Torres Leads Molina in Fund Raising : Politics: Labor contributes 25% of state senator’s 1st District campaign donations. Women’s groups back his opponent.

By RICHARD SIMON, JILL STEWART and HECTOR TOBAR

Feb. 14, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

State Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles) has raised nearly $1 million, almost twice as much as City Councilwoman Gloria Molina has collected in the 1st District race that will put a Latino on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, records show.

Nearly $1 out of every $4 donated to the Torres campaign has come from organized labor, including many unions representing county employees whose salaries are set by the board. The biggest county union has raised more than $100,000 from unions as far away as Michigan.

Molina has received $36,707 from women’s groups as she seeks to become the first woman elected to the Board of Supervisors. The councilwoman also has raised more than $20,000 from developers and lobbyists for the Central City West downtown development plan. Molina negotiated zoning and use restrictions for the project and shepherded those changes through City Council.

In the final days before Tuesday’s 1st District election, records show that Torres has raised $965,952 since the campaign got under way, while Molina has raised $550,999 for a total of more than $1.5 million--making it one of the highest-priced races in county history.

The stakes are high for politicians and donors. The winner will instantly become one of the most powerful Latinos in the country. For donors, the seat is important because the supervisors govern the nation’s most populous county. The board controls a $10-billion budget and represents nearly 9 million people--a higher population than 42 of the 50 states.

The election was ordered by a judge who found that the all-Anglo board drew its district boundaries to split the Latino vote, denying political representation to the county’s 3 million Latinos. The new district, which is 71% Latino, stretches from Silver Lake and Lincoln Heights east to Irwindale and La Puente.

Fund raising has become an issue in the race, with the candidates accusing one another of accepting money from special interests who have business before local and state government agencies. The candidates have had to raise large sums of money to deliver their messages--mostly through mailers, which are considered crucial because of the short campaign and huge supervisorial district.

The bulk of the money has been spent on printing and postage for mailers and on campaign staff, including professional political consultants. The campaigns also spent money to buy demographic and political data on the new district so that the candidates could tailor mailings. For example, mailers that feature Republican endorsements would target GOP voters.

Organized labor has given Torres $233,982--about 20 times more than Molina raised from unions--and is providing campaign workers.

“This is a big one for us,” said Sharon Grimpe Correll, general manager of Service Employees International Union, Local 660, representing 40,000 county workers.

Correll takes credit for raising more than $100,000 from unions nationwide. “What happens here with the board has a tendency to spread all over the United States and certainly in California,” Correll said.

Her local set up its own Torres campaign operation, spending $50,000 on mailers and phone calls to its 4,000 union members who live in the district.

The union also brought a successful lawsuit that threw out a voter-enacted $1,000-per-person limit on contributions, providing a big boost to Torres’ fund raising.

Torres has received at least $24,000 from companies with business before the Board of Supervisors, including $20,000 from attorney Richard Riordan, whose firm receives county legal work.

Riordan, who also gave Molina $5,000 before the first round of balloting Jan. 22, said he is supporting Torres in the runoff. “I think he is somebody who can work with all kinds of people, conservatives and liberals,” Riordan said.

Torres raised $117,000 from other politicians, including 15 fellow legislators. The largest amounts were loans of $25,000 from Assemblyman Mike Roos, $20,000 from Los Angeles school board member Leticia Quezada and $15,000 from Assemblyman Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles).

Molina drew $80,000 from her City Council campaign treasury, which includes money from City Hall developers and lobbyists.

She also has received $26,145 from her closest Democratic allies. Contributions included $10,000 from Rep. Esteban Torres, $8,645 from Assemblywoman Lucille Roybal Allard and $7,000 from Rep. Edward Roybal.

Both candidates have received money from a Malibu residents’ group and from Hollywood celebrities. Molina received $100 from Steve Allen, $150 from Carmen Zapata and $250 from Susan Clark. Actor Iron Eyes Cody donated $250 to Torres.

One of the biggest contributions to Torres, a liberal Democrat, was a $25,000 loan from a man he says he has never met--Safi U. Qureshey, an Orange County Republican.

Qureshey, president of AST Research, a large computer firm, refused comment. But Torres supporter Zane Alsabery said he asked Qureshey, a fellow Muslim, to make the loan after learning that Torres testified before an education committee about inaccurate portrayals of Muslims in schoolbooks.

“The textbook said that Muslims pray by rubbing their noses in the dirt and patting their hands on the ground,” said Alsabery, an Agoura Hills executive recruiter.

Gertrude Marshall, a retired restaurant owner from Arcadia, donated $15,000 to Torres on the recommendation of her lawyer, Riordan. “We like (retiring Supervisor) Pete Schabarum. We thought he (Torres) would be the next best guy.”

Molina’s biggest contribution was $15,000 from Stanley Hirsh, a longtime friend and contributor who owns the Mercantile Center downtown.

“I’m one of her ardent admirers,” he said. “There’s nothing that she could do to help me.”

Molina has refused contributions from landfill operators because garbage dumps are controversial in the district. Torres said he also has refused some contributions, but campaign aides would not identify the would-be donors.

The most striking difference between the two campaigns is the amount of money flowing from unions to Torres.

Correll said his union chose Torres over Molina because of his strong support of labor issues in the state Legislature and his pledge to fight any further private contracting of jobs held by county workers. Molina also opposes contracting.

Bill Robertson, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, said Molina “has not been a bad labor vote, but we have not had a decent dialogue with Gloria.”

Molina has been a critic of Robertson’s second in command, James Wood, board chairman of the city’s embattled Community Redevelopment Agency. Molina has accused Wood of using public funds to finance skyscrapers while affordable housing and other pressing needs received less attention.

Torres said he is “very independent” and that labor supports him “because of what I’ve stood for--to raise the minimum wage . . . to protect health and safety of workers.”

Union leader Correll added, “It kind of blows me away that (Molina) asked us for our endorsement and now is saying that we’re special interests.”

Molina said, “Unions are a special interest just like lawyers and women, but it’s the size of this special interest that is unbelievable, because it can be very controlling.”

Among Molina’s biggest contributions was $7,000 from the Engineers & Architects Assn., which represents 8,000 city employees.

The Los Angeles County Firefighters Local 1014 was Torres’ biggest contributor, providing $35,000, followed by Service Employees International Union Local 660, which donated $32,828.

The Northern California Pipe Trades District Council in Burlingame, which donated $2,000, has backed Torres since the early 1980s, when he co-sponsored a bill to ban plastic pipe in home sewers.

Unions argued that plastic could break, but it was also widely known that unions feared plastic might last longer than metal--and not need replacement. Torres’ bill was defeated.

“My attitude has always been that whoever supports you, you support them,” said Tom Hunter, business manager of the pipe trade union. “I’m sure that (Molina) is a fine person, and if she wins she’ll probably make a good supervisor. But that’s really not the point from our perspective.”

Molina’s largest contribution from women was $10,000 from Peg Yorkin, a television producer and chairwoman of the Fund for the Feminist Majority. Yorkin called Molina “a feminist, a very strong woman. In fact, we gave her the . . . Feminist of the Year award.”

She also received $10,000 from the Women’s Political Committee; $5,000 from Women For, a California women’s political activist group, and $3,500 from the National Women’s Political Caucus’ Westside chapter.

Molina has raised $20,750 from developers and lobbyists in Central City West, a partially blighted 465-acre tract of land west of the Harbor Freeway in her council district. The supervisors have no say over the developments, which require approval by the City Council.

Molina has played a central role in hammering out a compromise between developers and community groups, which included construction of additional housing.

“None of it was contingent on any kind of fund raising for me,” she said.

Ken Spiker, a lobbyist for PC Crown Hill, a landowner in Central City West, said he and the firm gave $7,000 to Molina’s supervisorial race because, “We get straight answers back from Gloria.”

Lobbyist Steve Afriat raised $6,500 for Molina’s supervisorial campaign and represented a Central City West developer. “The developers got what they wanted, but it was a result of significant concessions (by them),” he said.

Both candidates have received money from firms whose contracts and projects need Board of Supervisors’ approval.

Torres received $2,000 from the law firm of Parker, Milliken, Clark, O’Hara & Samuelian, the company that is defending the Board of Supervisors against a Los Angeles city lawsuit accusing the county of failing to provide help to the homeless. Molina received $3,250.

Several companies with business before the supervisors gave $1,000 to Torres. They include: Newhall Land & Farming Co.; Don Bailey, president of Comarco, a firm hired to run county airports; Marina Plaza Ventures, a partnership headed by Saudi investors seeking to build a hotel on county land in Marina del Rey, and the Holden Group, which administers a multimillion-dollar deferred compensation program for county employees.

The union’s successful court fight against a voter-approved $1,000 contribution limit has opened the floodgates in this race, but Molina and Torres have pledged to push for new county contribution limits if elected.

The candidates are not likely to break the record $2.8 million spent by Supervisor Mike Antonovich to beat back a challenge from ex-Supervisor Baxter Ward in 1988, said Robert Stern, co-director of California Commission on Campaign Financing.

But with Molina and Torres continuing to raise funds, they could reach the $2-million mark.

SUPERVISORIAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTORS

The top contributors to 1st Supervisorial District candidates Gloria Molina and Art Torres: Los Angeles City Councilwoman Gloria Molina

Stanley Hirsh, owner, Mercantile Center: $15,000

Peg Yorkin, Peg Yorkin Productions: $10,000

Women’s Political Committee: $10,000

Committee to Reelect Esteban Torres to Congress: $10,000

Lucille Roybal-Allard for Assembly: $8,645

Rep. Ed Roybal Campaign Committee: $7,000

PC Crown Hill: $6,000

Engineers & Architects Assn., city labor union: $7,000

Richard Riordan, downtown attorney: $5,000