Group Muscles Its Way to Front of Latino Activism : Politics: Many admire maverick spirit of NEWS for America. Others wonder if it’s fueling ethnic tensions.

In a series of hardball campaigns for Latino candidates and causes, a brash new alliance of Mexican-American activists is thumbing its nose at political decorum, arousing ethnic anxieties and testing the strength of the region’s emerging Latino majority.

Newer and smaller than mainstream organizations such as MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, this insurgent group has muscled its way to the forefront of Latino activism.

It has done so by supporting the successful ouster of Anglo council members in suburban Bell Gardens, by pressuring Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center to hire more Latinos and, most recently, by battling City Hall over the elimination of Latinos from the list of six finalists for Los Angeles police chief.

In one of its more controversial moves, the group recently held a news conference to allege that three finalists had engaged in misconduct, triggering an inquiry by the Police Commission.

The group calls itself NEWS for America, a name that symbolizes the growing size of the Latino population in the north, east, west and south. Its stated purpose is to achieve a proportional share of representation in jobs, politics and government contracts.

In the 18 months since it was formed over breakfast at a Holiday Inn in the east San Fernando Valley, NEWS has emerged as the bad boy of ethnic politics. The group has provoked the ire of prominent Latino officeholders, been accused of pitting browns against blacks and of jeopardizing pending reforms in the Los Angeles Police Department.

At the same time, NEWS has won the loyalty of many Latinos who admire its maverick spirit. “They are doing things that a lot of people have been afraid to do for fear of retribution or because they didn’t feel sufficiently empowered,” said Fernando Guerra, director of Chicano Studies at Loyola Marymount University.

What most distinguishes NEWS from mainstream groups is its blunt disavowal of coalition politics. Unlike traditional ethnic activists, NEWS looks at its own proliferating population and says, in so many words, “we can win without anyone else’s help.”

“NEWS combines ‘60s rhetoric with ‘90s numbers,” said Guerra. “They’re waking Latinos up to the fact that they’re not a minority anymore. It’s a heady feeling.”

Among black leaders--whom NEWS sees as political rivals--reaction has not been favorable.

“In general, I find their tactics very disturbing,” said John Mack, president of the Los Angeles Urban League. “Their notion that ‘it’s our turn and it’s time for blacks to move over’ is very destructive. There is no place for an attitude like that if we are ever going to build a process of mutual coexistence among all ethnic groups.”

The group’s youthful bravado can be deceiving. Although many in the organization cut their teeth in demonstrations and walkouts 25 years ago, the leaders are middle-aged lawyers, business and professional people who display the confidence that comes with material success and professional stature.

Moreover, NEWS leaders estimate that about a quarter of their 100-plus members are Republicans--a characteristic that helps explain the group’s aloofness from the city’s liberal power structure.

As much as anything these days, NEWS’ rhetoric exhorts Latinos to reject the deal-making and bridge-building that has been the hallmark of ethnic politics during the years Mayor Tom Bradley has been in power.

“We have always been so accommodating, so loyal, but it’s gotten us nowhere politically, in government,” said Xavier Hermosillo, a former journalist, legislative aide, management consultant and NEWS’ chairman.

Lawyer and NEWS co-founder Manuel Hidalgo put it more bluntly: “Mexican-Americans have to stop being, quote, ‘fair’ to the blacks and fair to the whites and start thinking about the 40% of the population that is ours. We can afford to be fair to others after we have assumed the reins of power in a few places.”

But that kind of tough talk is not all that sets NEWS apart from other Latino groups, and it is not the only reason why some Latinos regard the group with a mixture of enthusiasm and wariness.

There is concern that NEWS’ drive for a proportional share of political spoils sets the organization on a collision course with other ethnic groups, particularly African-Americans.

Raul Nunez, a Chicano labor leader and NEWS co-founder, contends that the makeup of the Los Angeles County work force, which employs many more blacks than Latinos, represents the kind of ethnic imbalance Latinos should no longer put up with.

“The Latino population is three times as big as the black population, and yet there are almost twice as many blacks as Latinos on the county payroll. How is that fair?” Nunez asked recently. Last week, the group won a partial victory when the county settled a civil rights complaint by agreeing to hire and promote more Latinos within the county’s vast public health system.

But NEWS is not representative of the region’s Latino population.

The group offers membership only to Mexican-Americans. It defends its exclusivity on the grounds that other, more broad-based Latino groups have lost their edge struggling with an unwieldy checklist that ranges from immigration reform to foreign policy in Central America.

“We want to concentrate on the political and economic advancement of Mexican-Americans in the U.S., because we are the ones who have been here the longest and have the greatest stake in the system,” Hidalgo said. “To the extent we succeed, all Latinos will benefit.”

While NEWS is officially nonpartisan and includes more Democrats than Republicans, the conservatism of some of its leaders has been identified with NEWS’ agenda on occasion, prompting some liberals to distance themselves on certain issues. Such was the case when several prominent NEWS members--including former U.S. ambassador to Mexico Julian Nava--announced a short-lived recall effort against Bradley last year.

“I have paid my dues to NEWS, but I am ambivalent about the group,” said Juan Jose Gutierrez, executive director of an immigration counseling center in Boyle Heights. “I have been extremely upset at times at the manner the people in NEWS have maneuvered to do things.”

NEWS leaders also drew criticism last year when they flirted with endorsing a Latino to replace retiring Supervisor Kenneth Hahn in the only district where African-Americans have a realistic hope of electing a black supervisor. There has never been one elected to the county board.

“The idea of backing a Latino candidate in that district didn’t make sense politically,” said one veteran Latino Democratic organizer who noted that Latinos make up less than 20% of the electorate in the district. “All NEWS was going do was irritate some people, and there is enough danger already of a black-brown confrontation.”

NEWS also draws questions about its chairman, Hermosillo, whose controversial past has helped color popular perceptions of the group and led one left-of-center newspaper commentator to label NEWS as a bunch of “Reaganized Mexicans.”

An outspoken Republican, Hermosillo incurred the wrath of environmental activists, including members of the formidable United Neighborhoods Organization, when he became the hired publicist of a project by Chem-Clear Inc. to build a hazardous-waste treatment plan a block away from Huntington Park High School. Chem-Clear withdrew its proposal in the face of opposition from the predominantly Latino community.

Hermosillo also was on the spot for his part as a paid consultant in Irwindale’s failed bid to become the new home of the Los Angeles Raiders. Afterward, some city officials described Hermosillo as a self-promoter who made money for himself and the Raiders at Irwindale’s expense.

Hermosillo plays down his role at NEWS, describing himself as the group’s message carrier rather than a policy-maker. And he says people who regard him as an opportunist are wrong if they suspect he has a hidden agenda at NEWS.

“I like being an entrepreneur and feeding my family,” he said. “I also have an interest in creating a better community for my five kids. That’s what motivates me.”

Nonetheless, his presence is one of the reasons why potential supporters of NEWS remain at least slightly ambivalent.

“Many of the things that they are saying need to be said,” said Guerra, “though sometimes I don’t like the way they say it, and with some of those guys I wonder if they don’t have an agenda or a client base that they haven’t identified.”

From its base in East Los Angeles, NEWS became a player in city politics when it began contesting the fairness of the City Hall process for picking a new police chief. NEWS became involved after the leading Latino candidate--Lee Baca, a high-ranking official with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department--was dropped from a list of finalists because of a city rule giving an edge to candidates from within the Police Department.

Last Friday, in a bitter setback, NEWS was unable to persuade the City Council to approve a motion by Councilman Richard Alatorre that would have delayed the selection of a new chief until after the June 2 election, when voters will decide whether to eliminate the advantage for insiders.

NEWS has been accused of playing racial politics with the chief’s job and of jeopardizing efforts to make the Police Department more responsive to minorities in general. The selection of a new chief is widely seen as the most important step in a reform process aimed at rooting out the causes of police brutality after the Rodney G. King beating.

A few Latino officials have also been critical of NEWS’ tactics, especially the group’s allegations of wrongdoing against three of the chief finalists, all of whom have denied acting improperly.

“They would have better served the community if they had kept their focus on the problems with the (police chief) selection process instead of attacking the candidates,” said Alma Martinez, an aide to County Supervisor Gloria Molina. “If their role is to be Geraldo Rivera types, they’re fulfilling it.”

NEWS leaders insist that they have no desire to stir up trouble between various ethnic groups. On the other hand, they say they are not afraid of a fight.

“We’re not here to do battle with the blacks or the whites,” said Nunez. “But people usually don’t give up power without a struggle.”

Moreover, they argued that the politics of race relations in Los Angeles all too often are played at the expense of Latinos.

Commenting on the selection of the police chief, Nava said he felt that the deck was stacked in favor of the black candidates. He said he believed that it was the intent of the Police Commission, which is responsible for making the selection, to pick an African-American.

“It is the broad sentiment among NEWS members that Mayor Bradley’s appointees, out of a misplaced guilt, want to make sure that the next chief is black.”

If NEWS’ growing reputation for bare-knuckles politics puts some people off, it has struck a sympathetic chord with many Latino residents.

“NEWS is taking on the issues that matter most in the Latino community because they’re the ones we read about and see on TV,” said Diane Gonzalez, an aide to State Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles).

As was the case last Friday, NEWS does not always triumph. The group gave up on its effort to recall Bradley when it became clear that the campaign was going nowhere. Later, it failed in an attempt to block the selection of an out-of-state architect to build the new County-USC Medical Center, arguing that fewer jobs would go to Latinos.

But none of this seems to have dented the group’s optimism or its penchant for pushing political hot buttons.

Hidalgo recently described Bell Gardens and neighboring communities in southeast Los Angeles where the population is heavily Latino as “the seven cities of Aztlan.” It was a reference to the Aztec civilization of ancient Mexico. Such talk lends a proprietary air to the group’s politics, for which the members are not apologetic.

“We are the majority,” Hidalgo said. “The mantle of leadership is (moving) to us. We will lead. We have no choice because our numbers will continue to grow.”

That sentiment helps explain the group’s curious name. NEWS, as in north, east, west and south. As in “we’re everywhere,” Hidalgo said. “That’s the news for America.”