Tag Archives: Voto Latino

CA-32: Cedillo Jumps The Shark On LA Radio

This Gil Cedillo is really a miserable little person.  Over at Nuestra Voice you can hear him with LA radio DJ Mario Solis Marich answering questions about that ridiculous attack mailer on Emanuel Pleitez using Facebook photos to build a narrative of Pleitez as a scary drunken gang-lover who parties with white women.  In the transcript, you’ll notice Cedillo’s immediate reaction to bringing up Pleitez’ name:

SOLIS MARICH: There was some controversy over the past 2 weeks when your campaign decided to do a negative attack piece on newcomer Emanuel Pleitez. Many people who observe campaigns including myself took that as a sign that the young candidate was really eating into your base.

CEDILLO: Well, one we’re not sure we’d call it negative unless he calls it negative, the fact that he posted these photos on his Facebook.

Two, we recognize what his roll is in this campaign, to suppress the vote and to try to take away votes and we think the electorate has the right to know all the information, information that he’s made public, about the candidates. We put the record out there and let people decide if they want to elect someone who has 25 years of effective leadership or if they want to elect somebody who they may not have full confidence in.

So in other words, anyone who participates in a campaign to try and get elected is automatically “suppressing votes,” presumably votes from Gil Cedillo.  The backstory here is that Parke Skelton, Judy Chu’s campaign manager, and Eric Hacopian, Pleitez’ top strategist, have worked together on other campaigns, which is to be expected from two Democratic consultants in LA.  Off of that thin reed Cedillo spins a wide-ranging conspiracy theory that Emanuel Pleitez swooped into the race to suppress votes from the naturally chosen “one” candidate who is supposed to win the seat.  Now, if you were of a conspiratorial nature, you could say the exact same thing about Betty Tom Chu, the Republican Monterey Park City Councilwoman who entered the race late and will undoubtedly cause some ballot confusion given the closeness of names between her and Judy Chu.  But it’s this sense of entitlement on the part of Cedillo, this idea that he deserves that Congressional seat and no Hispanic should dare “suppress the vote” by, you know, running against him, that stands out here.  This is typical sleazeball identity politics, the idea that any Hispanic must vote for a Hispanic, and multiple Hispanics in the field dilute the strength of the vote, and they should line up and wait their turn behind the self-anointed savior.

Now, here’s the rest of the interview, where Cedillo becomes increasingly ridiculous:

SOLIS MARICH: So, you don’t think that using pictures of a person at a party where they were basically doing what many people of all different ages do, enjoying themselves…

CEDILLO: Dancing on tables and using gang signs that he published on his Facebook, we think, first of all, one, we do not romanticize gangs or gang violence. He and I grew up in the same neighborhood…

SOLIS MARICH: Senator, let me just correct something, before you go down that path, maybe your staff hasn’t told you but he was actually…the quote unqute gang signs…he was actually at a Voto Latino event…

CEDILLO: I know where he was, I know where he was.

SOLIS MARICH: …and he was standing next to a very very respected actress and Latina activist Rosario Dawson who was actually with him making the same signs. So, are you accusing Rosario Dawson of using gang signs?

CEDILLO: I’m saying that that’s inappropriate, I find it inappropriate…

SOLIS MARICH: For both him and Rosario Dawson?

CEDILLO: Yes.  I find it inappropriate, I find it offensive. I don’t romanticize that one bit…

Solis Marich doesn’t get it out, but the “gang sign” made by Pleitez and Dawson stands for Voto Latino.  According to Cedillo, any hand gesture made in a photograph automatically romanticizes gangs.  I’ll bet he doesn’t bring a sign language interpreter along for his speeches!

The dreaded dialogue continues:

SOLIS MARICH: So do you think Voto Latino should apologize?

CEDILLO: No. No, I support Voto Latino, I’ve raised money for them, I know their executive director, I know their executive director is not pleased with this or with Emanuel, but as I said, I don’t romanticize that, I don’t think people who know this experience do and I think that’s for voters to decide.

SOLIS MARICH: So, you don’t think it was inappropriate, Senator Cedillo, to use that photo but not also tell people that while he was doing that that’s Rosario Dawson, and he’s not at a gang event, he’s actually at an event designed to encourage young Latino voters.

CEDILLO: No. No I don’t.

SOLIS MARICH: So you stand behind that mailer 100%?

CEDILLO: Yeah, no, absolutely. Let me be really clear, OK? I do not romanticize gang activity…

SOLIS MARICH: Are you accusing him of being in a gang?

CEDILLO: No. Let me tell you, I don’t romanticize gang activity, I don’t understand this fetish, or romanticizing or promoting that type of activity or emulating it in any circumstance or any environment, period.

SOLIS MARICH: So before we move on, just one final question, so you believe Rosario Dawson and Emanuel Pleitez were romanticizing gang activity at an event that was designed to encourage Latino voters?

CEDILLO: I believe that conduct does that, yes.

You hear that, Voto Latino?  Your efforts to register 35,000 voters in battleground states and produce videos that 5 million Americans watched during the campaign are USELESS when compared to the hand gesture you make signifying your organization, which kills children in drive-by shootings.

Calitics had the right idea when they suggested that CA-32 voters elect anyone but Gil Cedillo to replace Hilda Solis.  He makes that decision easier and easier with each passing day.

CA-32: Smear Tactics and Fear Mongering

I am a female constituent from the CA-32 district, who has lived on the same street as EP for the last 15 years.  I can attest to EP’s solid character and his outstanding ability to understand and represent the district-he is a far cry from the womanizing, gang sign-throwing, party animal Cedillo is attempting to portray.  But I will not go any further on that subject because that is not the point I wish to make.

I take Cedillo’s attack on EP personally-Cedillo crossed a line that was not only in bad taste but truly offensive to women.  Cedillo’s objectification of women on the flyer clearly shows what little regard he has for us.  Did he ever stop to think what these innocent women might feel when they saw their faces plastered all over a smear-tactic flyer?  What is even more infuriating is what little recourse these women have to hold Cedillo accountable for his reprehensible actions.  A public apology would be nice.  

It is very sad to see Cedillo resort to misrepresenting the character of a community role model (Emanuel Pleitez) to an entire congressional district.  I wonder if Cedillo knows that one of the women pictured alongside EP is the respected Latina role model, actress and political activist-founder of Voto Latino, Rosario Dawson.

Unfortunately, Cedillo is using Bush-era fear tactics to misinform a large demographic.  I am talking about the people in the district who, for various reasons, have no means to access or understand new technologies such as the internet and FB.  People like my mother, also a constituent, who saw the flyer and was confused on how Cedillo got a hold of EP’s pictures.  It was not until I showed her how FB works that she was able to see how Cedillo accessed and manipulated them.  She was furious that Cedillo, a supposed public servant, distorted the type of person EP really is through such nefarious means.  Now my mother knows that EP is not throwing gang signs, but the Voto Latino sign.  Cedillo consciously knew that people like my mother would not be able to untangle the web of lies he created on his flyer.

I am sure that If EP had skeletons in the closet, he would have erased his personal FB profile before he decided to announce his candidacy for CA-32.

Shame on you Cedillo!  Stop misrepresenting the facts and try focusing on real issues!

CA-32 Gil Cedillo take note: Voto Latino is not a “gang”

I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles County, in the district formerly represented by now Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis.  Like me, 60 percent of the residents of Congressional District 32 are Latino.  That didn’t stop my mother and I both from voting for a Chinese-American, Judy Chu, when she ran and re-ran for Monterey Park City Council in the 80s and 90s.  Nor, by the way, did it stop then-Assemblymember and Latina Hilda Solis from endorsing her.

Today there’s a pitched battle to fill Solis’ very large shoes, with Judy Chu, currently serving on the state Board of Equalization, running against State Senator Gil Cedillo.  Cedillo’s main point of persuasion for voters seems to be that since the 32nd district is a Latino district, as a Latino he is better suited to represent it.

Unfortunately for the Cedillo campaign, however, he’s not the only candidate in the race with that qualification.  Emanuel Pleitez, a 26 year-old Mexican/Salvadoran-American who served on Obama’s Treasury Department Transition Team, though trailing in third place, is apparently close enough on Cedillo’s tails to find himself the target of a vicious piece of attack mail.  The message of the mail piece: Pleitez is a “party animal.”  The evidence: Pictures on Facebook.

It’s no longer necessary at this point to further describe how innocent these pictures actually were; Calitics and The Hill have already done a great job of it.  However, given Cedillo’s primary qualification for office, it’s worth pointing out another detail his attack piece got wrong.

In the mailer, Cedillo accuses Pleitez of “flashing gang signs — and then posting the pictures on the internet.”  It then goes on to ask rhetorically, “Doesn’t he know about the lives and neighborhoods that have been destroyed by the gangs?”

If Cedillo knew the movement behind Latino political empowerment a bit better, he may have recognized that the woman standing next to Pleitez in one of those photos is Rosario Dawson, star of ‘Rent’ and ’25th Hour’ and founder of Voto Latino.  The “gang signs” the two of them are “flashing” are a ‘V’ and an ‘L,’ as in, ‘Voto Latino.’  Voto Latino’s mission is to empower Latino communities like CD-32 by getting out the vote and promoting civic engagement.  Admirably, Pleitez served on the organization’s Board of Directors.

Perhaps failing to recognize the hand gestures for what they were was a simple oversight by an ignorant communications staffer.  But eagerly jumping to the conclusion that Pleitez was endorsing gang activity on Facebook at the expense of families in the 32nd district was a reckless and malicious ploy to attract cheap votes.

The tragedy is that Cedillo has been nothing short of heroic in California in his numerous fights in the State Legislature on behalf of undocumented immigrants.  But in an all-too-typical phenomenon among politicians, the integrity that inspired him to take on these principled fights in the State Capitol have evaporated on the campaign trail.

The good news is, desperate attacks like these tend to backfire.  Unfortunately, they tend to turn people away from important elections in the process.  Senator Cedillo should bear both of these facts in mind next time he decides to go negative on his opponents.