Features

RACE AGAINST THE MACHINE

Dave WielengaWed. May 28
 

Tonia Reyes Uranga is campaigning door-to-door for the 54th Assembly District with passion in her heart and potted plants in her hands, but will it be enough to beat Bonnie Lowenthal and end the 16-election winning streak of Long Beach’s First Family of politics?


PHOTO by SUSAN SABO

Huge swaths of unrolled butcher paper hang from the walls of the Tonia Reyes Uranga for Assembly campaign headquarters, like political tapestries scrawled with names, addresses, phone numbers and appointments. They’re held up by thick, smudgy asterisks of tape and the desperate hope that all that processed wood pulp and chicken scratch calligraphy will translate into more than a big haul to the recycling bin the day after the June 3 primary.

“It’s very exciting,” gushes Caitlin Price, a 19-year-old junior college student, standing amid a few (mostly silent) volunteers—the exception: the woman who’s confounded to frustration by how to make cold calls—and a hodgepodge of used office furniture. This is Price’s first-ever taste of political action, and she commutes daily from the San Fernando Valley for it, listening to all-news station KNX both ways. “I’m very optimistic about our campaign,” she pronounces. Her enthusiasm threatens to get infectious until she mentions that she still holds out hope for Hillary, too.

Outside, Tonia pulls into the parking lot in a shiny pickup truck she’s borrowed from her son. It’s a few days before Mother’s Day, and she needs the vehicle to deliver 3,000 potted flowers to prospective women voters. She’s running late, but she parks the truck carefully. “The last thing my son told me was, ‘Take care of my baby,’” Tonia laughs, although in a way that shows she knows he was serious. “I’ve got to wash and fill it before I bring it back, too.”

The (once) Tonia Reyes and her husband, Roberto Uranga (a Long Beach City College trustee) have three kids in college, and they raised them in the 54th Assembly District she’s campaigning to represent—on the blue-collared, rust-belted, racially-mixed west side of Long Beach, where she’s lived since she was a teenager. That’s 40 years, now, and she’s spent the last six of them as a member of the City Council. “It’s a nice district with severe issues,” she summarizes, then can’t resist adding, “some crazy issues.”

The 54th Assembly District—and most of its craziest issues: economy, trade, transportation, environment and health—is wrapped around the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. “Monsters of the world,” Tonia calls them, meaning their implications reverberate beyond the borders of Long Beach, Signal Hill, San Pedro, the four cities on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, Avalon and parts of Los Angeles County. “They go outside the state and the country, too. They’re monsters of the world.”

Tonia slides out of the pickup truck and climbs the stairs to her second-floor headquarters. She’s dressed for flower delivery—a black T-shirt embossed with the logo of the Pile Drivers Union, Local 2375, with blue jeans and brown boots, although a delicate gold cross hangs from a thin chain around her neck, too. But the plants aren’t ready to go—yet. Caitlin’s got some explanation for that. Tonia looks a bit stressed for a second, then buys it. “Thank you, mija,” she says with motherly affection.

There’s a bright side to this delay, of course: a rare opportunity to sit down. Tonia finds a couple of swivel chairs and takes a load off, although cautiously—they don’t seem all that stable.

“I feel good, but I wouldn’t feel otherwise,” she says, exhaling a deep breath that at first seems to be taking measure of the moment, but involuntarily becomes an assessment of her campaign. “The numbers look good when we make calls. But you never know until Election Day.”

Yeah, well, see . . . that’s the thing: Sometimes you kinda do know—such as when the election is around Long Beach, and when the ballot has a candidate named Lowenthal. On 16 election days during the past 16 years, the record for Alan, Bonnie, Suja and Daniel Lowenthal in races for State Senate, State Assembly, City Council and Superior Court judge is a sweet 16-0.

Bring that up, and Tonia tries a playful swagger. “I guess their time is up!” she quips. But she knows it’s no joke. The Lowenthals’ ongoing and expanding legacy—they’ve become perhaps Long Beach’s most significant family dynasty since the Bixbys—presents the most problematic obstacle to her candidacy.

“The question is: How can you run against this machine?” she reflects soberly. “I don’t really have an opponent. It’s not Bonnie vs. Tonia—it’s the Lowenthals vs. Tonia. I’m running against the ex-husband senator, the daughter-in-law council member, the son who’s a judge. It’s a political machine. I’d call it a David-and-Goliath thing, except that Goliath was at least a distinct, living thing.”

It’s not exactly standing-room-only at Jongewaard’s Bake N Broil. The people who are eating get to sit down, but the lunchtime rush has created a waiting list, and most of the people on that list are milling hungrily in the restaurant’s narrow aisles. Bonnie Lowenthal’s not going anywhere, though—no matter that she’s got her day planner packed as ever with City Council duties and assembly campaign activities, and she makes a you-gotta-be-kidding face when somebody suggests eating somewhere else. “For some things, a little wait is just what it takes,” she says, in a voice equally flavored by her New York roots and her therapist training, a manner that sounds simultaneously like a mantra and a pronouncement. In this case, it also shows that she knows Long Beach, where nobody ever bails on Bake N Broil.

Bonnie Lowenthal has been here since 1969. She came down from San Francisco with her husband, Alan, a young psychology professor who’d just landed a job at Cal State Long Beach. Her arrival completed a cross-country odyssey that began in New York when she was still Bonnie Adler, the daughter of Eastern European immigrants, and touched down for four years at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. There was no tradition of political activism in her family. “My parents worked all their lives. My father finished seventh grade, then sold newspapers to support his widowed mother and his sisters so they could go to high school,” she says. “My focus had been going to school and developing a career.”

Four decades later, however, people recognize Bonnie Lowenthal—her trademark glasses, gray bob haircut and faintly boho jacket—as she’s finally rewarded with a booth at Bake N Broil. Her last name has become synonymous with local politics. The Lowenthals are sometimes called the Kennedys of Long Beach.

Bonnie is accustomed to hearing comparisons like that. She chuckles at a reference to the Clintons—“You’re stretching,” she says—but it’s clearly not a favorite subject. “I want to be known for the work I have done, not only for my last name,” she pleads. Then again, when listing her attributes to potential donors, Lowenthal’s campaign website extols her “unbeatable name ID.”

So far, that part’s unarguable:

• Alan Lowenthal is 6-0 in two races for the Long Beach City Council in 1992 and 1996; three for the state assembly in 1998, 2000 and 2002; and one for the state senate in 2004.

• Bonnie Lowenthal is 5-0 in two runs for the Long Beach Unified School District’s Board of Education in 1994 and 1998; and three for the First District on the City Council in 2001 (when she left the school board to run for Jenny Oropeza’s unexpired Council seat), 2002 and 2006.

• Suja Lowenthal, Alan and Bonnie’s daughter-in-law, is 4-0 in two campaigns for the school board seat Bonnie once held (2001, 2002) and two runs for the Second District on the City Council (2006, 2008). Suja announced her initial candidacy for the school board less than 24 hours after Bonnie won her City Council seat in 2001, and suddenly abandoned her run for re-election in 2006 to run for the City Council when Dan Baker resigned in a conflict-of-interest scandal—clearing the way for an easy win by a guy named Michael Shane Ellis.

• Daniel Lowenthal, Alan and Bonnie’s son and Suja’s husband, is 1-0 after a 2006 run for L.A. Superior Court judge. When Suja was recently appointed to the Metropolitan Water Board, he administered the oath of office to his wife.

• Josh Lowenthal? He hasn’t run for office. Yet. But he publicly considered a candidacy for school board earlier this year when the chamber of commerce was trying to recall Michael Shane Ellis—yes, the guy who won his seat when Suja dropped out—and was mentioned by the Long Beach Business Journal as a possible candidate for the City Council, if his mother makes it to the State Assembly.

“It’s a family of public service, and I’m proud,” Bonnie says. “But all of the Lowenthals are different people. We all have our own personalities, distinct interests and styles.”

Indeed, the irony to the Lowenthal’s winning streak is that Bonnie and Alan divorced in 1991, a year before it began. She’s never explained why she kept the last name, but acknowledges that it is an advantage in her run for the assembly.

“Name ID is very important, without a doubt,” Bonnie says. “But I’m well known in my own right, based on raising my kids in Long Beach, my involvement as a parent when I sent them through the public schools, and my 14 years of public service on the school board and the City Council. People are not going to be voting for me based on my name alone. They’ll think of my integrity and my honesty.”

Lunch has arrived, and Bonnie would like to enjoy it. “I would prefer that you not write about me and Alan,” she says. “That’s not what I want this story to be. This shouldn’t be a story about my family. This should a story about me running for the assembly—me and my opponent. Period.”

Maybe it should be—it probably would be—but there’s such a long record of the Lowenthals working together: endorsing one another, contributing to one another’s campaigns and pulling political strings that look an awful lot like bloodlines.

And then there’s this: If Bonnie Lowenthal wins the 54th Assembly District seat, the Lowenthal family will represent perhaps the most crucial area of Long Beach—the part that includes the port, with its myriad issues, rich fund-raising possibilities and concentrated influence and power—on three different levels of government: Suja on the City Council, Bonnie in the State Assembly and Alan in the State Senate.

“Honestly, that never occurred to me,” says Bonnie. “I’ve never thought about it that way. I hope people judge me on other terms.”

In a senatorially handsome room of thick, rich wood and meticulously kept file cabinets—the Hon. Alan Lowenthal leans back in an oh-so-cushy chair in his Paramount field office and allows the magic to come back to him.

“My goodness,” he says, “I haven’t even thought about these things in so long.”

It’s been more than a quarter of a century since Lowenthal was the Brillo-haired Cal State Long Beach psychology professor who helped generate a dynamic era of activism in Long Beach, a movement that spanned race, class, age and sexual orientation. As president of Long Beach Area Citizens Involved—its clumsy acronym, LBACI, was pronounced “Libachi”—he forged an alphabet-soup coalition with organizations like the NAACP, LAMBDA and LULAC.

“Our central theme, the question we kept asking ourselves, was: How do you empower people?” recalls Lowenthal, energy flooding into his voice. “We never thought about electing anybody. I certainly never thought about going into elected office myself.”

That was a long time ago—so long that Tonia Reyes Uranga and Bonnie Lowenthal were allies, fellow foot soldiers in fights against excessive force by the police, exploitive zoning practices that permitted cracker-box apartments in historic neighborhoods—and more transparent government. Alan was at the center of it all. He was Bonnie’s husband, yes, but he was something of a mentor to Tonia, too.

“I love Alan—I knew him before I met my husband,” says Tonia, who still includes a photo of herself with the senator on her campaign website. “We were so successful working together that we got him, me and Bonnie elected. I supported Alan in every race he had. I defended him when the Latinos were getting ready to redraw the lines to create a Latino-majority City Council district—to redistrict him out of his house. I mean, we’ve been through the wars.”

But Bonnie and Tonia are politicians now, and the six years they’ve spent together on the Long Beach City Council—representing districts that adjoin one another on the city’s west side—has created some animosity. It hasn’t affected their shared sense of the issues: healthcare, education, transportation and the environment, as they’ve said several times in separate interviews. As Election Day approaches, however, just about anything else they say about one another drips with disdain.

Bonnie tends to make her comments covertly, either totally off the record or in carefully parsed asides about one position or another that her “opponent” is taking. Tonia shoots from the lip so freely that it’s hard to be sure she knows her words will appear in print. When you assure her they will, she shrugs: “Sure, why not? People have seen me in action. They know where I stand. They know I don’t put up with a lot of crap.”

These differences in style are not without substance. In fact, both candidates say that their contrasting approach to the issues they share is one of the most important things for voters to consider.

“For me, it’s all about building consensus through relationships,” says Bonnie. “I was a psychotherapist for 35 years, so it brings me inner rewards to understand someone and promote their well-being. I try to listen to the feelings behind people’s words and how we can come together to achieve something that’s called win-win.”

Tonia doesn’t buy it.

“I’ve been to Sacramento, and it’s not about building consensus,” she says. “It’s about saying passionately what you believe in and finding allies and advocates who believe the same. A consensus-builder gives up certain things. What are you going to give up? Classroom size? Medicine for seniors? Consensus is nice, but this governor [Schwarzenegger] is taking no prisoners. We need a leader; Bonnie’s a psychologist. ‘Getting along’ just means you’re going to give something up.”

Speaking of surrender, how about that tough anti-pollution bill at the Port of Long Beach—the one that permitted virtually unlimited port expansion, so long as there was no net increase in toxic emissions—that Alan Lowenthal was fighting so hard to get through the state legislature . . . until, suddenly, he isn’t anymore?

“The real leadership, in terms of running the port, is the City Council—whether it knows it or not,” the senator explains. “Because the Harbor Department is an agency of the city, and now with the change to the city charter, the City Council can remove harbor commissioners, too. The power that both Bonnie and Suja have on the port right now as members of the City Council is greater than any influence Bonnie will have if she ends up going to Sacramento.”

Speaking of surrender, Tonia wonders whatever happened to confrontational grassroots activism, anyway.

“There’s nobody out there anymore,” she says, getting up from her chair and moving toward those potted flowers.

“The public is being shortchanged—and it’s helping to shortchange itself. “This idea of having three Lowenthals with control of the port is the most dangerous scenario we could possibly have. The essence of democracy is discussion, friction, conversation pros and cons, getting things on the table to see if you’re going to get the position that accurately reflects the community. If you have one family controlling the Port of Long Beach, we don’t have the benefit of an airing of issues, a diversity of opinion. They have no reason to listen to anybody else.”

Tonia considers those flowers and the gimmickry of political campaigns.

“People look at Alan with rose-colored glasses and the memory of those old days in the neighborhoods. But, c’mon, he’s a senator,” she says. “I’m not saying it couldn’t happen to me. It’s easy to get sucked in. If I win, everybody will want to be my friend. Where are the people jabbing us?”

Tags: , , , ,

RELATED

Viewing 25 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    Strongly consider the paragraph that begins, "The public being shortchanged----Now ask yourself this question,
    "Do we really want one family controlling the port?"
    • ^
    • v
    Finally, an article that digs a little deeper...thanks Dave!
    • ^
    • v
    Nice one. I have to believe that Bonnie's passion for representing her district has kind of passed. With an adjacent port spewing more and more emissions, and downtown development stalling above Broadway, there's little more than photo ops coming out of her office.
    • ^
    • v
    I'm seeing Tonia as the just the kind of street brawler the LBC needs right about now in Sacramento. Knock 'em dead kid
    • ^
    • v
    Times are changing and I think it is a great opportunity to have someone like Tonia in Sacramento! You Go Girl!
    • ^
    • v
    Uh, there are other candidates...but given the way the politicians split up this state they don't matter I guess since they do not have a (D) after their names. This is what their redistricting has done, given us a choice between an tangerine and a mandarin; hardly any difference whatsoever.
    • ^
    • v
    Josh? Running for City Council? I wonder if he will include on his resume the bikini contest he's holding at his club on June 6th where the winner wins a breast augmentation. And to think, the Lowenthals wanted to turn the Gaslamp into this type of place. Good job Josh, I'm sure your parents are proud.
    • ^
    • v
    2ndDR--where is that being held? Maybe I'll enter...does augmentation also mean reduction? :)
    • ^
    • v
    I'd vote for Josh solely for the fact that he IS hosting a bikini contest on June 6
    • ^
    • v
    I'm not sure what sort of "power" you think legislators have over the ports, but it isn't really as direct as Tonia is making it sound.

    Let's face it - she's using these talking points to make a case for herself by belittling her opponent. It's called RHETORIC, and she's making it sound as if there would be some sort of oligarchy with limitless control. Why a journalist isn't challenging her campaign rhetoric is beyond me.

    The only real sort of influence that Lowenthal had on the Port was getting people to seriously take action on cleaning up the air. His bills (whether they succeeded or not) got the discussion going on several important issues. I don't think the Ports would be "Green" today if he and others in the community weren't pushing for cleaner air.

    The reality is that Legislators do not have the ability to "force" policy at the port unless a majority of California legislators democratically make it so (and even then they are limited in their ability as much of it is local). Last time I checked, 2 out of 120 legislators is NOT a majority.

    Tonia's stance on Port issues is supposedly similar to Bonnie's - they are both advocating for cleaner ports so our community won't suffer. So really, with Bonnie in the Assembly, we'd have another legislator from Long Beach advocating for clean air. Isn't that what you really want?

    There is a difference between Bonnie and Tonia however, and that is: Tonia is running her campaign as the "clean air" candidate. At the same time, she's taking money from the companies whose operations are contributing to over 24,000 deaths in the region. It's pretty obvious she pushed for the AQMD board seat because she knew the 54th campaign was around the corner and she's smart enough to know what a big issue it is for the district. I argue that Tonia's "work" on the AQMD is nothing more than political posturing and NOT something she is willing to stake her political career over. With BNSF, UP, Occidental and Chevron in her corner, she'll be screwing us on the details every time in Sacramento despite whatever glorious press releases we read - and we all know the devil is in the details. For some reason NOBODY is running a story on Tonia's hypocrtical campaign. I guess there isn't a a decent journalist in this crazy town, despite how highly Bill Pearle and the District staff think of themselves.

    Who gives a crap about somebody's name - I DON'T want a two-faced Assemblymember who's in bed with corporations that fight every clean air bill in Sacramento. That is a vote our children and grandchildren won't appreciate.
    • ^
    • v
    To Concerned: Having "another legislator from Long Beach advocating for clean air" isn't EXACTLY what we really want. Having TWO MORE legislators from Long Beach advocating for clean air would have been far better. But Ms. Lowenthal chose to move into the 54th Assembly District for this election. She should have stayed in the the 55th Assembly District where she lives and run to be the representative when it was available a few months ago. Is it possible she thought Ms. Reyes Uranga would be easier to beat than Mr. Furutani? I'd say that was a another bad choice.
    • ^
    • v
    First of all - we DO have several legislators advocating for LB's air quality, including Warren Furutani - even though he doesn't live in Long Beach. I don't think we should critize our local leaders like Bonnie and Warren for the gerrymandering that was done almost ten years ago. Should we get some real redistricting reform, perhaps then we'll see districts that encompass entire communities.

    I heard Bonnie's response to why she is running in the 54th and it makes sense. Sure a portion of her current district and house was in the 55th - but WHAT AREA has she represented over the last decade+? I guarantee you, it wasn't wasn't Lakewood, Carson, Gardena, etc. In her roles as Vice Mayor and school board member, she has represented the City of Long Beach. The 54th arguably has more of Long Beach, including the Port which she has proven leadership in (I remember her pushing the cold ironing technology in council).

    This town is full of people advocating for real redistricting reform - the fact that Long Beach has 3 different and disparate congressional members is proof positive we need it. You (and Tonia) are arguing that a community leader should not represent the people she historically has because of district lines that were drawn erratically almost ten years ago. That isn't the type of democracy you really want, is it?

    By the way - I notice you didn't have any comments regarding Tonia's hypocrisy and dirty air contributions...
    • ^
    • v
    Be careful dragging Assemblymember Furutani into this. He and State Senator Jenny Oropeza are strongly supporting Tonia in this race. I heard Assemblymember Furutani say at a very public meeting that he needs a strong fighter like Tonia in the Assembly with him to get these types of environmental legislation passed.

    And where you get that Tonia is just on the AQMD because of the benefits she might receive in this race shows your lack of history in the area. She has been a vocal and highly visible advocate for cleaning our air since long before she ever ran for office. Tonia and her three children all suffer from asthma, which is aggravated by pollution coming from the Ports, so this is a deeply personal issue for her.

    Your comments just come off as a sad reflection of the desperation of the Lowenthals to keep their 100% win track record - without really deserving it.
    • ^
    • v
    Just because Warren is supporting Tonia doesn't mean he wouldn't work with Bonnie (and vice versa) once she gets elected.

    If Tonia is that concerned about air quality, why is she taking thousands of $$ from the corporations that contribute to 24,000 premature annual deaths? The same companies who have spent millions of dollars lobbying the California and Federal governments against bills that would promote our health and well-being?

    Your comments about "desperation" and "deserving" are easy political statements to make, but not so easy to back up. Tonia will be saying one thing and doing another in Sacramento. Her contributions from big oil and rail are proof of that.

    YOU should be careful voting for someone who parades her asthmatic family around while simultaneously pocketing dirty dollars from the corporations that contributed to that asthma. As an LB Post columnist likes to posit, which is it that enables her to do such things, ignorance or arrogance? Either way, I don't want her representing my community.
    • ^
    • v
    And still because of the b.s. districting the arguments are only between two candidates that are pretty much indistinguishable because they are the only ones with the golden (D), guaranteed to get you elected in LB no matter your transgressions.
    • ^
    • v
    But somehow it was alright for Bonnie (and other Lowenthals) to take Railroad moeny in the past? I'll admit it takes some looking, but you can certainly find the records on the City Clerk's website. The main point is that I have never seen where such donations have influenced Tonia or Bonnie's action or votes.

    And I AM careful who I vote for. I care deeply and spend a lot of time and effort checking facts and information. In this case I've known both candidates personally for over 15 years. I've voted for Lowenthals in the past, and most likely will in the future - but not this time.
    • ^
    • v
    First of all, I'm so glad Mr. Furutani is representing parts of Long Beach. He is a stong environmentalist. My point was Ms. Lowenthals choice in battles. You can talk about redistricting all you want. The fact is that Ms. Lowenthal is a 55th AD resident and she should have run to represnt that seat. And thanks LB Guy because I checked the City Clerk website and you're right, the Lowenthals took railroad money as well. But I guess that's ok, right Concerned.

    Since you're obviously campaign staff, I would suggest getting to work because I can guarnatee Tonia and her staff are out working you as we speak. They've been in my neighborhood several times.
    • ^
    • v