Business and Community Partners: Governor Put On Notice By Hispanic Leaders / Chicago News Cooperative

U.S. Representative Luis Gutierrez, the state's highest-ranking Hispanic elected official, attacks Governor Patrick Quinn Monday April 26, 2010 asking for more state jobs for Hispanics. Gov. Quinn's representatives Jack Lavin, right, and Billy Ocasio, second from right, listen to Gutierrez's attack.
Jose More/Chicago News Cooperative

When United States Representative Luis V. Gutierrez harshly criticized Gov. Patrick J. Quinn in an off-the-cuff speech early this week that recalled his cocksure political origins, the outburst said as much about roiling disagreements in the Hispanic political community as it did any substantive appraisal of Mr. Quinn’s record in office.

“We must remember there is an election in November, and those that don’t respond to the needs of our community need not come and seek our vote and seek our support for their elected office,” Mr. Gutierrez said at a rally Monday of more than 100 supporters in the Little Village neighborhood. The remark capped a blistering discourse that singled out Mr. Quinn for not appointing any Hispanic cabinet members and for hiring a disproportionately small share of Hispanics in state government. (Listen to his remarks.)

Mr. Gutierrez’s stark criticism comes as national attention is focused on Hispanic issues because of a controversial new immigration law in Arizona and as Mr. Obama promises to press lawmakers to work on a comprehensive bill to overhaul the country’s immigration system. The congressman’s remarks also bring to the surface an emerging debate within Chicago’s fast-growing Hispanic community over what exactly they hope to gain as their numbers and political influence increase.

Mr. Gutierrez — who earned the nickname “The Little Rooster” in part for his flamboyant speeches during the turbulent 1980s at Chicago’s City Hall — argued that Hispanics should judge Mr. Quinn and other Illinois politicians mainly on how many Hispanics they appoint to government jobs.

Other leaders say Hispanics, who now make up more than 15 percent of the state’s population, should focus on something broader than the old Chicago arithmetic of doling out jobs along ethnic lines. Public officials should address substantive issues like crime, unemployment and education, these leaders say.

The debate also exposes how Mr. Gutierrez is jockeying to get more spoils of Democratic power, even as rivals like Juan Rangel and his United Neighborhood Organization have forged close ties to the governor and to Mayor Richard M. Daley.

Critics of Mr. Gutierrez dismissed his recent attacks as mere rhetoric intended to save the jobs of his political allies who were appointed by former Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich.

“This sounds like political posturing from some of the Blagojevich faction of Latinos who feel that they are losing out on power,” said Mr. Rangel, chief executive of the United Neighborhood Organization.

Mr. Rangel’s group stands to receive $98 million from the state to build new charter schools in Latino neighborhoods where public schools are overcrowded. Another $44 million is earmarked for other charter school operators that cater primarily to Hispanic students. Mr. Rangel said such initiatives are more important to Hispanics than whether they see faces like their own in top state posts.

“We have to look at real issues in our neighborhoods and bring solutions, not the same old politics,” Mr. Rangel said. “This should not be about, ‘Can you take care of my guys?’

“We need to be thinking much broader than that. We have bigger problems than whether one person or another keeps his job with the state, and this is distracting from real issues.”

A spokeswoman for the governor noted that Mr. Quinn has appointed Hispanics to head the Illinois Commerce Commission, the state’s human rights board and a panel on improving education in Illinois.

“He has strong relationships with Latino elected officials,” said the spokeswoman, Mica Matsoff. “We are confident they will work and fight for the governor as we head toward November.”

Mr. Gutierrez’s criticism of the governor coincided with the congressman’s rebukes of President Obama for not carrying out his campaign promise to try to change the nation’s immigration laws. Inaction on that issue in Washington, he said, created the environment for the new anti-immigrant law in Arizona. The law, which gives the police the authority to detain people they suspect as illegal immigrants, has prompted protest rallies across the nation.

But at Monday’s rally, Mr. Gutierrez and other local Hispanic leaders complained primarily about the governor. They said Hispanics accounted for only 218 of 3,681 hires by the state’s largest departments last year.

“It’s getting more and more frustrating as I have to deal with people in this administration,” Mr. Gutierrez said, “people who I feel have a disregard for me also and for this community and its power and its influence. I hope this is a wake-up call.”

Two aides to the governor, Jack Lavin and Billy Ocasio, stared grimly or scribbled notes while the congressman capped the rally with a 15-minute attack on their boss. Mr. Lavin, the governor’s chief operating officer, did not dispute the numbers that showed Hispanics making up less than 6 percent of hires by the state in 2009.

“We’ve made some progress,” Mr. Lavin told the crowd. “There is a lot more progress we have to make.”

Also at the rally was Juan Ochoa, one of the highest-ranking Hispanics in Illinois as the chief executive of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, which manages Navy Pier and McCormick Place. But Mr. Ochoa was there to back up Mr. Gutierrez’s statements, not to defend the governor.

“I don’t know how a Democratic governor can win this election without the complete support of the Latino community,” Mr. Ochoa said. “Friends have a responsibility to tell the truth. Better now than in October.”

Mr. Gutierrez said he feared that Mr. Ochoa would soon lose his job. There have been longstanding problems at McCormick Place, which has lost market share in the convention trade to Las Vegas and Orlando, Fla.

Mr. Gutierrez said he was speaking out because he hoped to avert Mr. Ochoa’s losing his job. He criticized the governor, saying that he goes to “fund-raisers of the speaker of the House that wants to destroy our community, but I haven’t heard him once stand up and defend Juan Ochoa.”

Mr. Gutierrez did not specify how he felt that Michael J. Madigan, Illinois’s House speaker, had damaged Hispanics, and a spokesman for Mr. Madigan declined to respond to the congressman’s remarks.

Mr. Gutierrez, 56, long ago earned his Little Rooster nickname for his modest physical stature and his pugnacious style. He has also developed a reputation as a politician who can switch allegiance quickly and not always irreversibly.

A few years ago, with corruption cases rocking City Hall, the congressman said Mayor Daley was distracted from improving schools by “less important priorities,” like working on the bid for the 2016 Olympics. He briefly flirted with challenging Mr. Daley’s re-election attempt, but ended up heartily endorsing the mayor’s re-election in 2007.

Mr. Gutierrez’s recent outspokenness contrasts with his reluctance to discuss his relationship with Calvin Boender, a businessman and top campaign donor who was convicted in March of bribing a Chicago alderman. Mr. Boender had lent $200,000 to Mr. Gutierrez, who lobbied Mayor Daley to support Mr. Boender’s real estate project on the West Side.

Nevertheless, said David Yepsen, director of the Paul Simon Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University, criticism from the state’s top Hispanic elected official is something that Mr. Quinn would be unwise to ignore. Mr. Yepsen said that Mr. Quinn could be damaged in a tight race if Hispanics voted for him in lower numbers than expected.

“It’s going to be a bad year for Democrats,” Mr. Yepsen said, “and Pat Quinn really needs votes of the Democratic base, including women and Latinos.”

At Mi Tierra restaurant in Little Village, the congressman’s cheering supporters relished the spectacle of Mr. Gutierrez’s gesturing animatedly and bouncing between English and Spanish during his unscripted dressing-down of the governor’s aides. His high-decibel language competed effortlessly against the mariachis playing in the main dining room.

The lack of a Hispanic in the governor’s cabinet, Mr. Gutierrez said, is “a situation that is intolerable and one that must be corrected immediately.”

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