A Bloggin "Meet and Greet" with CD 1 Candidate Gil Cedillo

A Red  Spotted Blogger meets up with CD 1 City Council Candidate Gil Cedillo.

Cedillo for City Council Billboard near Avenue 26 and Figueroa in Cypress Park.

** Blogger's note: As we enter the last week of campaigning leading up to March 5 Election Day, this blogger has been out and about in the city interviewing various candidates for office. We will bring you those missives beginning tomorrow. Yesterday morning, I made my way into the busy collectivist hub that is the Gil Cedillo for CD 1 City Council Office,on Daly and Main Street in Lincoln Heights.

Cedillo supporters get their marching documents.

 The brothers and sisters of SEIU (including those from the former Local 347 that I knew from my Shop Steward days), were out in force , supporting their former SEIU 660 brother Gil. With panduse in hand (and a second one to follow), a mutual friend who is supporting Cedillo, brought Red Spotted Blogger and One Bill Gill together and first impressions? Cedillo is an engaging, affable persona who is not afraid to stray from practical political behavior and embrace unconventional actions (like his endorsement by Mayor Antonio Villar). Revealing also, were Cedillo's comments on his friend, former California Governor Pete Wilson, who's support of Prop 187, is still reviled by many in the Latino Community. Referencing back to his comments in a 2004 Los Angeles Times Magazine on Wilson, Cedillo restate his comments from the article as excerpted below.

State Sen. Gil Cedillo, a Democrat from Los Angeles, is regarded as a ground-zero advocate of Latino political causes, especially as the prime mover behind the effort to give illegal immigrants driver's licenses. He has mixed feelings about the man he worked against (and sometimes with) in Sacramento. As do many Democrats, he doesn't hesitate to praise Wilson's budgetary discipline and overall decisiveness: "Unfortunately, the 187 episode may eclipse the career of a man I consider very competent, very moderate and an effective leader."Cedillo says there is lingering distaste for the notorious commercial showing immigrants sneaking across the border. The grainy, sinister look of the film made the immigrants appear to be criminals, and revealed the true feelings of its backers, Cedillo says. The line used in the commercial: "They keep coming."Still, neither Cedillo nor McCarthy believes Wilson is a racist. Cedillo's voice slows and drops lower, as though mourning the thought: "The governor is not a racist. No way. He had the courage to step forward on his convictions, and although I didn't agree with him, there was no question where he stood.

With Cedillo's Sacramento legislative career now a memory and his campaign to replace City Councilman Ed Reyes, a door to door ground battle against Reyes's Chief of Staff Jose Gardea, will Cedillo's affable, engaging persona, grant him an extension of his political career? That story continues next weekend---Scott Johnson. 

 CD 1 City Council Candidate Gil Cedillo, young campaign worker and Political Activist Art Pulido (from left to right). Photos by the author.

Your thoughts ..............

Scott Johnson in CD 14