Forging Latino Power by George L Pla

Author:George L Pla
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Berkeley Public Policy Press
Published: 2025-10-20T00:00:00+00:00

The cover of the October 5, 1988, UCLA Daily Bruin featured staffer Dean Florez and state Senator Art Torres at the hearing on racism in the UC system. Photo by Lynette Tsai. Reproduced with permission from Daily Bruin.

After a few years working municipal finance for an investment banking firm, first back East and then in LA, Florez increasingly felt pulled back toward politics and his hometown. First, while Dean was in his last term at Harvard in 1993, a fellow Latino Central Valley Democrat, Cruz Bustamante, was elected to the Assembly in the next district up, centered in Fresno. Next, MBA in hand, Florez was hired by a New York firm that needed a West Coast regional manager to break into municipal finance there. Come 1994, Florez was ensconced in the executive suite of a downtown LA skyscraper as his former boss, Senator Torres, was running for statewide office. But what put him on the ground back ​in Shafter was his mother’s decision to run for the city council there in 1996. Though his Nana had been the political one throughout Dean’s childhood, his mother, Fran, eventually became a community leader in her role as manager of the Bank of America branch in Shafter, which organically drew her into public affairs.

While Dean was reintegrating himself into California goings-on, the state legislature was in upheaval, both at the top and in the historically Democratic Thirtieth Assembly District, which includes Shafter. The Republican incumbent was vulnerable on several counts, including being a Southern California transplant and still largely financed by Orange County money, in a district with a slightly Democratic majority among registered voters. Bustamante, who knew Florez from when they were both legislative staffers, recruited him to serve on the California High-Speed Rail Authority, setting Dean up for a potential Assembly run in his home district. Dean could run as an authentic Thirtieth District homeboy, but he would also be able to tap into external money, which Speaker Bustamante pledged to provide. Bustamante, however, was out as Speaker in February of 1998, and Antonio Villaraigosa was in. Florez and Villaraigosa knew each other only as opponents in the 1991 election that had pitted their respective mentors, Art Torres and Gloria Molina, against each other for LA county supervisor. Antonio bluntly informed Dean that he would not make good on the support Bustamante had promised.

Not long after, first-term Assembly Member Tony Cárdenas, along with Alex Padilla, who was again on his staff, drove to Dean’s campaign office in Shafter to size up his prospects. Florez had thoroughly broken down and assessed the district’s electoral geography and patterns. After determining that winners of either party tended to carry the district by about seven thousand votes, he had set as his fundamental strategic goal to register at least fifteen thousand new voters and get at least half of them to the polls. Alex scrutinized the maps, breakdowns, and data taped up all around on the office walls, noting that if Dean could get 10 percent more here and 7 percent more there, he could win.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.