THE SUNDAY PROFILE : Balancing the Extremes : As the first Latino mayor of Santa Ana, Miguel Pulido Jr. has earned the respect of a diverse city--and some criticism

Miguel A. Pulido Jr. starts the day in the well-worn offices of his family’s Santa Ana muffler shop, slipping easily from English to Spanish to French as he studies the absentee vote count from the recent election, ducks under a car to diagnose a faulty converter and takes a call from a Vietnamese supporter.

He then dashes to City Hall for a briefing on pending projects, pays his respects at a viewing for deceased Latino community attorney Wallace Davis, and rushes to Costa Mesa’s swank Center Club for a gathering of the nonpartisan Latin American Voters of America.

By the time he takes his seat on the council dais for an evening forum on community policing, he is 30 minutes late.

Pulido--who was sworn into office Tuesday as Santa Ana’s first Latino mayor--has earned both respect and criticism for his ambitious effort to juggle engagements and his diplomatic knack for wooing a wide range of voters.

Now, the Mexican-born Pulido, 38, may face the greatest challenge of all: finding a way to unite and satisfy a city of extremes that includes the conservative white residents who have long held considerable voting clout and the vocal Latino community activists who have eyed his politicking with growing disdain.

“There are those who criticize him for not being a single-issue elected official,” said former Mayor Daniel H. Young. “The fact of the matter is he’s the mayor. . . . Let me tell you, from a guy who has eight years on the beat, Santa Ana is one of the toughest cities to represent.

“You have every nationality, every income group, every political persuasion, all of whom are struggling to get to the forefront. You have to be a supremely talented listener. You have to be someone who has a genuine interest in all points of view, or you just flat won’t succeed. That’s where I think Miguel has the right talents.”

Pulido, a handsome yet shy former solar engineer and tennis player, was elected to the City Council in 1986 after his family successfully fought the city’s attempts to raze their business, the Ace Muffler shop on 1st Street.

Back then, he was a little-known activist who tenaciously battled Santa Ana’s powers that be. Since then, he has emerged as an accomplished politician, adept at working state and federal government officials to pull in millions of dollars in grants for the city.

But Pulido’s agility in sporting different hats when addressing different audiences has alienated him from some Latino community leaders, who say he shapes his opinions to what constituents want to hear, often shows up late or not at all to community events, and hasn’t shown enough sensitivity to the city’s low-income immigrants.

“If you say you’re going to be there, you have to follow through,” said Rueben Martinez, a downtown barber and bookseller who supported Pulido strongly in his early years but has since become disenchanted. “That’s where you get your credibility and integrity built. Through the years, he’s gained some and he’s lost some. He’s always sitting on the fence.”

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On the eve of the recent election, Pulido came under fire from some Latino community activists for sending out a final-hour mailer to white voters that stated he opposed Proposition 187 because it “does not go far enough” in cracking down on illegal immigration.

Just a week earlier, he had publicly stated that he was opposed to the measure, but cited different reasons, namely that Proposition 187 would deny children access to education and health care. Those sentiments were absent from the mailer, which instead focused on the threats that some “illegal aliens” pose to public safety and on Pulido’s efforts to clear the city of the homeless and limit the number of people who can live in a residence--key concerns to many Santa Ana voters.

“It was an awful piece. Of course it hurt him,” Martinez said. “It did not show any passion, and no sensitivity.”

The new mayor, however, says his position on the controversial initiative remained consistent, and that he sent out the mailer to stress his opposition to illegal immigration.

Pulido points out that his family emigrated legally from Mexico. He says he is proud of his cultural heritage and fluency in three languages, and he enjoys strumming his guitar as his father sings traditional Mexican ballads that his grandfather wrote and passed down.

The Latino community, he says, is as diverse as the white community.

“I don’t feel the connection some people assume I feel. I don’t think any one voice can speak on behalf of all Hispanics,” Pulido said.

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Pulido was born in Mexico City to Miguel Armando Pulido, an engineer, and Maria Soledad Pulido, whose French ancestry piqued the younger Miguel’s interest in the language before she died when he was 19.

His father, now 68, immigrated to California in 1960 for a Van Nuys factory job that never materialized. Instead, his father worked in the Placentia cornfields, fixing transmissions on his own time until he earned enough, after a year, to bring his wife and four children to join him in the rundown farmhouse they called home.

When the young Miguel was bused to Commonwealth Elementary School in Fullerton for kindergarten at age 5, he spoke no English and was the only Latino boy in his class.

“On my first day of school, my mother made me two pieces of paper to carry with me,” Pulido said. “The one in my right pocket said, ‘My name is Miguel Pulido and I live at 801 S. Placentia Drive.’ The one in my left pocket said, ‘I have to go to the bathroom.’ ”

Pulido used both slips that day, he said, and took his first steps toward the assimilation that he prides himself on. By sixth grade, he was class president, assuring fellow students that he would do his best, but warning that he couldn’t promise A’s or free soda.

“I grew up in a very Anglo environment, and because of that, I’m very comfortable in diverse environments,” he said.

Pulido went on to Ladera Vista Junior High and Troy High School, both in Fullerton, and to Cal State Fullerton. In 1992, he married Laura Saari, an Orange County Register reporter whom he met while she was interviewing him.

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When Pulido quit his job as a solar engineer in 1984 and emerged onto the political stage as a devoted son fighting to save his family’s business, he grabbed attention for his intelligence and measured eloquence.

Attorney Al Amezcua, who is putting together a committee of community leaders to serve as the mayor’s “eyes and ears,” remembers meeting Pulido at the muffler shop when he brought his old Honda there for repairs. Shortly after, Pulido called Amezcua for advice in mounting a challenge to the city’s plan to raze Ace Muffler for a shopping mall.

“I remember him really for the first time taking a very strong position on what he believed in, and doing things the smart way, not screaming, not yelling, but making presentations stating his positions in a very calm, a very sound way,” Amezcua said.

He said that while Pulido is not “a flag raiser for the Mexican community,” he has shown great talent in working with “every segment of the community,” from staunch Republicans to Democrats, from Korean business owners to Vietnamese senior citizens and wealthy whites.

“That’s why he’s the man of our times,” Amezcua said. “This city needs someone who is able to pull everyone in, and almost be at the pulpit to ensure that all voices and all perspectives and everybody’s position is taken into consideration.”

When two youths were killed in a drive-by shooting near his uncle’s house several years ago, Amezcua took a personal interest in pushing for the city to address the gang problem. He called Pulido, who met him at a Taco Bell near the muffler shop--a hangout Pulido jokingly refers to as his office.

Out of that meeting eventually came Pulido’s anti-gang plan, which includes the city’s Project PRIDE, a youth employment program, and an effort to build more community centers.

Pulido also has worked with Councilman Robert L. Richardson to try to curtail residential overcrowding, and has lobbied to lure a new federal courthouse to Santa Ana, along with a host of other federal grants.

Pulido also spearheaded an effort to get Santa Ana designated as a ‘federal enterprise community,” which would ensure tax breaks for businesses and eligibility for more social service grants. (The city’s application is still under review in Washington.) And although he came onto the council fighting City Hall, Pulido quickly distanced himself from the acrimonious battles that then plagued the board.

“The first several months on the council I did nothing but listen and listen and listen to see what was occurring,” Pulido said. “I think some people weren’t happy with that because they wanted me to grandstand. But that’s not what I was about.”

His attentiveness has won him praise from some of the city’s neighborhood associations, organizations made up predominantly of homeowners in the city’s better-kept neighborhoods.

“He has always been concerned about neighborhood integrity and about the people who live in the neighborhoods,” said Lorri Schmitt-Tudor, president of the Washington Square Neighborhood Assn. “I have never had the feeling that he was dividing people up in terms of ethnicity. He has a genuine concern. He’s a very caring man. He wouldn’t be doing what he is doing for all of us if he wasn’t.”

But his critics offer a different portrayal, saying that while Pulido may have an open ear for some people in town, he has not been as receptive to lower-income residents, many of them non-voting immigrants.

“This guy likes to go to Washington, D.C., instead of going into the barrios,” said onetime supporter Martinez. “He goes into the nice neighborhoods in town, but we’re human beings too. He’s going to have to clean it up, and if he does, I’ll be there for him, because we need to be united. Can he do it? We need to find out.”

Others have harsher criticisms. When Pulido offered differing statements on Proposition 187, some Latino community activists charged the behavior was all too typical.

“I think he lacks the integrity and the character and the commitment and the political will to lead a diverse community,” said John Palacio of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “Pulido, in my judgment, exemplifies a career politician who will say or do anything to remain in office.”

Palacio and others say they were already wary of Pulido after he sent out a similar final-hour election mailer in 1986 calling illegal immigrants a “public nuisance.”

“The support that he had in the Latino community was very soft, but we heard he was going to be a new Pulido, a new leader,” Palacio said. “What we really saw was vintage Pulido, a man who will sell his community out for political gain.”

The criticisms illustrate one thing, said former Mayor Young: that governing a city of extremes is a delicate business.

“I think he faces some extremely difficult challenges to make everyone comfortable,” Young said, “but I think he’s up to the task.”

Miguel A. Pulido Jr.

Age: 38.

Native?: No, born in Mexico City, lives in Santa Ana.

Family: Married to newspaper reporter Laura Saari; no children.

Passions: Watching and playing tennis, speaking and reading French, vegetarianism.

On his early days in California, living in a Placentia farmhouse: “When I first got there I was Tom Sawyer--making treehouses in the avocado trees.”

On learning to speak English: “I didn’t speak English as a kindergartner. I was the only Spanish-speaking kid in the class. . . . At home our parents would make us write in Spanish, speak in Spanish, but at school my parents wanted everything to be in English.”

On juggling his new job as mayor with his work at the muffler shop: “I can work very effectively. I know I’m going to have to leave the muffler shop more than I did before--but it is a part-time job.”