Just Who Is Henry Lozano?

This Henry Lozano guy must be some piece of work.

Lozano is the much less publicized other party in the child custody fight with Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre and his wife, Angie. The battle has so far proved less a forum for deciding where Lozano’s 10-year-old daughter might best live than an examination of the very complicated life of the Alatorres.

It is Alatorre, not Lozano, who in the course of the dispute has failed a test for cocaine use. It is Alatorre, not Lozano, who is accused of taking cash from City Hall contractors. It is Alatorre who is being investigated by the FBI and the IRS. It is Alatorre whose career is threatened.

Yet the judge in the case, Henry W. Shatford, has entrusted care of Lozano’s daughter to the Alatorres. In doing so, Shatford said Lozano’s presence would be detrimental to the child. In his final word on the matter he wrote:

“The court would think Lozano would forget about winning or losing the custody battle at this time and think only of [the child’s] well-being, leaving her with the Alatorres.”

Given all of Richard Alatorre’s problems and the undisputed fact that Lozano is the child’s natural father, you’re left to wonder just how horrible Lozano must be.

That Lozano is not a monster and, instead, that friends say he is one of the best people they know does little to resolve the confusion.

Henry Lozano is a small, thick man with flat features beneath a fading twirl of pompadour. His dark eyes are set deep under a crooked brow and going deeper by the week.

The eyes tucked back in there are nervous, wary, moving like those of a man who’s been hit so much that his immediate concern in life is ducking the next punch.

Lozano is 65 years old, the chief of staff to a local Democratic congressman. He has spent nearly his entire adult life behind the scenes in the boisterous world of East Los Angeles politics. It would not be farfetched to say he is one of the people who built that world.

Lozano’s political philosophy is not especially complicated. It was stamped in him in the little south Texas town where he grew up and where, as a third generation American, he was forced to attend Latino-only schools. He has spent much of his life since seeking redress. Whatever campaign or cause he happens to be working on at any moment, part of what he is doing is securing the rights he felt that boy was deprived of.

“It’s how you get things done,” Lozano says. “Political decisions that affect you are being made from the day you’re born to the day you die. Every single day. Unless we’re part of that, we lose.”

He left Texas to join the Marines, mustered out in California in the ‘50s and stayed here when his brother-in-law helped him land a job at an Eastside aerospace plant. There, he became active first in the labor movement, then in the burgeoning Latino politics of the period.

Almost everybody who knows Lozano from back then recalls meeting him at a rally, a meeting or a political bull session.

This wasn’t a bunch of dreamy ‘60s radicals sitting around imagining a better world. Every once in a while somebody would get rambunctious and climb on a table at a place like Googies and proclaim the solution to all the problems then afflicting mankind. But for the most part these were tough, hard-nosed men, trained in Walter Reuther’s stern union organizing campaigns. They measured success in specifics--this many jobs gained, that many contracts signed.

The men in this world met almost nightly in Pico Rivera or the City of Commerce, in beer bars like the old El Intimo, in the back rooms and corner booths of pasta joints and steakhouses like the Dal Rae and Stevens.

Outside were the million bungalows of old Los Angeles. Inside were whiskey and waitresses in tights and decollete dresses. The bar stools were Naugahyde; the lunch special came with an iceberg lettuce salad and a double martini.

From the outside, this scene had all the allure of a rat-infested warehouse. Inside, it had the appeal of air. You breathed it to live.

Lozano grew up politically in these joints, and when he graduated to the broader stage, he brought the ethic of the joints--a sense of handshake honor and personal relationships--with him.

Today’s politics are more muted, its loyalties less enduring, its practitioners scrubbed up, smoother and prettier. But Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles), Lozano’s current boss, says there will always be a place for people like Lozano, old-fashioned nuts-and-bolts coalition builders.

For three decades Lozano has been in a notably quiet way a powerful man. As chief of staff for former Rep. Edward Roybal (D-Los Angeles), Lozano was the keeper of the keys to a kingdom of federal largess. For many of those years, Roybal was the highest-ranking Westerner on the House Appropriations Committee, one of the so-called 13 cardinals who chaired with considerable autonomy appropriations subcommittees. As the head of Roybal’s staff, Lozano “ran the West Coast,” one person said. “Everything went through Henry.”

Beyond doling out federal dollars, Roybal was far and away the most powerful Latino in Congress, and Lozano has been in the thick of almost every significant campaign involving Latinos or Latino issues for what seems like forever.

He has counseled a thousand and one ambitious young pols, including his current foe, Alatorre. He helped engineer Gloria Molina’s rise from obscure activist to one of the most powerful political figures in the state. He shepherded Becerra, current chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, through every step of a still-young and promising career. He helped repair the damage when Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa’s rising star dimmed under a cloud of rumors of marital infidelity.

Lozano’s office is in a bland Echo Park office building above a bank. Amid the usual debris of political life--the grip-and-grin signed photos, the precinct lists, a desktop statuette of a horse’s ass, an “I love golf” mug--the most telling feature of the office is Lozano’s Rolodex. Rather, Rolodexes. Seven of them sit on a credenza behind the desk. Seven more are on the floor.

Several times, interns have been assigned the task of organizing the thousands of names. Several times they’ve failed. The only organization is in Henry Lozano’s head.

Henry knows everybody.

Henry’s job is to know everybody.

He is famous in his world for this. Ask Henry, young political aspirants are told. Go see Henry. See what Henry thinks. Get Henry’s help. Call Henry.

‘Angie, I’ve Gotta See My Baby’

The facts, in so far as they are agreed upon, are these:

Fifteen years ago, Angie Alatorre introduced Lozano, a married man and father of five, to her sister, Belinda Ramos Nykoluk. They began an affair. Ten years ago, they had a child. Lozano’s marriage at the time had reached an impasse of mutual convenience. He and his wife, Isabel, shared their Pico Rivera bungalow, but little else. Lozano was a constant companion of Belinda, and hence the child, for several years after her birth. Yet he made no public acknowledgment of paternity. The birth certificate does not mention him. Many friends knew about the baby. Many others did not.

Six years ago, when the girl was 4, Henry and Belinda broke up. They had talked about marriage, but Lozano never went through with his divorce. During this same period one of Lozano’s three sons drowned and another committed suicide. He was unsettled, his wife despondent. He stayed, nominally, in the marriage.

The split with Belinda was amicable, so much so that Henry baby-sat while Belinda went on dates with other men; afterward, she would ask his opinion of them.

Four years ago, Belinda became ill with cancer. She died in January 1996. A week before her death, lawyers working for Richard Alatorre prepared a statement. The statement asked that Angie Alatorre, who had no children of her own, raise Belinda’s daughter. The statement further instructed Angie not to allow the child’s natural father (unidentified in the statement) unsupervised access to the little girl. Belinda signed the statement.

After she died, her daughter, then 8, moved in with Belinda’s mother.

The girl asked Lozano to take her to all the places the three had gone to together. They made a tour of the parks, the zoo, the tar pits. He called her, as he always had, “My Gorgeous.” She called him, as she had, “Lasagna.”

Four months after Belinda died, Richard and Angie Alatorre, citing Belinda’s wishes and unbeknown to Lozano, asked a court to grant them guardianship of the girl. They told the court that they did not know who the father was. Speaking recently of the guardianship proceedings, Angie said: “Henry’s name never came up.”

During this period, the Alatorres began restricting Lozano’s visits with his daughter. When Lozano objected, Angie Alatorre disclosed the existence of the guardianship. The young girl was angry and did not want to see him, she said.

“I always figured we’d work it out,” Lozano says. “I’d tell her, ‘Angie, I’ve gotta see my baby.’ ”

But the baby was indeed angry. She asked Lozano to stop using his pet name for her. “Don’t call me Gorgeous any more,” she said. Why? Who knows? The Alatorres say the girl was mad at Lozano for making her mom cry. Lozano blames the Alatorres.

Lozano says he was patient and tried to put things right. A mutual friend set up a dinner meeting between Lozano and Richard Alatorre at Colombo’s, an Eagle Rock restaurant. At the meeting, they agreed things could be improved. Alatorre, according to Lozano, said he understood Lozano’s situation, that he had had similar disputes over visitation rights when he and his first wife divorced.

Then Angie showed up at the restaurant with the child in tow. The little girl gave Lozano a letter written on Angie’s stationery addressed to “Mr. Lazania” and signed in crayon.

“I don’t want to see you ever again,” it said.

Once Riled, He Does Not Yield

Henry Lozano is a persistent man. He’s not a shouter or screamer, but a tugging, inexorable force. Once riled, he does not yield. He and Alatorre had often been political opponents but never made their opposition personal. The end of the restaurant peace conference marked the end of any semblance of friendship.

“You ever see a small dog fighting with a big dog?” one ally says. “That’s Henry. He goes for the belly. He gets in close, comes right in under you. He has a way of forcing in and not stopping.”

Says Frank Villalobos, a friend: “You have to know when to get up from the table, when to walk away. Henry doesn’t. He’s just going to sit there and keep trying to cram it into you why you have to do it his way.”

Lozano hadn’t wanted the child Belinda bore and at times neglected his paternal responsibilities. Few friends think he ever really wanted full custody of his daughter. He’s 65 years old and lives in an apartment. He’s a workaholic. He’s vibrant and strong and healthy, but how would a 10-year-old daughter fit into this life?

The Alatorres, by every account, dote on the girl and love her.

But the denial of visitation rights, which Lozano regards as the outright theft of his child, and the poisoning of her attitude, enraged him.

He went to court, asserting his rights as the father, contesting the guardianship earlier granted the Alatorres. The Alatorres and Angie’s relatives, including her mother and sister, all denied knowledge of Lozano’s relationship to the girl. They said that as far as they knew he was a friend. Contrary evidence produced in court was voluminous and included such items as a videotape of the girl’s baptism, attended by the Alatorres, members of Angie’s family and Lozano. Lozano and Belinda are referred to on the tape as Mommy and Daddy.

In court, the Alatorres said that when they sought guardianship of the girl, they might have suspected Lozano was the father. But Angie said later that she couldn’t be sure.

“He denied it to the world,” she said.

The Alatorres told the court that they did not in any case know Lozano’s whereabouts. This despite the fact that the two men have known one another for 30 years and work in the small world of Eastside politics; they frequently cross paths. For the entire period Lozano was the top aide to a local congressman whose telephone number is listed in every phone book.

Being involved in local politics, especially local Latino politics, and saying you do not know how to get hold of Henry Lozano is like saying you’re a Hollywood agent who’s never heard of Disney. It would be easier to trip over the shadow of Lozano’s presence than be blind to it.

This disingenuousness notwithstanding, Judge Shatford gave Angie Alatorre custody, saying the young girl needed the presence of a woman in her life. He ordered Richard Alatorre into drug rehab. And he said Lozano had neglected and angered the girl, had betrayed the child’s best interests.

Behind-the-Curtain Player Par Excellence

The very public nature of these proceedings is an aberration for Lozano, who has been the consummate behind-the-curtain player.

One of the few times he ventured out front was in 1992 when Ed Roybal--Mr. Roybal, as many people still refer to him--quit Congress after 30 years. He anointed Lozano his successor. Lozano, with what he says was trepidation, accepted.

Old friends say that despite his protests, Lozano cherished the idea of going to Congress. It would be the crowning achievement of his political life, which is to say, his entire life. Politics consumed Lozano. Long before, friends say, it cost him his marriage.

In the beginning, when he was moving out of the union halls into the political corridors, his wife, Isabel, came along with him. When the divisions between political and personal began to disappear, when office hours melted into the endless procession of evening banquets and late-night talkathons, Isabel accompanied him.

In a fashion, anyhow, because once they arrived at whatever function Henry dragged her to, he would sit her down at a table then head off to work the room.

“Roybal would chew me out: ‘Go back and sit with your wife,’ ” Lozano says. “And I would, for a while. Five or 10 minutes, maybe. Then somebody would come up and you’d say, ‘I’ll be right back.’ Of course, you weren’t.”

“You’re blinded by it,” he says.

Politics can be an intoxicating world. Its puzzles are engaging; its decisions have real weight. And it is largely a meritocracy. You succeed in it by what you do. What Lozano lacks in polish, he makes up with dead-on instinct and persistence.

Using all the skills and contacts he had employed so often on behalf of a hundred others, he launched a congressional campaign. With Roybal’s blessing, he gathered endorsements and donations. It was as if he had spent his whole life preparing for this. Victory seemed inevitable. Then abruptly, a mere two weeks later, he quit the race. Publicly, he said he was too old (then 58) to accumulate the seniority needed to be effective. He also cited unspecified personal reasons. Privately, he told friends those personal reasons had entirely to do with the 4-year-old girl he had fathered with Belinda.

The issue arose--how else?--in a telephone call. Lozano was playing golf with friends. As usual, he had his cell phone. It rang. Angie Alatorre was on the line, telling him to quit the race. According to Lozano and what he told others at the time, Angie told him that if he didn’t get out, the news of his illegitimate baby would be used against him. Everyone, Isabel included, would know.

“Henry at that time hadn’t yet had an honest conversation with his wife,” a friend says. Lozano withdrew.

He helped recruit the man he now works for, Xavier Becerra, to run in his place. Becerra, in an upset, beat Alatorre’s favored candidate and went to Congress. Henry stayed home, made his phone calls and nursed his resentment.

Feud Centers on Personalities

The custody fight has been widely cast as one front in a war between two political machines--one run by Richard Alatorre and state Senate Majority Leader Richard Polanco, the other by an alliance of Gloria Molina, Lozano and Becerra. This interpretation holds that the Molina group has used the custody action as a forum to air all of Alatorre’s considerable dirty laundry and thus take him down.

But hardly anyone outside Alatorre’s legal team makes this argument.

First, say several observers, the notion that there are two distinct Latino political machines is overreaching. There are two informal groups, but they hardly qualify as machines, they say.

“It’s not about building anything. There’s no machine,” says Assemblyman Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks), an ally and old friend of Lozano. “There are a bunch of individual actors. Nobody has their hooks into anybody. It’s more like, ‘Who can we get to run for this? Who can we think of?’ ”

Fernando Guerra, a political scientist at Loyola Marymount, calls them “recruitment and sponsorship networks. They’re fluid, and they tend to almost morph into one another over time.”

Alatorre and Lozano have often backed opposing candidates but have often worked together too. Lozano campaigned for Alatorre numerous times and has given counsel when it was sought.

That said, there is undeniably a different tone to the two groups. Lozano’s thinks of itself as the more high-minded, altruistic, issue-oriented and populist. County Supervisor Molina is often cited as the exemplar and leader. But among her so-called allies are a number of people who are no longer close to her. She and Lozano, for example, have barely spoken to one another for years.

So although there are undoubtedly elements of competition and payback in the custody fight, “it’s a side benefit,” says one Lozano ally. What this fight is really about has little to do with politics and everything to do with personality, stubbornness and anger.

Molina long ago nicknamed Lozano and his buddies “the macho dogs.” Rather than being offended, they take the name with pride. And it fits. There is about Lozano an old-fashioned maleness. He’s the guy who squeezes your shoulder, hard; the guy who knows all the off-color jokes. Although Lozano has done much to promote women in politics, one friend says, “he’s totally from the old school. He still believes the guys should sit down and work things out. It’s still a little boys’ game.”

That attitude figures into the custody fight, which is a competition not between two political machines, but two people. Asked to name his enemies, Lozano thinks long and hard before offering up a single name--Angie Alatorre.

This ugly dispute, like many, has been noisy in a way that private affairs ought never be. It has been mean and contentious in a way that decisions affecting the lives of children ought never be.

The process of resolving such disputes, the court system, is maladroit. It steers things off track, so much so that a “good” outcome is no longer possible. The well is poisoned. Too much pain has passed. The best that is left would be an end less bad than all the others.