What was billed as a three-way surrogate struggle for the Assembly between Latino political powerhouses has thinned to two candidates, as a top aide to Sen. Gil Cedillo is dropping out of the race.
That leaves John Perez, the cousin of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and Ricardo Lara, the district director for Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez as the remaining politically connected candidates for the Assembly seat, which Núñez must vacate this year due to term limits.
Arturo Chavez, the district director for Cedillo, said in an interview that he was withdrawing because “we don’t need that kind of dissension within the community.”
“There’s a lot of folks involved in this particular race, a lot of family and friends and it would have been pretty divisive,” said Chavez, who had a fundraiser scheduled today at the Sacramento Sheraton Grand, which was to have been hosted by Cedillo. It has since been canceled.
Political circles are buzzing that Lara, too, was dropping out.
But Núñez, speaking after an education press conference on Wednesday morning, denied that, saying, “Huh? He hasn’t left anything."
Reached by phone late Tuesday, Gabriel Sanchez, a spokesman for Lara’s campaign and himself a Núñez aide, was asked if his candidate was dropping out of the race. Sanchez said he would speak with Lara before he responded. Neither Lara nor Sanchez has responded to phone calls or e-mails since.
The speaker said the key to the race would be the endorsement of the powerful Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, to which both he and Villaraigosa are closely allied.
“It is a district that is dependent on union activity, (a) working class community. You can’t run away from that,” Núñez said of his district, which includes Boyle Heights, Little Tokyo and Westlake, among other areas.
The labor federation is set to make its endorsement on Monday, according to its communications director Mary Gutierrez.
“We’re friends and at the end of the day we’d like to be together, if we could,” said Núñez of himself, Cedillo and Villaraigosa. “We’re going to sit with everybody after the labor fed endorsement and see who gets that endorsement. I think the person who gets that endorsement probably has best shot at winning and I think we need to figure out where you go from there. “
Chavez dismissed as “spin” the idea that political maneuvering was afoot to clear the field.
“I am sure he’d like to think he has that (influence), but he doesn’t have that kind of role in this,” Chavez said of Villaraigosa.
Perez is a former member of the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency, which he recently left to launch his Assembly bid. His is also Villaraigosa’s first cousin. (Perez’s mother was Villaraigosa’s mother’s sister).
All three Democratic candidates filed paperwork with the county registrar to run for the seat last week. A fourth Democratic candidate, Michael Aldapa, also filed for the seat. The 46th Assembly District is a heavily Democratic seat, with the winner in the June primary expected to ease through the November general election.
Latino leaders in Los Angeles have tried to avoid open political warfare between factions before, often with benefits down the line for those who put their ambitions temporarily on hold.
In early 2007, three Latinos were eying a seat on the Los Angeles City Council, including newly elected Assemblyman Richard Alarcon, former Assemblywoman Cindy Montanez and Felipe Fuentes, who served as chief of staff to Sen. Alex Padilla when he served on the city council.
Ultimately, though, the field thinned to one, with only Alarcon remaining in the race in what amounted to a waltz into the council. Fuentes then ran for the Assembly seat Alarcon vacated. And Montanez received two plum appointments, a seat on the Los Angeles Planning Commission made by the mayor, and a seat on the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, made by the speaker. The latter job pays an annual $128,109 salary, according to the Sacramento Bee state workers’ database.
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