Richard Alatorre

Richard Alatorre (born May 15, 1943) is an American politician who was a member of the California State Assembly from 1973 to 1985 and the Los Angeles City Council from 1985 to 1999, the second Latino to serve on the council in the 20th century.

Now a lobbyist, he has been called "one of the most influential Latino politicians in the state".

Alatorre was born in 1943, the son of Joe Alatorre of El Paso, Texas, a repairman at a stove factory, and Mary Alatorre of Arizona, a beautician.

He and his sister, Cecelia, were brought up in East Los Angeles.

He began politics early, as he put it, "a student body officer or class officer every semester from junior high school through high school."

He attended and graduated from Garfield High School (Los Angeles), where he was student body president.

In 1960 he heard John F. Kennedy speak at East Los Angeles College and began handing out Kennedy fliers and became involved in the campaign of Leopoldo Sanchez, a Latino candidate for judge.

Alatorre earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology from California State University, Los Angeles, and a master's degree in public administration from the University of Southern California.

and in the late 1960s he was a consultant to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

Alatorre began his California Assembly career as an aide to Assemblyman Walter Karabian.

The latter was "the first Latino in more than two decades" to be elected to the council, the previous one being Edward R. Roybal, who left in 1962.

More than half of the district's 200,000 residents were Latino, but voting strength was historically based in the "mostly Anglo, conservative Eagle Rock area," other neighborhoods being Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights, El Sereno and Highland Park.

It was said that Alatorre's election to the remainder of Snyder's term "filled a huge void in city politics and government" because a city council "without a Latino representative in American's pre-eminent Hispanic city was something of a civic embarrassment, magnified recently when the U.S. Justice Department filed suit against the city, charging that its reapportionment plan had denied Latino representation."

Alatorre dated Carole Creason when she was working for Walter Karabian and State Senator Alfred Song in 1968.

In 1971, he ran as the Democratic candidate for Assembly to succeed David Roberti, who had been advanced to the State Senate.

His opponent was Republican Bill Brophy.

But the day before the election, shots were fired into Brophy's house and, Alatorre told a reporter, the resulting publicity gave Brophy the boost he needed to win the seat.

In 1972 Alatorre ran again, and this time he was elected.

In 1972 he was elected to the California State Assembly, serving 12 years in various capacities, including Chairman on the Select Committee on Farm Labor Violence; Chairman of Human services Committee; Chairman of the historic 1980 Elections and Reapportionment Committee; Founder and Chairman of the Chicano Caucus for the California State Legislature; and Chairman of the Prison Reform Committee.

During his tenure in the Assembly, he authored the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act.

In his Assembly years, from 1973 to 1985, Alatorre "proved himself a reliable member of Speaker Willie L. Brown's fund-raising political machine that milks the business community for money needed to elect Democrats."

"Back-room powerbrokers" in the Assembly also "put him in charge of fashioning a legislative and congressional reapportionment that gave Latinos their most substantial political representation in history."

He "helped shape the state's farm labor law, which gave migrant workers collective bargaining rights. ... he got the UC Irvine School of Medicine to admit more minorities in return for an appropriation for a new teaching hospital."

Los Angeles Times reporter Bill Boyarsky noted in 1985 that "Alatorre is a player. He likes the game. He knows how to push in public and private. He knows how to deal."

As an Assembly member in Sacramento, wrote Times reporter Denise Hamilton, Alatorre earned a reputation as a "hard-nosed deal maker."

Alatorre won a special election in December 1985 by 60 percent of the vote to replace Arthur K. Snyder, who had resigned as Los Angeles City Council District 14 representative and who endorsed Alatorre.

Redistricting, 1986. Alatorre attempted to gain more influence for Hispanic voters by recommending a redistricting plan that would have moved the 13th District of City Councilman Michael Woo, a Chinese-American, away from Woo's power base in Hollywood and—"much against his will—into a two-thirds Latino district."

The move was deemed unnecessary when Councilman Howard Finn died and his District 1 was moved into Northeast Los Angeles to give Latinos a clear shot at electing another council member.

In Alatorre's successful bid for a full four-year term in 1987, he faced opponents who decried Alatorre's "pro-development" stance,

Alatorre was a strong ally of Mayor Tom Bradley and was aligned with pro-development forces.

He was a "vocal advocate" of civil rights, and he helped organize shelters for the homeless.

He obtained state enterprise zones tax incentives for East Los Angeles.

Some of his other positions were:

Boyarsky described him in 1989:

"A slender man of 46, he favors expensive-looking, well-cut Italian suits. ... But his combination of the crude and the pleasant, of bluntness and courtliness, casts an aura that puts off people used to more conventional, or polite, politicians. At City Council meetings, Alatorre slumps in his chair looking bored as his colleagues drone on. He reads the newspapers, sneaks a cigarette at the side of the chambers. And smoking, swearing, always saying, 'Hey, man,' Alatorre acts as if he never left Garfield High."

In high school he was hired by a local jeweler to collect past-due debts from customers.

He also worked for Philip Montez, who became "one of Alatorre's political mentors" and later the regional director for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in Los Angeles.

After college, he taught sociology at California State University, Los Angeles and University of California, Irvine, and night courses in government in the federal prison on Terminal Island.

He also worked with gang members and was a community organizer.

In addition, he was western regional director for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where he successfully initiated lawsuits on behalf of children, many of whom had been assigned to classes for the mentally disabled because they were Spanish speaking.