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ATTACKS JEW to defeat that Jew!" Richard Polanco. |
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Reporter's Notebook
Latinos, Jews & Gays
Editor's Note: This is the first of an occasional column by veteran reporter Karen Ocamb.
Welcome to my first political column, an attempt to pull back the curtain and reveal the Oz behind the scenes. Unfortunately, the wizards manipulating the strings aren't always fake gods with good intentions. Sometimes they're our fallible friends--and they're going to ask us to pick sides. We need to know with whom we're getting into bed. Read on.
There's no denying that with his protégé Richard Alarcon's slim 29-vote victory over Richard Katz, state Senate Majority Leader Richard Polanco is California's newest kingmaker.
Even political rival L.A. County Supervisor Gloria Molina acknowledged Polanco at the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project dinner July 17 after learning that Katz had called off the expensive vote recount in the San Fernando Valley race. (Katz was endorsed over Alarcon by the Stonewall Democratic Club.)
Many Latinos, including California Democratic Party Chair Art Torres, were upset by a last minute, inaccurate and misleading Polanco-sponsored mailer sent to Latinos implying that longtime progressive Katz was a racist. Many believe the "race-baiting" mailer was the reason Alarcon won.
Meanwhile, Alarcon-backers charged Katz with racism after his "dirty hands" mailer linked Alarcon to City Councilmember Richard Alatorre who is reportedly under investigation for alleged illegal and unethical conduct. They suggested that the mud on the hands meant that Katz thought Latinos were "dirty."
Countering, the Katz camp noted that "dirty hands" is commonplace in negative campaigns to imply political corruption, not race.
Democrats were mortified. The mud-slinging threatened to disintegrate the old Tom Bradley political coalition and split Latinos and Jews. Alarcon's dance around accepting responsibility--though his campaign manager, Richie Ross, was reportedly the mailer's author--didn't sit well. But neither did Katz's refusal to accept Alarcon's subsequent, albeit weak apology. Instead, Katz is pursuing a lawsuit charging Alarcon with election irregularities and defamation.
At the Latino Vote '98 dinner, it was time to move on. "I think, like everyone else, there's a sigh of relief in the Latino community that it's over. The time is now for healing--there's been a lot of divisiveness," said Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa who managed to stay neutral in the race. "Hopefully this will smooth the bitter issues that have been fuming in the Latino community," said Molina, adding that Alarcon will be "very good" on gay and lesbian issues because "it's the same discrimination" as that suffered by Latinos.
Katz supporter West Hollywood Mayor Steve Martin also hoped for healing. "We can't have this kind of division. There's too much work to do." And Alarcon unflinchingly told me he supported "just about everything" the gay community proposes, including domestic partnership benefits and same sex-marriage--"I don't have a problem with that. Love is the important thing. You have a lot of supporters but I'll be with you arm and arm."
And over the years Polanco has repeatedly stood up for Michael Weinstein's AIDS Healthcare Foundation and been a vote the gay community can count on. But expect politics to hit the fan if details of the Katz lawsuit become public, probably sometime around its first scheduled hearing on Aug. 19.
Introduced as evidence of defamation will be a tape recording on which Polanco is heard saying, "I'll spend whatever it takes to beat that Jew," according to a source close to the Katz camp who knows Polanco and has heard the tape. Roughly a week and a half after that comment was made, Polanco poured $186,000 into Alarcon's campaign, money which funded the infamous mailer.
Without proven voter fraud, however, it is unlikely that a judge will overturn Alarcon's election based on a related contention of defamation. When asked about the alleged comment, Palanco's chief aide, Bill Maybie, said, "I've worked for him for nearly a decade, I know this guy and this isn't something he would say or even think."
In our communities, we have Jews who support Polanco and Latinos who support Katz. It's actually another controversy--HIV names reporting--that's most likely to stir up a greater debate than Latinos versus Jews. Weinstein, who has become kind of an unofficial gay/AIDS gate-keeper to Polanco, supports names reporting and would no doubt advise him to pursue that course if Polanco topples Senate Pro Tem John Burton.
The San Francisco-based senator is a "champion" for gays, according to several sources, who favors a compromise proposed by Assemblymember Carole Migden that would allow for "unique identifiers" based on numbers unique to an individual. But behind the scenes, sources say, Weinstein is trying to undermine the compromise because he believes, along with the conservative California Medical Association, that reporting names is good medical management surveillance. Most HIV/AIDS experts fear names-reporting will scare people away from getting tested, especially women and people of color.
Reaction in the gay and HIV/AIDS communities to Polanco's "caught on tape" remarks will say a lot about what we're willing to accept, do, and forgive in the name of political access and power.
--Karen Ocamb