Second in a four-part series on how Latino political power has changed Los Angeles
PART II: THE SAN FERNANDO VALLEY MACHINE SPEAKS
Alex Padilla was a 22-year-old managing his first election campaign when advisors issued a challenge: Make sure the kickoff party for your guy has at least 100 guests.
The candidate in the 1995 assembly race: Tony Cárdenas, who had never run for office before. They seemed like a political odd couple. Cárdenas, 10 years Padilla’s senior, was a strapping real estate agent. The tall, deep-voiced Padilla wrote satellite software for Hughes Aircraft.
The two had known each other less than a year but hit it off immediately. They were the sons of Mexican immigrants who settled in Pacoima and attended Mary Immaculate Catholic Church.
Elementary school? Telfair. High school? San Fernando High, where white teachers and counselors told them they would never amount to anything.
Both left the northeast San Fernando Valley for college — Cárdenas graduated from UC Santa Barbara and Padilla from MIT. Each realized the only way to make things better for the Valley’s growing Latino community, in an era of anti-immigrant sentiment across California, was to elect politicians who looked like them.
Cárdenas would be their test run.
“And so I had the sense to start with making three phone calls,” Padilla told me over Zoom. “I called one of Tony’s brothers, because Tony is the youngest of 11. So I figured between the siblings, their spouses and their kids, we’re going to get a good chunk.”
He called another friend who came from a family of 11. And then another big family.
“When the political advisors came in,” Padilla continued, “they were like, ‘Man, how’d you pack the room on short notice?’”
He let a beat pass, then grinned.
“That’s how we roll.”
Cárdenas easily won, becoming the first Latino state legislator from the San Fernando Valley. Today, he’s a congressman and Padilla is California’s first Latino U.S. senator. The duo, who room together in D.C., frequently cite that initial campaign as the template they used to construct an L.A. political dynasty worthy of the British royals.
Two years after Cárdenas’ win, Padilla successfully managed the state Senate campaign of Richard Alarcon, who became the Valley’s first Latino council member until Padilla replaced him in 1999. As Cárdenas and Padilla spent the next decade hopping between Sacramento and City Hall, their campaign volunteers — almost all fellow San Fernando Tigers — became their staffers, then elected officials who followed the playbook of their bosses.