First in the 1st : On the Day After, Molina Is Treated Royally by Colleagues and Supporters

As a rule, members of Los Angeles’ City Council arrive at their meetings casually, straggling through a back door and past the coffee pot to their seats.

On Wednesday, the morning after she had walloped her opponent to become Los Angeles County’s first Latina and first elected woman supervisor, Councilwoman Gloria Molina was accorded a Miss America entrance.

It was actually her second entrance. Ten minutes earlier, she had stopped in briefly and without ceremony as her colleagues gathered for the meeting, then went back to her office.

But then Council President John Ferraro dispatched council members Nate Holden and Joan Milke Flores to fetch her. The two flanked Molina on the walk back to council chambers.

“This is too much!” Molina said, again and again. A TV reporter held open the walnut door. Molina passed under the carved, gold-lettered admonition, “Law is reason without passion,” and into the chamber.

“You want me to go down the center aisle? My goodness.”

And as the eldest daughter of a Mexican immigrant laborer was escorted down the aisle where the King of Spain and the Queen of England have passed, Ferraro announced, “Members of the council, Supervisor-elect Gloria Molina is entering the room. Everybody please stand.”

Seven hours before, the newest star in the Latino national political firmament had sat at a table eating Denny’s chicken-fried steak with her staff, thrilled and tired beyond fatigue. Now, a dozen red roses waited at her desk, a gift from the courtly Ferraro, and dozens of people waited to pay her court. Some looked triumphant. Others, who had not been politically prescient, looked queasy and hung back. For some Latino voters, a handshake was not adequate for so overwhelming a moment: Molina wobbled on her 2-inch heels as each swept her into an abrazo (hug).

The council meeting was brief, but not brief enough for Molina’s 3-year-old daughter, Valentina. Until her mother took it away, she jabbed distractedly at her tongue with the plastic stick that had held the card in the roses. Councilman Joel Wachs fished chocolates out of his desk drawer for her.

“That’s all she needs, is chocolate,” said her mother. “She’ll start zooming around here.” Sure enough, as Molina chatted, Valentina sang “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and swung from metal stanchions. When a city photographer asked her to pose, she said no.

“Because I don’t want to, I said. That’s the reason. I’m gonna tell my daddy on you.”

Valentina had been told that when this was all over, she was going to Disneyland, so her mother coaxed her into posing with Ferraro by saying, “This is the man who’s going to give you the ticket for Disneyland!”

Then Molina laughed, thinking of all the sidewalks she had covered in nearly a dozen weeks. “Can you imagine walking Disneyland after this campaign?”

Full of adrenaline and chicken-fried steak, Molina “didn’t get a whole lot of sleep.” And she awoke Wednesday morning thinking, “We won, we really won,” and with “the comfort of finding it was over.”

The photographers’ arrival at her Mt. Washington house was anticipated; she wore makeup with her pajamas. The phone rang without cease. “People that I didn’t even know had my home phone number.”

A little after 8 a.m., Molina’s husband, Ron Martinez, brought Valentina home from neighbor Renee Quinn’s house, where she had spent the night.

Quinn began as a neighbor and became a Molina believer. This was the first vote she cast for Molina; although she lives across the street, the City Council district line runs down the middle of it and Molina is not her councilwoman.

When Quinn came over a bit later, Molina was still in her robe, finishing a phone interview. “Actually she looked quite good considering she had no sleep,” Quinn said. “I think she’s just so high on the victory.”

In the weeks before, Valentina had sometimes said “things like, ‘Gee, mom and dad leave me a lot,’ ” Quinn said.

Quinn left them reunited Wednesday morning, “The happy little supervisoral family.”

Wednesday noon, at campaign headquarters, a woman answered the phone, “Supervisor Molina,” and then, “We’ve been waiting a long time to say that.”

The phone rang a lot, calls from San Antonio and Montebello, from Rep. Barbara Boxer, school board President Jackie Goldberg. Flowers were delivered, roses from the Martha Rios family, tulips from “all the Latino women in the valley. Looking forward to governorship.”

A press turnout awaiting her would have delighted a presidential candidate and it filled the small room with kilowatts and body heat.

Molina let them know by car phone that she was 10 minutes away, and volunteer Carmen Azzolino waited outside to hand Molina the flowers Molina’s staff had bought.

“Pretend she’s coming,” a KMEX cameraman told the volunteers, who obligingly squealed and cheered. They did it again when Molina arrived.

For more than an hour, she answered questions in Spanish and English about policies and sexism and money. “Can you tell us a little more about Gloria Molina the person?” a reporter asked coaxingly. “Name three things that are sacred to you.”

Molina rolled a cool can of Sprite between her hands. “My family is very important to me,” she began. “My commitment to my work is very valuable. . . .” She never got to No. 3; another question interrupted.

Across the room, a sister and her father, Leonard, sat waiting for the crowd to ebb so Molina could cut the cake with “Congratulations” written in blue frosting. Their eyes kept returning to her. “My parents are so shy,” said her sister, Gracie Diaz. “Where Gloria came from, I don’t know.”