Life of Promise, Pressing New Issues

Long before the high school honors and the Ivy League education put Rocky Delgadillo on the path to becoming Los Angeles’ next city attorney, there was that little art scholarship he won back in kindergarten.

His parents remember it vividly because it was the first of many honors and opportunities for the bright, affable son they christened Rockard John and raised in the largely Latino, working-class community of Highland Park in northeast Los Angeles.

In the years that followed, he was the student body president and star athlete (varsity football, basketball and baseball) at Franklin High School who went to Harvard, earned a law degree from Columbia and came home to work in one of the city’s most prominent law firms. After a stint with the organization formed to help the city recover from the 1992 riots, he joined Mayor Richard Riordan’s administration in 1994, eventually rising to deputy mayor for economic development.

On Monday, Delgadillo will be sworn in as city attorney, the first Latino to hold an elected, citywide office since Julian Nava’s 1967 election to what was then an at-large seat on the school board.

Delgadillo, on his first try for elected office, pulled off an upset victory over Councilman Mike Feuer with the help of moneyed special interests, much of the city’s business community, a growing Latino electorate and a triumvirate of high-profile supporters: Riordan, former Secretary of State Warren Christopher and businessman and former basketball great Earvin “Magic” Johnson.

As Delgadillo takes the helm of the city attorney’s office, he faces a number of pressing issues, including the federal consent decree mandating law-enforcement reforms in the wake of the Rampart Division police corruption scandal and the city’s legal liabilities from Rampart and other matters, recently estimated at $1 billion. He will try to make good on his campaign promises of better schools, safer neighborhoods and lower legal costs.

And, political observers say, he also will need to demonstrate his independence from the business interests that helped him get elected. That is especially true of the outdoor advertising industry, which has fought efforts to more closely regulate billboards. Advertisers put up some $425,000 in billboards supporting Delgadillo, albeit independently of his campaign.

Raphael Sonenshein, a Cal State Fullerton political scientist and an authority on Los Angeles politics, said Delgadillo’s newcomer status to elected office and the nature of his campaign, which was centered on Delgadillo’s compelling personal story rather than on a lot of specific plans, have made it difficult to know what to expect from him.

“There are a lot of blanks to be filled in,” Sonenshein said.

The June 5 election results--City Atty. James K. Hahn’s defeat of former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa in the mayor’s race, and Delgadillo’s victory for the city’s second-highest office--placed Delgadillo at the top of the list of promising Latino political stars. And they almost certainly ensure Delgadillo the city attorney will receive a higher level of scrutiny than did Delgadillo the candidate.

Delgadillo has said repeatedly he will not be influenced by campaign supporters on billboards or any other issues.

“I’ve said ‘no’ to special interests and developers” over the years as a Riordan appointee, Delgadillo often says, usually adding he has the “strength of character” to decide issues on their merits.

People who have known Delgadillo since his formative years say they have no doubt about his integrity--or his future.

He was born July 15, 1960, the fourth of five children of a close-knit family. His father, Al Delgadillo, grew up in nearby Cypress Park, the son of Mexican immigrants. He met his future wife, Beverly Sowers, through relatives after he got out of the Air Force.

They still live in the house where they raised their family, which now includes 13 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. The farthest any of the five Delgadillo children moved from Highland Park is Irvine, so family get-togethers are large and frequent.

Beverly stayed home to raise the children--and volunteered with the PTA, Little League and Scout troops--while Al worked as an associate engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratories. Family outings were Sunday drives around Los Angeles and occasional evening movies at the drive-in, plus camping and fishing vacations.

Rocky “was always a very loving child, a little bit on the shy side. . . . He hardly ever got into trouble,” his mother recalled.

His best friend from high school, Robin Cardona, jokes that he and Delgadillo “were the freaks of Franklin” because they never drank, did drugs or got into any other kind of trouble, “not even a reprimand for being loud.”

At Harvard, Delgadillo was cut from the baseball team, so he went out for football the following fall and won All-America honors.

Cardona, now Franklin’s basketball coach, said he is gratified that Delgadillo stays involved with his alma mater.

“Too many people forget where they come from, but not Rocky. He’s been a great role model for our kids,” Cardona said.

Al Delgadillo did not speak Spanish around his children--a decision he said he later regretted--because he wanted to spare them the discrimination and other difficulties he had experienced as a child whose primary language was Spanish.

Rocky Delgadillo took Spanish in high school and later used audiotapes to become more proficient, then honed his skills on the campaign trail. Now he speaks Spanish to his infant son, Christian, born to him and his wife, Michelle, during the final days of the campaign.

“I’m still working on my accent,” Delgadillo said last week as he prepared to move from the mayor’s suite into the city attorney’s office.

Delgadillo’s parents, who hoped their son would choose Stanford or another California university, reluctantly agreed to Harvard. But Al Delgadillo urged him to return to his roots when his schooling was done--an anecdote that Rocky Delgadillo often used to open his campaign stump pitch.

Jack L. Wright, the Franklin High college advisor who encouraged Delgadillo to go to Harvard, later wrote in a law school recommendation letter that his former student “radiates a high degree of confidence, and yet is a very modest young man in spite of all his accomplishments.”

Back in Los Angeles after Harvard, Delgadillo spent a year teaching and coaching at Franklin before heading back east to law school, and after returning to Los Angeles to stay, he was instrumental in founding a scholarship program for Franklin students.

“He continues to make a difference in the community he grew up in. . . . I’m very, very proud of him,” Wright said recently.

At O’Melveny & Myers, negotiating entertainment industry contracts in the firm’s Century City offices, Delgadillo met Warren Christopher, then the firm’s chairman, who became a mentor.

Delgadillo got involved in the firm’s scholarship program for its “adopted” school, O’Melveny Avenue Elementary in mostly Latino San Fernando--a project launched by Christopher. He sought Christopher’s advice on several occasions, including when he was considering joining RLA (then called Rebuild LA) after the 1992 riots and when considering running for city attorney.

“I always thought he would be an excellent candidate. He has the [right] kind of personality and background,” Christopher said. “I told him it seemed like a long shot, because [Feuer] had already lined up a lot of endorsements, but I thought he could do it and could run a very inclusive campaign.

“I had no doubts he was an emerging political figure. Even if he had lost this race, I thought it nonetheless would have been just the beginning for him.”

Leaving RLA for the mayor’s office, Delgadillo launched the Minority Business Opportunity Committee, worked to attract firms to the city and helped bring jobs to some of the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods. The work put him in close contact with many of the city’s influential business leaders and wealthy developers, who later contributed to his campaign. The job also regularly brought Delgadillo into Latino and African American communities, and both groups strongly backed him on election day.

“He’s fair; he’s shown no favoritism among ethnic groups,” said longtime Councilman Nate Holden, an African American who backed Delgadillo’s candidacy. “He worked on projects all through the city, and I saw how he advocated and supported those projects.”

Many of those who worked with Delgadillo at RLA and at City Hall say he is hard-working, unflappable, deliberative and a good listener. He prefers negotiation to confrontation, but will fight if he needs to.

Clearly disappointed when passed over--twice--for deputy mayor, Delgadillo hung in there and ultimately got the promotion.

“He has really grown in the job,” Riordan said during the campaign, when he endorsed Delgadillo, helped raise money for him, and later spent $265,000 of his personal wealth on his deputy’s behalf.

On Saturday, Delgadillo launched a two-day “thank you tour” through some of the neighborhoods that supported him.

At a pancake breakfast held at the Mid-City headquarters of Kappa Alpha Psi, an African American philanthropic fraternity, Delgadillo handed out freshly minted copies of “City Contacts and Information Guide,” bearing his photo and new title.

In brief remarks before digging into his pancakes and sausage, Delgadillo promised to keep in touch with community concerns around the city.

“I won’t let you down,” he promised. “And if I ever do, I want you to call me and let me know. I want you to hold me accountable.”