On Tuesday, May 15, voters in the 49th Assembly District, which stretches from El Sereno to Alhambra and Rosemead, will pick a successor to Gloria Romero, who recently won a special election to the state Senate. The race pits Alhambra Mayor Dan Arguello, a longtime fugleman for former Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre (D–Under House Arrest) against Judy Chu, a City Council member and former three-time mayor of Monterey Park.


Chu entered electoral politics to fight the English-only ordinances that Know-Nothing nativists were mandating for billboards and signs in Monterey Park in the early ’90s. She quickly became the town’s foremost champion of interracial comity, and has been a staunch supporter of the area’s low-wage workers. In Sacramento, she says, she would support the creation not only of a statewide public power authority, but of a tristate Pacific Coast authority as a vast counterweight to the Southern power cartel. She doesn’t shy from the notion of the state’s using its eminent-domain powers to gain leverage over that cartel. In short, she’d be an intelligent, progressive legislator who understands that part of her task would be to stiffen Gray Davis’ spine. We support her enthusiastically.

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