Montanez, Ascending

Here, at the Casa Torres banquet hall in San Fernando, it feels like a family affair. The DJ is spinning rancheras and cumbias; the tacos, enchiladas, rice and beans are quickly vanishing, and young children are chasing after one another. It’s a festive March night, promising to be long, because the polls have just closed and there will be a delay in the counting of ballots for this primary election.

Ni modo. No matter. The 200 people gathered here will not leave until San Fernando Mayor Cindy Montanez is pronounced victorious in her bid for an Assembly seat. Some of the partygoers are her family members; the rest might as well be.

Everyone in the hall knows the northeast Valley’s rising Chicana politician and her gushing parents, both dressed casually, as they work the room thanking their daughter’s supporters. Manuel Montanez, 55, the candidate’s father and top precinct walker, has spent long hours convincing area residents to vote. His wife, Margarita, 55, is the campaign’s primary caregiver, feeding hundreds of volunteers her popular carne asada, rice and beans.

“They’re a good example of how you can have little money but a lot of passion for your kids,” says Montanez, 28, “and amazing things can happen in just one generation. My father taught us to think each day what we can do to make everything better. Every night I go to sleep thinking about how I can make tomorrow better than today.”

By night’s end, Montanez is declared the primary’s winner, sweeping the election with 65% of the votes. But the crowd’s enthusiasm is about much more. In November, the mild-mannered Chicana is expected to win the working-class, heavily Democratic 39th District seat, joining the northeast Valley’s undisputed political Latino power base. As an assemblywoman, Montanez vows, she will make public safety and school funding her priorities; she plans to expand after-school programs, develop quality parks and recreation in all neighborhoods and return to her first love of preserving historic homes and cleaning up neighborhoods throughout the district.

“This victory is a victory for our community, not for me,” Montanez tells the crowd. “The northeast Valley is going to continue to be a beautiful place to live and work because we’re going to continue to work together. Se los digo de todo corazon (I tell you this from the heart).”

Representing the district, which reaches from Sylmar on the northern end to Sun Valley to the south, is a job Montanez has been preparing for all her life without even realizing it. In the one-bedroom house she shared with her parents and five siblings, Montanez dreamed of becoming a city administrator who could improve her community by refurbishing its Victorian homes and building a library and performing arts center. She credits her affinity for public service mostly to her father, who, despite working three jobs, started a union at the plant where he worked and inculcated in his children the idea of giving back.

After her 12th birthday, Montanez committed all of her summer vacations to community service work, volunteering to help organize the pope’s visit to Los Angeles, working as a peer counselor in juvenile hall and as a candy striper in a hospital. Thin and shy, Montanez cried easily and always preferred thinking to talking, her mother says.

But her sister, San Fernando City Councilwoman Maribel De La Torre, saw something special in her little sister the day she learned to ride a bicycle. All of the children were playing in the yard when Cindy, then 5 or 6, hopped on a bike and asked her siblings to follow her. Quickly, she took off and then fell.

“She started crying, but then she got back on and continued to ride,” De La Torre says. “The thing that was amazing to me is that she was able to mobilize us to be her support network and stick with her until she completed what she wanted to do. That’s what she’s done in this district. It’s the way she’s always operated: building coalitions for a good cause.”

Mentors, such as state Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sylmar), recognized that ability as well when Montanez, then a student at UCLA, made headlines by organizing a 14-day hunger strike in 1993 to bolster the Chicano studies program. For two weeks, Montanez and seven others, including her younger sister Norma, then a high school junior, drank only water and inspired the support of civil rights activists and Chicanos across the Southland.

“That she was able to make that kind of decision at a young age made me so proud,” Manuel Montanez says. “I’ve always told all of my children that the only way to truly help their community is to be in

It was in Alarcon’s office, the San Fernando mayor says, that she discovered the elected official’s duty she loves most: following up with constituent requests. Satisfying them made her curious about running for office herself. In 1999 she was elected to the San Fernando City Council, and she was appointed mayor last year. The one-on-one contact with voters, she says, is what most drives her. “I know I don’t live the typical life of a 28-year-old,” she said. “When you’re in this position, a lot of people look up to you, and you should do a good job of fulfilling those roles.”

Her Youth Is an Issue

Montanez was opposed in the primary by Yolanda Fuentes, 27, who grew up in Pacoima and has worked as district director for state Assemblyman Tony Cardenas (D-Panorama City) for four years. Fuentes and Montanez ran on similar platforms, but Montanez raised four times as much money in contributions and compiled an impressive list of endorsements.

Along the way, critics have found fault with Montanez for choosing to run for office before earning her college degree, for remaining unemployed while serving on the City Council, and also for being young. Her detractors argue that a young woman who has not completed college or had substantial work experience is not mature enough to run the daily operations of a city--or represent a large, diverse district in Sacramento.

“I’m a working person. I belong to the union, and the majority of our people are working people,” says San Fernando Councilman Richard Ramos, 33, who was elected to the council at the same time as Montanez. “If you’re not working, you can’t speak to the issues that working people have. I don’t think Cindy has the work experience to take a position, let alone to run for state Assembly. I just don’t think she represents the hard-working people of the northeast Valley.”

But former San Fernando Mayor Raul Godinez II says voters should not be quick to discount Montanez’s City Council experience or her many years of community activism. Godinez, 40, now the assistant director for Oakland’s public works agency, served on the City Council from 1994 to 1999 and appointed Montanez to the city’s first cultural arts commission in 1995. Godinez withdrew his endorsement of Montanez in 1999 because of her involvement with a protest against the city while she was running for office, but he supports her today.

“Is she perfect?” he asks. “None of us are. She was coming from a college environment, an activist environment, and that was her worldview. But the level of maturity and growth she’s gone through is phenomenal. I’m very impressed by her willingness to take an unpopular side. Her unique resume, and the fact that she’s younger with the added dimension of being Latina, brings a different perspective to the Assembly.”

Her upbringing, more than anything else, represents the ideals and values of the working families of her district and helps her to understand the needs of her constituents, says Montanez. She says she intends to complete her bachelor’s degrees in math economics and Chicano studies after the election and pursue graduate work in urban planning in the future.

“My family has always been about hard work; that’s what I’m about,” Montanez says. “In the world of policymaking, some people start their work in their 40s or 50s. I may be 28, but for 16 years I’ve worked consistently in this district. When I commit, I not only commit myself but I commit the strongest team possible and a very strong grass-roots effort that hasn’t always existed. I do expect to hold a strong leadership role in Sacramento. I grew up like the people in this district, and I live like them.”

Growing up, the Montanez bunch--three boys and three girls--possessed few material things and focused on keeping their minds and bodies healthy, studying and practicing their Catholic faith. The family did not own a television until Cindy was a teenager, and she did not have her own bed until she was 13. Everyone in the house was required to be fluent in English and Spanish.

At 5 o’clock every morning, the family rose to run in the park. As Manuel Montanez raced ahead with the older children, Margarita jogged in the back with the younger ones. After classes, the children, all nationally ranked swimmers, practiced after school with their teammates. “I always believed that a healthy body fosters a healthy mind,” Manuel Montanez says. “To motivate them was very important to me, and what better way than as a family?”

In their spare time, the young children completed puzzles with their mother, read books and helped their parents earn extra cash. On weekends the family drove to Fresno to pick surplus tomatoes, oranges and watermelons, and sold them on the streets in San Fernando, directly across from where Montanez’s campaign office sits today.

“My dad would make a game out of it,” De La Torre says. “He would challenge us to see who could pick the biggest, greenest watermelon. We never really looked at it as work or were ashamed of it. My dad always made us feel so secure and proud of what we did.”

Fifteen years ago, after putting himself through electrician’s school at night, Manuel Montanez opened Montanez Electric, the business he runs today with the help of his wife and all of his children. But even greater than the family’s entrepreneurial spirit is its love for its community, says De La Torre, 31, who was elected to the City Council last year. Her brother Roberto, 26, serves on the San Fernando planning commission; brother Eziquiel, 32, is a teacher; and brother Miguel, 29, is a librarian. Her sister Norma, 25, is a homemaker and mother of three.

The excitement and influence of the Chicano movement in the 1970s also helped inspire her siblings and other young Latinos in the Valley to strive for more, De La Torre says. “Who would have ever thought the northeast Valley would have such a Latino power base?” she says. “The immigrants who came here in the 1970s have such a strong foundation of traditional Mexican values, support and education. It couldn’t help but create a generation of leaders. The Chicano movement also laid the foundation for the kids who were growing up. I think all of the right things happened to this generation at the same time.”

The northeast San Fernando Valley, in fact, has become a Latino political stronghold in the six years since Cardenas was elected a lawmaker. Cardenas--a mentor to Los Angeles City Council President Alex Padilla, who grew up in Pacoima--narrowly lost his bid for Los Angeles City Council in March and has filed to run in the city’s 2003 election. Fuentes, his district director, says she does not know if she will run for office again.

“As the Democratic nominee, I will support Cindy,” Fuentes says. “[But] coming from San Fernando, she’s going to have to learn the rest of the district, the different communities and the issues in Sacramento.”

The primary now behind her, Montanez is excited and energized by the general election ahead, in which she will run against Republican Ely Dela Cruz Ayao, a real estate agent. The girl who was once the shyest member of her family revels in the campaign trail she’ll walk until November, connecting easily with people from all walks of life as she knocks on doors for support. San Fernando residents, in particular, welcome her as if she were family, offering her avocados and lemons from their trees, or meals when concerned mothers think she is hungry. Frequently she peppers her conversations with historical tidbits about the Valley’s neighborhoods, making sure she also asks personal questions to let residents know she is interested in more than just their votes.

“People feel more empowered when you deal with them in person,” she says. Montanez’s commitment to enfranchising Latinos motivated campaign volunteer Miguel Mendevil, who lives in Whittier, to drive 100 miles round trip to help her get elected to a state seat that doesn’t even represent him. Mendevil, now a Los Angeles Unified School District administrator, invited Montanez to speak to his first-grade students last year at Laredo School of Social Justice in Cypress Park about her job as mayor. He expected her to visit for two hours, as most of his guests did. Montanez spent the entire day.

“She brought them pamphlets about the city and her business cards, and she helped them edit their papers and everything,” he says. “She did this in an area where she won’t get any money, definitely no votes, and there was no photo opportunity. This told me she was real, and it makes driving 100 miles a day pretty easy.”

For Steven Veres, 26, supporting his friend is about more than personal loyalty. By working for her campaign as a field coordinator, Veres believes he is ushering in a new era for politics in the Valley. “People have been dissatisfied with the way politics has worked here for a long time. This is our chance to make a change,” he says.

On primary night in March, Margarita Montanez tries to make a speech, but her emotions get the best of her. Seeing her at the lectern, next to Alarcon, makes the mother feel overcome. But later, when she has collected herself, she says what is on her mind.

“I am so overwhelmed by what I’m seeing here tonight, the way people respond to her,” she says. “But now she needs to respond to her constituents. This is not for Cindy. This is about the northeast Valley.”