Fiedler Remains a Force in Local Politics

She was the San Fernando Valley’s version of Everywoman--a suburban housewife who built a national political career by challenging the status quo.

In the process, Bobbi Fiedler helped change the course of local education, toppled some of the Valley’s most venerable elected officials and paved the way for a host of other Valley matrons to enter the political fray.

She catapulted into the public spotlight in 1977 when she won her first political race. Backed by Bustop, the grass-roots anti-busing group she helped form, she unseated the Los Angeles school board president. Their bruising battle signaled the beginning of the end for the district’s controversial mandatory busing program.

Three years later, Fiedler stunned veteran politicos by eking out a victory over popular 10-term Congressman Jim Corman. She was elected to two more terms in the U.S. House of Representatives but gave up her seat in 1986 to run for the U.S. Senate. She finished a disappointing fourth.

Along the way, the citizen activist-turned-politician was indicted in a campaign scandal--although the charges were later ruled groundless and dismissed--touted as a possible mayoral contender, hired as a television commentator and appointed to a series of city and state government commissions.

Divorced from her pharmacist husband, she married her longtime advisor and political mentor Paul Clarke in 1987. Clarke died in December of lung cancer.

In 1990, Fiedler was found to have lymphoma, a systemic cancer, but said she overcame it through chemotherapy and bone marrow treatments.

Although she resigned from the city’s powerful Community Redevelopment Agency last year, she has not lost her stature in Valley political circles. Republicans consider her a powerful ally in their push for Valley secession and the school district breakup campaign.

Neither has she lost the combative style that made her the Valley politician that outsiders love to hate. Even Fiedler admits: “I’m not the kind of person people feel neutral about. Either they like me . . . or they don’t.”