The Cudahy Booze Cruise
Electioneering has never been this much fun
The old man looks nervous. I can’t say that I blame him. We’re sitting in the back of a stretched Escalade limousine, surrounded by somber men in dark suits and sunglasses. It’s Election Day in the Southeast L.A. County city of Cudahy, and campaign fliers for incumbent mayor David Silva and his running mate Josue Barrios sit in a pile next to the old man. He picks one up and holds it between his legs with both hands, fiddling with it like a charm.
Stockpiled in front of us is an impressive selection of booze: Patrón tequila, Rémy Martin and several bottles of champagne. Since the polls opened this morning, this limousine has gone house to house, picking up voters, and dropping them off at the polls. Judging from the collection of used glasses filling the limousine’s cup holders, they had a pretty good time while doing so.
For the past 20 minutes, the limo has been camped in front of City Hall, right next to a polling station. Outside, as voters stream by, more men in suits gather by the entrance to the building, chatting gregariously. Speaking only for myself, they project an air of menace and authority. Most are city employees, like two-time felon and Cudahy administrative clerk Gerardo Vallejo.
Police officers drive by and wave to Vallejo. This is not particu-
larly reassuring.
On a previous trip to Cudahy, several weeks ago, I saw a city vehicle packed with the mayor’s campaign signs parked in front of Vallejo’s house. That’s a violation of County election law – using city resources to promote one candidate over the other. No charges were ever brought, however. A county official in the D.A.’s office declared the infraction “minimal and incidental.”
This is just the second election in Cudahy in the past decade. The last election in 2007 was marred by reports of gang presence at the polls. In that election and this one, candidates running against the status quo have faced death threats, arson and vandalism of their homes and property.
Despite nearly a dozen such incidents in the past two years, the Los Angeles County Registrar Recorder has refused to send an election monitor to Cudahy. In their absence, I’ve come to Cudahy to look for violations of election laws. I’m no lawyer, but it sure seems to me like I’m sitting in an election violation right now.
My laissez-faire attitude toward fashion and basic personal hygiene make it a stretch to peg me as a reporter, and get me inside the limo. But my attempts to strike up a conversation with the men in suits go unanswered. It could be because I’m a six-foot-two scruffy white guy in a city that’s 95 percent Latino. I’m not exactly inconspicuous.
As the doors to the limo shut, and we start to drive away, I’m nervous. One week earlier I’d written a story comparing Cudahy to Afghanistan. Not a good way to make friends.
And this is not a good town to be friendless in.
Nearly a third of the police force that patrols Cudahy had ethical violations on their records when they were hired or have run into trouble while on the force. Crime reports for the last 30 years show that Cudahy is a major gateway for drug trafficking – not just in L.A. but throughout the country. At least four known gangs control the city streets by night.
In my mind one, and perhaps only one, thing is clear: looking out the tinted windows of a stretch limo, American democracy looks a whole lot different in Cudahy.
So, does parking your stretch limo outside a polling station, stocking it with campaign literature and plying voters with alcohol constitute an election violation? The answer, it seems, is that no one knows for sure.
The California state elections code is remarkably vague – stating simply that no one may “do any electioneering” within 100 feet of the polls. Though the code is hundreds of pages long, nowhere does it give an actual definition of electioneering.
In a 2008 legal memo, California Secretary of State Debra Bowen defined electioneering as “[a]ny message that can be reasonably connected to a candidate or measure that is on the ballot.”
That memo, however, is not law.
“Ultimately,” says Bowen spokes-person Kate Folmar, “it’s up for a jury to decide.”
And that makes a prosecutor’s job extremely tricky.
“For as long as I’ve been here we’ve never actually prosecuted an electioneering violation,” says David Demerjian, who runs the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s public integrity division.
Part of the problem is finding witnesses to accurately document the nature of the election fraud. In this regard, the first line of defense is supposed to be the local police department.
“It’s often the case that police will be reluctant to get involved when the incident involves an active city councilmember,” says Demerjian. “They fear political reprisal.”
That makes an independent election monitor crucial in a city like Cudahy.
But, says Demerjian, “We do not preemptively monitor elections. If a violation is reported, we send
an investigator.”
A few days later, Demerjian tells me that his office heard no word from Cudahy on Election Day. Of course, the body that could have monitored the election, the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder, stayed home on Election Day.
Registar-Recorder/CountyClerk Dean Logan admits his office received a call before the election from County Supervisor Gloria Molina expressing her lack of faith in the legitimacy of the Cudahy electoral process. “In response,” Logan says, “we spoke with Cudahy’s City Clerk and made him aware of both our and Supervisor Molina’s concerns.”
Molina’s office didn’t return calls for comment by deadline.
Logan says that without the consent of the city, his office doesn’t have the mandate to provide oversight in a local election. However, given the cloudy definition of electioneering, an election monitor could have helped law enforcement officials build a case by serving as witnesses in a trial – a point that is now moot.
What about the booze, though? Electioneering aside, California has a law against giving gifts in exchange
for votes.
“For California elections, as opposed to elections that involve any federal offices, it is not illegal to offer something of value in order to encourage someone to vote, but only to vote in a particular manner,” explains Fredric D. Woocher, a lawyer and election expert with Strumwasser & Woocher LLP. “Of course, one would surely prefer that the liquor be provided after the voters cast their ballots than before.”
Demerjian says, either way, he would need multiple witnesses to come forward to say they were offered alcohol in exchange for their votes to have any shot at building a case.
Based on my limo ride, that isn’t going to happen. The men in suits are far too savvy to be so explicit.
Rolling from City Hall to a polling station across town, the men in suits barely say a word, other than fielding calls in Spanish about where to pick up voters. Halfway there, one of the men relaxes enough to allow himself a glass of Rémy Martin.
“Where are you from, anyway?” he finally asks me, after a few sips.
“I work around here,” I reply.
We leave it at that.
When the old man gets out to vote a few minutes later, I get out with him. I don’t know whether I’m being paranoid or am rightfully scared.
Cudahy will do that to you.
“You have to hand it to them: they have a serious political machine,” Luis Garcia, who ran against Mayor Silva and his limos, tells me later. “Elections are just about the only time you’re going to see stretch limousines in Cudahy.”
In the end, perhaps elections in Cudahy aren’t all that different from anywhere else in America. Money talks.
Silva and Barrios won in a landslide.
Published: 03/11/2009
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Great reporting, this is the only place you can read about what really is happening in this country. Mexico's President Calderon said that "Graft in the US is a huge problem" in a BBC interview, and here is a shining example. I wonder how many other "Cudahys" exist in our country?