Global Courant
It is one of the most loved ranchers in Mexico, a ballad as simple as it is profound, as boastful as it is warning.
“El Hijo del Pueblo— “The People’s Son” — played by Vicente Fernández over the speakers of Chiguacle Sabor Ancestral in Sun Valley as I enjoyed a carne asada dinner about an hour before Imelda Padilla’s election night party.
The 35-year-old hadn’t arrived yet – she made a last-minute call to doubting voters in her bid to win the Council District 6 special round of elections. That’s the seat long held by Nury Martinez, whose career imploded last fall. after the leak of a recording in which she and others made racist remarks.
“It’s my pride to be born / In the humblest barrio”, begins “El Hijo del Pueblo.”
“Away from the hustle and bustle/from a fake society.”
The Padilla campaign never chose a theme song, but it might as well have been this one.
Written by José Alfredo Jiménez, the song is a paean to those who remain with the working class and have no desire to join the powerful. A woman of the people is how Padilla, 35, threw herself against opponent Marisa Alcaraz.
Supporters cheer for Los Angeles City Council District 6 special election candidate Imelda Padilla at her election night party.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
The race was expected to be close because the candidates are so similar. They are Valley residents who only left home to attend a University of California school and came back to make Los Angeles better – Alcaraz as a staffer for Councilman Curren Price, Padilla as a community organizer in the northeastern San Fernando Valley. Both are Democrats who fall on the moderate end of the LA liberal spectrum. Both worked for councilors who ended up in scandal – Alcaraz served as deputy for Richard Alarcon, whose voter fraud conviction was overturned by an appeals court in 2016, and Padilla was Martinez’s deputy.
Their only real difference was where they decided to start their careers. Alcaraz opted for the town hall, Padilla stayed with the neighborhoods of the valley. Their conflicting knowledge of the district they wanted to represent became apparent when I interviewed them the same day in Plaza del Valle, the huge shopping center in Panorama City where each of them had their campaign offices. The candid Padilla told story after story about every resident, every street, in equal parts English and Spanish. Alcaraz couldn’t, because she was painfully unknown.
“I have no shame / That I am not the son of the people.”
By the time Padilla appeared at Chiguacle to thunderous applause shortly after the polls closed, she was up 13 percentage points.
“What a good start, right?” she said, genuinely stunned by the adoration. “Thank you for coming. Let’s mingle!”
It was less victory celebration and more coming home – a San Fernando Valley version of “This is Your Life.”
There were non-profit leaders like Mayra Todd, who runs an organization that helps victims of domestic violence. She hugged Padilla as the two danced happily. “Imelda is the person our community has been waiting for,” said the Van Nuys resident. “We want to work with her to remind her of the promises she made. I don’t think she will be a fraud because she lived our life.”
Community activist Severiana Pablo Reyes has known Padilla for 19 years and remembers the time she called 311 to complain about mosquito-infested puddles at Rosa Parks Learning Hills in North Hills. Padilla – who was then working for Martinez – showed up within 15 minutes. “She never says, ‘It can’t be done,'” the Panorama City resident said. “She always says, ‘Let’s see how it can be done.'”
Alex Reza, the legendary San Fernando high government teacher whose former students included U.S. Senator Alex Padilla, Martinez, and other Valley Latino leaders, hugged Padilla as she slowly walked through Chiguacle’s vast dining room and patio. She attended a different high school, but the two organized youth leadership conferences for Latino teenage boys for years.
“She knows what ordinary, hard-working families go through,” he said. “Boy, Imelda got that”si se puede‘ spirit.”
Former opponents came to pay their respects. Rose Grigoryan finished fourth in the April primaries and subsequently sided with Padilla, especially after a pro-Alcaraz mailer sent to Armenian households used a photo of Grigoryan to suggest an endorsement.
“Once I got to know Imelda personally, not only did I make the right choice, I made the beautiful choice,” she said. “The council is not a position for her; it is a mission.”
Lalo Lopez originally backed Marco Santana in third, but went with Padilla after the two met for lunch and she “won my heart”. Not only did the businessman organize a successful fundraiser, he used his connections to get the candidate on Don Cheto’s popular Spanish-language radio show on election morning.
“She’s the choice, mate,” Lopez said before walking to the bar. “La campeona del pueblo.”
The champion of the people.
Supporters greet Los Angeles City Council District 6 candidate Imelda Padilla as she arrives at her election night party at Chiguacle Sabor Ancestral in Sun Valley.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
”How many millionaires/Would you like to live my life?”
That text stuck with me especially when I saw the political class approach Padilla like gentlemen jockeying to kiss the ring of the new queen.
Valley Congress members Brad Sherman and Tony Cardenas. Councilors John Lee, Traci Park and Marqueese Harris-Dawson. LA County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and State Treasurer Fiona Ma. There were young campaign strategists who all seemed to be wearing the same uniform of sport coats, jeans and fancy sneakers. Enrique Vela and James Acevedo, godfathers of the Valley Latino political machine a generation ago. Acevedo wore a perfectly ironed, dazzling white guayabera that made him look like a Chicano Albert Schweitzer.
It wasn’t just people power that helped Padilla build an early, commanding lead. Campaign finance reports through June 21 showed she slightly outmaneuvered Alcaraz, but beat her in independent spending, $639,000 to $480,000. A mailer pasted a photo of Alcaraz next to a smiling Alarcon, an image from a column I wrote earlier this year. A door hanger featured a portrait of a smiling Padilla on one side, along with a photograph of Price and Alcaraz surrounded by references to the recent felony charges against Price.
“I write my songs / so the people can sing them.”
The party atmosphere in Chiguacle was so lively that most of the audience didn’t stop talking when a short program started around 9:30 pm. They ignored Cardenas and Sherman and did not respond when Father Walter Paredes of Mary Immaculate Church in Pacoima recited the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish, lingering on the line “Deliver us from evil” before offering Padilla a blessing.
The room was still not quiet when a tired but grinning Padilla finally stood on a podium no bigger than a coffee table. She admitted that she was “a little nervous and overwhelmed” but regained her composure when she noted that the circumstances of the special election were “not something the community was excited about”.
Instead of giving a vision, she wanted the pueblo. To the unions who opposed the powerful Los Angeles Federation of Labor after it endorsed Alcaraz. Her family. Her political team, which swarmed the small stage until Padilla almost disappeared. Her pediatrician, who was in the audience and had cured Padilla’s childhood illness of rickets.
Armenians. Salvadorans. Sikhs. A group of middle-aged Latinas who knocked at the door for hours every day and pronounced them “the most” chingonas (badass women) in the world.”
“I think we can enjoy the party now!” Padilla concluded, as everyone roared.
Father Walter Paredes of Mary Immaculate Church in Pacoima blesses District 6 candidate Imelda Padilla at her election night party.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Before she returned to her benefactors, I asked Padilla how she felt.
“Very tired but honored,” she replied, stopping to smile for someone’s selfie. She won’t have much time to rest. If she maintains her lead, she will take her seat once the LA County Registrar of Voters ratifies the election and the city council accepts the results. After that, she has to campaign again: the District 6 seat is on the agenda for regular elections next spring.
What did the adoring masses mean to her?
“It means I have a strong foundation to get the job done.”
Finally, how would she stay in this positive moment? How would she resist the temptations that have hindered too many political newcomers like her, who campaigned for reform only to join the swamp of City Hall?
She didn’t stop or flinch. “I just have to stay involved with everyone who helped me here.”
Padilla thanked me and disappeared into the crowd, moving in all directions. I thought of the last line of “El Hijo del Pueblo,” the only stanza she should hang in her new office, a prophecy of a future I hope she will never meet:
“And the day those people let me down
That day I am going to cry.”
