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_Click here: SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Metro -- Latinos not united behind
Aguirre_
(http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20080907-9999-1m7atty.html)
Voting bloc may be vital for re-election
By Ronald W. Powell
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
September 7, 2008
SAN DIEGO – Michael Aguirre burnished his credentials as an advocate for San
Diego's Latino community by winning a redistricting lawsuit in the 1990s
that helped create the first Latino-majority City Council district.
DON KOHLBAUER / U-T file photo
Barrio Logan activist Rachael Ortiz is critical of City Attorney Michael
Aguirre.
So it says something about the way he has run the City Attorney's Office
that he is losing some support in that community before the Nov. 4 election,
especially since his challenger is Judge Jan Goldsmith.
Goldsmith is a Republican who, as a state Assemblyman, took positions that
made him anathema to some Latinos.
Leading the charge is Councilman Ben Hueso, who was elected from the council
district that Aguirre helped create. Hueso says Aguirre is not providing
professional legal services that the city needs to serve residents.
“The services to our constituency comes first – above politics, above the
need to grandstand publicly,” Hueso said at a Goldsmith news conference last
week. “Our mission is to provide services to our constituency.”
Also dissatisfied with Aguirre is Barrio Logan community activist Rachael
Ortiz, who says Aguirre has not made neighborhood enforcement a priority – a
charge he denies.
Ortiz, who is well-respected, has a nearly four-decade track record of
advocacy for the working-class community southeast of downtown, and she says
Goldsmith has committed himself to ridding the area of illegal businesses and
housing. “I'm not supporting Mike because the neighborhood prosecution unit has
not been a priority to him,” Ortiz said. “That has been the greatest tool
Barrio Logan has had to beautify and improve.”
The unit cracks down on junkyards and other businesses operating out of
compliance with zoning and other laws.
Aguirre lashed out at Ortiz in a televised debate last month, saying, “
Rachael Ortiz is financially interested in the wheelings and dealings that go
on
with redevelopment.”
In an interview for this story, Aguirre backed away from that allegation. He
minimized Ortiz's opposition, saying: “She's been angry with a lot of
different people. You can be in her doghouse. No one takes it seriously.”
Aguirre noted endorsements from state Sen. Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego, and
Dolores Huerta of Bakersfield, who co-founded the United Farm Workers with
Cesar Chavez. In the debate, Aguirre called Huerta “probably the number one
Latina in the entire country.”
The Latino vote could be vital if Aguirre is to win re-election, after
squeaking into office in 2004 with 50.2 percent of the vote.
Enrique Morones, a local immigration activist and Democrat, said he cannot
back Goldsmith, who as an assemblyman supported Proposition 187, which
attempted to deny illegal immigrants social services, health care and public
education.
Aguirre remains popular among Latinos, Morones said.
“He's outspoken – but that's his style,” Morones said. “He's shown he's
committed to serving the causes that are important to the Latino community.”
Ortiz once praised Aguirre's work on behalf of the Latino community, calling
him “part of us” in a 2001 newspaper story.
Now, she says she's “never been tight” with Aguirre. She recalled once
having 10 people walking precincts for Aguirre in one of two unsuccessful runs
for
the District 8 council seat, “and I never got a thank you.”
“He's worried about something,” Ortiz said of Aguirre. “I have a right to be
an activist in my neighborhood, and I won't be afraid of anybody. I can
endorse anybody I want to.”
Goldsmith said he met with Ortiz after the June 3 election.
“She talked to me about the neighborhood prosecution unit and said that the
city wasn't responding and that there were issues out there,” Goldsmith said. “
I told her what I've said many times publicly – that neighborhood
prosecution units are our top priority.”
In debates, Aguirre has criticized Goldsmith for not renouncing the
endorsement of the anti-illegal-immigration group San Diego Minutemen. The
group is
reviled in the Latino community, and Aguirre calls it a “vigilante group”
that takes immigration enforcement into its own hands.
Goldsmith said he did not seek the group's endorsement.
“I don't know what they do,” Goldsmith said. “If they are vigilantes, then I
don't want anything to do with them. If they are expressing their views on
things, they have a right to express their views.”
Goldsmith has also been criticized for actions in 1993, when he directed his
Assembly office staff to videotape schoolchildren as they crossed the border
from Tecate, Mexico, headed for classes in the county's Mountain Empire
Unified School District. Some called the tapings a violation of the children's
privacy or an assault on poor immigrants.
Goldsmith doesn't see it that way. He said the students were attending school
illegally at the expense of taxpayers. After his videotapes were circulated
and residency checks were made, dozens of pupils were expelled.
“This was not about immigration,” Goldsmith said. “It was about residency.”
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