A Weblog by L.A. Daily News Reporter/Columnist Tony Castro
'A Child Shall Lead the Way...'
June 21, 2008In Barack Obama's presidential campaign, the mantra of the faithful has been that a child shall lead them - but few were taking that literally.
Now, though, they have 14-year-old Joshua Steele of Studio City, who is too young to vote but not too young to show them the way...
Posted by Tony Castro at 04:16 AM | Permalink
Obama to Hillary: Read My Lips
June 17, 2008When Hillary Clinton fired campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle some months
back, the ouster effectively branded the top Latina in her presidential bid the scapegoat for her failure. The move also quietly angered Latino political insiders who knew the campaigns flaws ran much deeper.
On Tuesday, Solis Doyle got some revenge -- and a lot of respect -- back when Barack Obama named her the chief of staff to whoever winds up becoming his vice-presidential running mate.
Obama is either trying to heal wounds between the two women or sending a message to the Clintons that he has kissed off Hillary as his VP, and only a fool would believe the former.
Meanwhile, the appointment hasn't gone unnoticed in Latino political circles which have warmed up significantly to Obama since he clinched the nomination.
Posted by Tony Castro at 01:10 AM | Permalink
Couple Marks California's First Same-Sex Marriage
June 16, 2008BEVERLY HILLS -- A wrongful arrest years ago in New York for impersonating a woman led Robin Tyler to becoming the best female impersonator of her time – yes, she really was a woman, a leading gay rights activist and a career in show business.
“I did Judy Garland, and I could really sing like her,” says Tyler. “But the guys in the show had to show me how to walk in (high) heels.”
On the other side of the country, the granddaughter of a former governor of California, Diane Olson was born into a life of privilege in Beverly Hills that could have led to debutante ball and society circles.
“My grandfather was the first Democratic governor of California,” says Olson. “He was progressive and ran on the platform of separation of church and state.”
On Monday, their two unlikely paths led to history when they became the first same-sex couple to legally marry in California – the result of their lawsuit that knocked down the state’s laws against gay marriage.
Tyler, 66, and Olson, 54, who share a home in North Hills in the San Fernando Valley were married shortly after 5 p.m. by Rabbi Denise Eger in a Jewish ceremony on the front steps of the Beverly Hills courthouse where they were denied a marriage license each Valentine’s Day each of the last eight years.
Technically, they shared the moment of being the first same-sex couple to marry in California with Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon who were married also shortly after 5 p.m. in San Francisco by Mayor Gavin Newsom.
The two couples were allowed to marry on the eve of when the state begins to issue marriage licenses to same-sex partners because of their unique roles in lawsuits from Los Angeles and San Francisco that led to last month’s Supreme Court decision declaring the ban on gay marriage unconstitutional.
Their landmark marriages took place even as opponents of same-sex marriage, including Cardinal Roger Mahony of the Los Angeles Roman Catholic Archdiocese and other religious leaders, objected with their belief that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.
On Tuesday, hundreds of same-sex couples are expected to jam courthouses in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other counties applying for marriage licenses, with many of them also marrying that day.
Among those will be actor George Takei, who best known for his role as helmsman Hikaru Sulu on “Star Trek,” and his partner Brad Altman. They will help open the wedding license facility in West Hollywood, where hundreds of couples are expected to get their licenses and marry Tuesday.
But on Monday it wa the two early marriages that stole the thunder.
Wearing identical three-piece, cream-colored suits, Tyler and Olson exchanged vows before a throng of relatives, friends, supporters, on-lookers and a national news media spotlight.
As the days counted down to when they could marry, the two San Fernando Valley women captured most of the focus in large part because of their backgrounds.
Tyler, a former comedienne and national gay rights activist who organized three national gay rights movement marches on Washington, D.C. Olson, the granddaughter of Culbert Levy Olson, governor of California from 1938 to 1942.
Understandably, in the days just before the long-awaited ceremony, they became slightly irritated at some of spotlight they found bothersome.
“Is there this much attention paid to what heterosexual couples (who are marrying) are wearing? The cake they’re ordering? The flowers?” Tyler asked about all the questions on their wedding arrangements.
Assured that there is similar curiosity about all weddings, Tyler softened.
“Well, okay,” she said. “I guess it is kinda big.”
But there were also some funny moments.
When a reporter for a Jewish publication seemed curious that she was marrying a non-Jew, asking questions such as whether they had a mezuzah on their front door and whether she believed in intermarriage, Tyler shot back:
"If women want to marry men, it's perfectly okay with me!"
“Stupid, I'm not,” says Tyler. “I knew this was about Diane not being Jewish. But I quickly told him, ‘We both believe in a higher power.”
Tyler’s name at birth was Chernick, which she says she changed when “I was in teens so my mother wouldn't know I was performing on high holidays.”
Both women also were supported by their families in their wedding day.
Tyler’s brother Robert Chernick and his wife Maureen came into town days earlier and rode on a float with the bridal couple in the Los Angeles Gay Pride Parade.
“They dressed as California Supreme Court justices and held up our hands in victory,” says Tyler. “Yes, we wore tuxedos, and they had signs saying "Supreme Court" hanging around their necks. Believe it or not, several gay people asked them for autographs.”
Also attending the wedding were Diane's sister, Debra Olson, and Debra's grown daughters, Chrysta and Kaitlyn.
It was Debra Olson who introduced Tyler to her sister almost four decades ago, and the two later become close friends and developed a relationship 15 years ago.
“She was sober, and in the program for many years,” says Tyler. “I began going to 12 steps meetings with her, and gave up drinking. We fell in love. But we had known each other well and been friends for years.”
For Tyler, her wedding day was a long way from the trauma in 1962 of getting arrested in a New York gay club and, she says, arrested by police who mistake her for a woman dressed as a man and charge her with violating the cross-dressing laws on the books at the time.
From jail, Tyler says, she called the New York tabloids with her story, ultimately becoming a cause celeb and attracting the attention of a local drag club owner who hired her to impersonate Judy Garland, who was a heartthrob of the gay nightclub crowd.
“I looked like her,” says Tyler, showing a visitor to her office photographs from that period showing a remarkable resemblance to the entertainment icon. “This wasn’t lip-syncing. The club had a 15-piece orchestra, and I could sing like her.”
She breaks into what is still a respectable Judy Garland vocal riff and for further proof shows off a video of her impersonation.
For her part, Olson just smiles and enjoys the moment. She is friendly but reserved.
“Because Diane is soft spoken she has never been on the front lines of the gay movement but always on the sidelines, totally supportive,” says Tyler.
“She never used her political pedigree about being Culbert Levy Olson's granddaughter, but when we sued to get married, she decided to make it public, because he ran on the platform of 'separation of church and state.' She turned to me and said, ‘Go for it.’”
Posted by Tony Castro at 02:18 PM | Permalink
The Politics of Same-Sex Marriage
June 13, 2008A story lost in the buzz and uproar of the onlaught of same-sex marriages that begins Monday night is the political backbiting that has gone on behind the scenes.
The quietly feuding sides are the gay and lesbian community of San Francisco and the two pairs of Los Angeles-based original co-plaintiffs of the landmark lawsuit that last month resulted in the California Supreme Court knocking down the ban on same-sex marriages.
One of those Los Angeles couples, Robin Tyler and Diane Olson, will wed Monday evening when they become one of the first two same-sex couples to marry legally in California.
A special arrangement with officials will allow Tyler and Olson to marry early to recognize heir role in the case, and similar arrangements in San Francisco will allow Mayor Gavin Newsom to officiate at the marriage of Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon Monday evening. Martin and Lyon were the first same-sex couple to marry during the 2004 Winter of Love in that city, but this time their wedding will be legal.
But it is the Tyler-Olson wedding that has stolen the thunder, much to the chagrin of activists in San Francisco, who even employed a public relations firm to help establish it as the heart of the same-sex marriage movement.
Only in the past month, though, has it become clear that Ground Zero of same-sex marriage has been in L.A., specifically the Beverly Hills courthouse where Tyler and Olson had tried unsuccessfully every Valentines Day since 2001 to get a marriage license.
Tyler and Olson, along with two other co-defendants, actually filed the first lawsuit challenging the state’s marital law through high-powered attorney Gloria Allred.
Last week, as they were making arrangements for their historic wedding, Tyler and Olson recalled that their original lawsuit had made negative waves even within the gay and lesbian communities.
"The truth is we started this lawsuit against everybody telling us we would lose,” says Tyler. “But a lot of the people who shunned us for filing this lawsuit are the same ones who are now getting a lot of credit.”
We stepped out of the loop,” says Olson. “(Some gay activists) were mad at us that we didn’t go through a gay law firm to do this. (But) Gloria (Allred) has been a friend of ours for a long time. They kept telling Robin, ‘Wait. Wait. It’ll be political suicide. Don’t rock any boats. It’s too soon. It’s a Republican-appointed Supreme Court.
"I said I’m not afraid of conservatives if they’ll interpret the constitution.”
Posted by Tony Castro at 02:59 PM | Permalink
Clinton Lessons for Antonio's Trip to Israel
June 11, 2008As a national co-chair of the just-completed campaign debacle of the Clintons, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa should have learned a few lessons for his own future campaigns.
1. Do not refer to yourself as the honorary "Jewish mayor of Los Angeles."
Resist the temptation, especially as you try to corner the important Jewish vote which will be critical to your ambitions of becoming governor in 2010. Even if this is your third trip to Israel during your political career. Remember what price Bill Clinton had to pay as "America's first black president" when that mantel backfired. Or the price Hillary had to pay.
2. Do not "recall" that you "landed under sniper fire" of your visit to Sderot.
In a future campaign it will be tempting to impress with being in danger in the Middle East, especially since Sderot is a town on the Gaza border that has faced repeated rocket attacks by Palestinians. Just recall how well such recollections about Yugoslavia paid off for Hillary.
3.Watch what you say to Israelis on those village streets.
Remember Bill's lesson on the rope line talking to a crowd at Millbank, S.D. You never know when someone's a citizen journalist and when your words will wind up on YouTube.
Posted by Tony Castro at 11:32 AM | Permalink
McCain's Latino Strategy: The Cubans
June 10, 2008Leave it to John McCain to kick off his wooing of the Latino voter with a Spanish radio commercial appealing to the Cubans in Florida who are possibly the closest thing to a lock-cinch for the Republicans next to the party's loyal right-wingers.
In an attempt to knock Barack Obama's willingness to meet with some enemies of the U.S., McCain's ad tells Cuban Americans he would effectively continue the four-decades-old embargo of Cuba and not meet with new Cuban president Raul Castro until the release of all political prisoners in that country.
"While some support a dialogue with Raul Castro, John McCain believes we should support the courageous men and women who continue to stand up for freedom in Cuba. Rather than resume relations with Raul Castro, John McCain wants first and foremost for all political prisoners to be released."
A more important Latino voting bloc that poses a potential threat to the GOP's hold on states such as Texas are the Mexican Americans in the Southwest, and McCain hasn't yet begun addressing that constituency in the months since clinching the Republican nomination.
Smart, John.
Posted by Tony Castro at 04:38 PM | Permalink
Antonio in an Obama Administration?
June 09, 2008Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's name has already popped up in the Barack Obama camp's discussions transforming his primary organization into a political machine for the general election.
Villaraigosa has been mentioned in talks about sending organizers and surrogates into important possible swing states like Texas, Colorado and Michigan -- states with large blocs of Latino voters, which were one of Obama's noticeable weaknesses in the primaries.
Antonio was one of Hillary Clinton's national co-chairs and campaigned for her extensively among Latino voters. He endeared himself to the Obama campaign last week when on the day after the final June 3 primaries, he endorsed his Illinois senator and acknowledged he was the presumptive Democratic nominee while Clinton held out for three more days.
Villaraigosa figures to be potentially be one of Obama's important campaign surrogates among Latinos along with former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros.
Posted by Tony Castro at 02:03 PM | Permalink
Why Obama Will Win the Nomination...
February 11, 2008... or Hillary will wind up killing the party as we know it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/opinion/10rich.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Posted by Tony Castro at 04:09 PM | Permalink
Top advisers a window into hopeful's thinking
February 04, 2008Ruth Prince Hladky of Studio City has been a
Republican for years, but she has re-registered as a Democrat for
Tuesday's California presidential primary just to be able to vote
against Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. "I'm worried about what changes he might bring," said Hladky,
70, an executive assistant to the head of a major restaurant chain.
"Does anybody really know him? Does anybody know who his advisers are -
his kitchen cabinet?" President Reagan's White House popularized the term
"kitchen cabinet," the tight coterie of kingmakers and advisers around
him, but the term dates back to the presidency of Andrew Jackson, whose
political opponents gave the name to the collection of unofficial
advisers he consulted about the counsel of his official cabinet. In presidential campaigns, kitchen cabinets and inner
circles have historically provided a window to the influences that
define and shape politicians seeking the country's highest office. "Inner circles, so-called kitchen cabinets, play very
important roles in campaigns," said Jaime Regalado, executive director
of the Pat Brown Institute at California State University, Los Angeles.
"Hopefully, the best campaigns tap into the human resources
that give a candidate a better understanding of issues and
policy-making." Yet rarely do kitchen cabinets and inner circles surface as issues on the presidential campaign landscape.
"But Barack Obama is the unknown in this campaign," Los Angeles political consultant Bill
Orozco said. "He's African-American, but I don't think it's race alone
that may bother some people.
"It's also that he's been in the Senate only a short time. It's fair to ask: `Who is he? Who influences his thinking?"'
Most of the other presidential front-runners in both parties, after all, have been in the public eye much longer and have gone through the political vetting process. And their kitchen cabinets include policy advisers, high-level staff members, big money fundraisers and aides to former presidents.
Perhaps no one has been through more than New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, and she might have the ultimate adviser in her husband, President Clinton, whose interview in a new book "The Second Civil War," by political writer Ronald Brownstein, may offer insight into the counsel he has given his wife.
The former president said he would have opted for a more bipartisan influence in his White House, bringing both Democrats and Republicans into talks to try to ease the polarization in Washington.
"If I had to do it over again, I would block out significantly greater time ... to just bring these guys in and let them say whatever the hell they want to say to me," Clinton said.
It is that kind of familiarity to who is advising Hillary Clinton that could give her an added advantage over Obama.
"What makes Obama so attractive to many people - his newness to Washington and his portrayal of an outsider seeking change - is a double-edge sword," Orozco said. "He hasn't been through fire like Hillary Clinton or John McCain."
Yet a survey of political experts on the potential inner circles of both Democratic and Republican front-runners suggests that Obama's kitchen cabinet is not much different from those of other leading cabinets.
Obama's inner circle of advisers is made up of Harvard law professors who were his mentors in college, an influential Chicago pastor whom he calls his moral compass and a small bipartisan group of U.S. senators and an Illinois legislator who have guided his political career in Springfield, Ill., and Washington.
Obama has also borrowed Bill Clinton's advice on bipartisan influences. His inner circle includes the counsel of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, who has been a mentor in Washington, as well as of Joseph Lieberman, the Democrat-turned-Independent who has endorsed McCain in the GOP but also has been a mentor in the Senate.
In Los Angeles last month for an intimate economic discussion with four San Fernando Valley residents, Obama said he enjoys talking with small groups to compare with professional advice he receives.
"We've been holding these small group sessions on various issues," he said. "It's good to get input from people around the country and not just what you're getting in Washington."
Harvard constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, for whom Obama served as a research assistant while at the Harvard Law School, said the Illinois senator is uniquely qualified among the students he has known.
"On the whole, Barack is sufficiently well-versed on policy matters and issues that I don't think any adviser could do a better job of advising him or write much better than he does himself," Tribe said.
"No speech-writer, no ghostwriter could write as well as he does."
Still, Tribe said Obama has called upon him at times for advice on such issues as habeas corpus, the Guantanamo mistreatment of prisoners and the Justice Department scandal.
"I am privileged to advise him," Tribe said. "But he's his own man."
Posted by Tony Castro at 02:42 PM | Permalink
Will Latinos Decide the California Primary?
February 02, 2008In wooing Latino voters, Hillary Clinton may have elevated the taco to political symbolism, which made a Mexican restaurant in Hollywood an ideal site for some old fashion arm-twisting and deal-cutting in the presidential campaign.
At a dimly table filled with margaritas and tortilla chips, a group of disappointed volunteers from the defunct Bill Richardson campaign debated whether they should shift allegiance to Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama when one of them heard their cell phone ringing.
“I just got a call from Hilda Solis,” said longtime activist Ruben Treviso, who heads the politically connected Latino veterans group, the American G. I. Forum. “She read me the riot act. I’ve got to go with Clinton.”
But the influence of Solis, the powerful, four-term San Gabriel Valley congresswoman supporting Clinton, only went so far.
By the time the meeting ended, the group of Los Angeles activists who had campaigned for Richardson in the snows of Iowa and New Hampshire decided to split up evenly between Clinton and Obama and campaign among Latinos for both leading up to the Feb. 5 California primary where they account for about a quarter of likely Democratic voters.
“We decided it wouldn’t be a good idea to put all our eggs in one basket,” said Treviso. “It’s one thing to be a lawmaker in Washington. It’s another living out here.”
The incident dramatically underscores that the Latino vote is not as simplistic and monolithic as too often portrayed in the national news media: Latinos don’t necessarily accept the endorsements of elected officials as political gospel, and they aren’t automatically rejecting Obama because of historic racial-ethnic tensions.
For despite the endorsement of most of the country’s leading Latino leaders, Clinton has been getting only two in three Latino votes – only slightly better than what the Democratic nominees have received in recent presidential elections.
In last month's Nevada caucuses, Obama received 26 percent of the Latino votes to Clinton’s 64 percent. A California Field Poll released last week showed Clinton holding a 3-to-1 lead over Latino voters.
The endorsement of Obama by Democratic icon and Latino darling Ted Kennedy, who has been campaigning on his behalf in California and the Southwest, could well change the balance of power.
Obama himself continues to be confident that the numbers will increase in California.
“My history is excellent with Latino supporters back in Illinois, because they knew my record,” he said in his recent campaign stop in Van Nuys. “It’s important to get my record known in the Latino community, and our supporters in California like Maria Elena Durazo will help accomplish that.”
Durazo is the popular and influential head of the heavily Latino Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, who last week took a leave from her position to endorse Obama and join his campaign organization in California.
The challenge facing Obama in wooing Latino voters, both the Obama campaign and Latino insiders say, is not the racial tensions between the two groups but a more sophisticated and subtle issue: The fears that a black president could jeopardize the political and economic gains Latinos have made in the last generation as they have outnumbered African Americans in the population.
“They say things like, ‘If Obama is elected, Latinos will start losing all the gains they’ve made in recent years,” says Lucy Casado, owner of the Hollywood restaurant where the former Richardson activists met and a founder of the Mexican American Political Association in California.
In fact, a growing number of Latinos and African Americans believe that the historic racial divide separating the two groups is no longer what it once was, though it continues to be the focus of many outsiders.
“The media in general have been too anxious to portray that side as if it is always a case of troublesome conflict,” says Jaime Regalado, executive director or the Pat Brown Institute at California State University, Los Angeles. “The truth is that they are building a history of cooperation, living and working side by side.”
Underscoring that point is a new study by three University of California at Irvine criminologists concluding that Los Angeles is not on the brink of a major interracial crime wave that they blame on the news media’s increasing fixation on the specter of black-versus-brown violence.
According to scholars John R. Hipp, George E. Tita and Lindsay N. Boggess, street violence (in Los Angeles) has been overwhelmingly intra-racial rather than interracial.
"Blacks are about 500 percent more likely to assault a fellow black than a Latino and about 650 percent more likely to murder a fellow black,” the student contends. For their part, Latino offenders are also much more likely to assault or murder another Latino than an African American.
Activists of both sides say the media obsession with ethnic-racial conflict has overshadowed significant but far less glamorous progress made in race relations in America’s most diverse city.
Those strides, in evidence at Monday’s Martin Luther King Jr. parade in South Los Angeles, includes such bridge building as the Latino and African-American Leadership Alliance, a new coalition chaired by South L.A. activist Najee Ali and Christine Chavez, the granddaughter of farm worker legend and Mexican American icon Cesar Chavez.
Symbolic of that bridge-building was the selection of this year’s parade grand marshal – Mildred Garcia, president of California State University, Dominguez Hills.
“Like Dr. King, she is breaking down barriers for women and minorities while continuously striving towards the best in education,” says parade founder Larry Grant.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa built his historic election in 2005 on a multi-racial coalition, but other politicians have found duplicating his success rough-going.
“Latinos have had more difficulty in general supporting Obama than African Americans have had,” says Regalado. “It’s an uphill struggle in the Golden State here for Obama because the (Latino) base is supporting Hillary, and he will need the independent vote to offset that.”
For the record, few Latino voters will publicly admit they will not vote for Obama because he is black.
“Hillary gives them an out,” says Latino political activist Alex Jacinto. “Of course, there’s an undercurrent (of racism), but no one is going to go there.”
The issue, say sociologists and racial experts, is also deep-rooted among Latinos: Though Obama and other African Americans often include Latinos when talking about “people of color,” few Latinos identify themselves as such. According to the 2004 Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, 58.5 percent of Latinos identified themselves as “white,” 35.2 percent claimed “some other race,” 3.6 percent checked “two or more races” an only 1.6 percent self-identified as “black.”
Other Latinos like San Fernando Valley activist Joe Lozano of Mission Hills are quick to reject Obama, if not for his race for what they believe his faith to be.
“Our great country is not ready to be run by a Muslim as I am told he is,” says Lozano, who admits having believed the untrue blog and email rumors circulating about Obama on the Internet.
Still, Obama’s campaign boasts of several recent developments that they say dispel the notion that Latinos will not support the Illinois senator: The endorsement of Durazo, the who has deep roots in the Los Angeles labor and Latino movements; the backing of several elected Democratic officials, among them Rep. Linda Sanchez of California, Senate Majority Leader Gloria Romero of Los Angeles and State Senator Gil Cedillo of the Los Angeles Eastside; and the recent economic roundtable discussion in Van Nuys that included two Latino supporters among the four participants.
They also point to grassroots organizers like Leila Linford, 27, of Long Beach, the University California at Riverside graduate and daughter of a Cuban mother and American father – both Republicans – who has been working in Latino communities on behalf of Obama for months. Or 17-year-old Gustavo Delgado, a Cypress College student from Orange County, who has been averaging over 20 hours a week volunteering in the campaign.
“I think he is not afraid to deal with countries that don’t agree with or align with the American status quo,” says Delgado, who was first drawn to Obama when he appeared on the cover of Time magazine, “and that he will bring the country back to its previous status in the world, where we are respected in the world and where we learn to put our priorities in order and care for the people and issues at home.”
Adds Linford:
“I consider myself an idealist, and (Obama) speaks to me in that sense. I also know he can also get things done. He has an excellent track record. I have done my research and I believe he is working on the people’s behalf. I love that he doesn’t accept any lobbyist’s money -- it all comes from us. He wants to bring the power back to the people; he wants to change things and lead our world into a new direction. He was against the war from the beginning, when the war was popular.”
Obama supporters have also been buoyed by the CNN and Opinion Research Corp. survey released Monday showing that a growing number of Americans can now accept an African American president.
Obama himself confidently refuses to accept the notions that Latinos reject him. As he as leaving his recent Van Nuys backyard appearance, Obama took one last question from a Spanish television network reporter: Did he believe there was a pattern of Latinos voting against black candidates?
“No, in Illinois – they all voted for me,” he said. “Yes, there have been historical patterns. But there are places like California where those patterns are going to be broken.”
Posted by Tony Castro at 11:16 AM | Permalink
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