mayor Hahn has lumped you in with "Sacramento politicians" who have taken millions of property tax dollars from the city. What's your response?

A: I don't respond to that charge. I tell people what I have done for them. I delivered $550 million in affordable housing funds for the city. I tell people about the $200 million I delivered for teacher training. It was Mayor Hahn who negotiated with Governor Schwarzenegger to forgo those property tax dollars for two years before we in the Legislature even had a chance to look over the deal. And the budget that took the most money from the city, I didn't vote for. So he better get his facts straight.

Q: How does your ballot initiative to ban developer and contractor contributions differ from Mayor Hahn's proposal?

A: His depends on a recusal process, and whether there's a nexus between the campaign contribution and officeholder. Mine is much simpler: Just eliminate contributions over $100.

Q: If you're going to ban contractors, why not ban contributions from public employee unions?

A: There is no direct benefit given in return for a contribution to a union. With a developer or a contractor, there's a direct benefit.

Q: But if a councilmember accepts contributions from a city employee union and then approves a pay hike, isn't that a direct benefit?

A: You asked for my answer and I gave you my answer. This would still be the toughest ethics ordinance in the entire country. Also, if you look at the "pay-to-play" issue on the table fight now, it is contractors and developers that are being investigated, not unions.

Q: Do you believe City Hall is corrupt?

A: That depends on what you mean by corrupt. I don't want to make broad generalizations like that.

Q: What about the allegations that Hahn's office handed out contracts to contributors?

A: The mayor's office made mistakes that led to a perception of impropriety. Having his fundraiser as a liaison to the three proprietary departments, that was unconscionable. Whether it was illegal, I'll leave that to the law enforcement investigations.

Q: What qualities are needed in someone who wants to be mayor of Los Angeles?

A: My mentor was Mayor Bradley. He transcended his ethnicity and demonstrated that he could lead a diverse coalition. We need a mayor who can forge alliances beyond their ethnicity and geographic community. Mayors in L.A. also need to be bigger than life. When Bradley walked down the street, he dominated the picture. He also was able to pull out the best in people. Right now, people don't feel that way about our current mayor.

Q: What are the top three priorities you have for moving this city forward?

A: First, we have to rebuild the trust between the city and the people it serves. Second, we're way behind on public safety. Not just police, but also fire and sanitation. I would start my budgets by making sure that these three functions are fully funded. I would guarantee an extra 100 police officers a year on a zero-based budgeting process. That should come out of the first general fund dollars the city spends, not be tacked on an extra sales tax.

Q: Should business owners and executives be concerned that if you're elected mayor, you will target them with things like an increase in the living wage?

A: You mean should the business community be scared of me? The answer is no. The business community should look at what I've done. Sure I'd like to raise average wages. But the best way to do that is not through some mandate on business but by improving the skill levels of our workers.

Q: Who are the three people who now live in the city of Los Angeles that you most admire?

A: My father, of course. He's part of the greatest generation--a World War II veteran. Also, (radio and TV performer) George Lopez. Oh, and I can't forget (police commissioner) Rose Ochi, who was my mentor in Mayor Bradley's office.