When Tony Cárdenas was elected to the California state Assembly in 1996, he made history as the first Latino from the San Fernando Valley to serve in the state Legislature.
Similarly, when he moved on to the U.S. House of Representatives, he became the first Latino elected to represent the Valley in Congress.
Now, 28 years after winning his first election, the 61-year-old Cárdenas – who has spent his career encouraging other Latinos to seek political office – is bidding farewell to life as an elected leader.
Retiring Rep. Tony Cárdenas with his wife Norma is honored at Los Angeles City Hall on Friday, Dec. 13, 2024 for his decades-long career that includes stints as a L.A. City Council member, state Assembly member and congressman. The council also declared Nov. 1 as Tony Cárdenas Day in Los Angeles. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
Retiring Rep. Tony Cárdenas and his wife Norma listen to U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla as Cárdenas is honored at Los Angeles City Hall on Friday, Dec. 13, 2024 for his decades-long career that includes stints as a L.A. City Council member, state Assembly member and congressman. The council also declared Nov. 1 as Tony Cárdenas Day in Los Angeles. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
Retiring Rep. Tony Cárdenas with his wife Norma, left, is honored at Los Angeles City Hall on Friday, Dec. 13, 2024 for his decades-long career that includes stints as a L.A. City Council member, state Assembly member and congressman. The council also declared Nov. 1 as Tony Cárdenas Day in Los Angeles. Councilmember Imelda Padilla, right, led the presentation. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
Retiring Rep. Tony Cárdenas and his wife Norma listen to Mayor Karen Bass as Cárdenas is honored at Los Angeles City Hall on Friday, Dec. 13, 2024 for his decades-long career that includes stints as a L.A. City Council member, state Assembly member and congressman. The council also declared Nov. 1 as Tony Cárdenas Day in Los Angeles. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
Show Caption1 of 4Retiring Rep. Tony Cárdenas with his wife Norma is honored at Los Angeles City Hall on Friday, Dec. 13, 2024 for his decades-long career that includes stints as a L.A. City Council member, state Assembly member and congressman. The council also declared Nov. 1 as Tony Cárdenas Day in Los Angeles. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
ExpandAs he reflected on his long political career during a recent interview, Cárdenas spoke of how he had to be nudged and prodded to run for office the first time. Back then, Cárdenas, a young real estate broker who had studied engineering in college, was on the board of a nonprofit in Pacoima with a woman whose husband turned out to be James Acevedo. Acevedo is a developer active in the Valley’s Latino political scene.
Cárdenas said it was Acevedo who saw something in him and pushed him to run for the Assembly.
“I said, ‘Ha, people like me don’t run for office.’ What I meant was Brown people like me don’t run for office because I didn’t have those examples in my life, growing up,” recounted Cárdenas, who grew up in Pacoima. The youngest of 11 children, Cárdenas and his siblings were raised by immigrant parents.
When Acevedo said it was time that a Latino from his neighborhood run for office, Cárdenas kept giving him names of other potential candidates. After about six months of the back-and-forth, Cárdenas said Acevedo – who must have known how to push Cárdenas’ button – suggested that Cárdenas did not care about his community.
Cárdenas pushed back by rattling off a list of the various ways he was supporting the community – from hiring young people to work for him, to donating money, to volunteering to speak to students at local schools. When he stopped talking, Acevedo said, “that’s why you need to run,” Cárdenas recalled.
So Cárdenas went home and asked his wife Norma what she thought of him tossing his hat in the ring. A somewhat naive Norma – Cárdenas said the couple had no idea how much work would go into campaigning – gave him her blessing. The rest, as they say, is history.
From Sacramento to L.A. City Hall to D.C.
Cárdenas was first elected to the state Legislature in 1996 and served three terms in the Assembly before leaving due to term limits.
In 2002, he ran for a seat on the Los Angeles City Council but lost to Wendy Greuel in what has been described as a nasty and bitter contest. Cárdenas lost by fewer than 250 votes.
Cárdenas again ran for City Council in 2003 when a new opportunity opened up due to redistricting. He won that election and remained on the council for a decade.
Then in 2013, Cárdenas handily won the newly redistricted 29th Congressional District and became the first Latino to represent the Valley in the U.S. House of Representatives.
While Cárdenas was the first Latino to represent L.A.’s San Fernando Valley in various elected posts, he wanted to make sure he wouldn’t be the last. Many credit him for encouraging other Latinos – including Latinas – to run for office, from grooming them to become political candidates to helping raise money for their campaigns as past chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus’ BOLD PAC, which works to get more Latinos elected.
Last year, after Cárdenas announced that he would retire from Congress and not seek reelection in 2024, CHC BOLD PAC Chairwoman Linda Sánchez said in a statement that when when Cárdenas chaired the PAC from 2015 to 2020, he “brought the organization to the next level. His leadership in increasing Latina/o representation in Congress is unparalleled, and his role in making and defending Democratic majorities in the House and Senate cannot be understated.”
U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, who also grew up in Pacoima and became Cárdenas’ campaign manager when the latter ran for the Assembly, said during a recent L.A. City Council meeting where Cárdenas was being recognized that he’s inspired by his longtime friend.
Padilla said there were a lot fewer Latinos in office when the two of them first got involved in politics and credited the retiring congressman for mentoring and opening doors for other people of color to participate in politics.
“If we’re better today than we were 25, 30 years ago, it’s in large part because of the work and passion of Congressmember Tony Cárdenas,” Padilla said.
L.A. City Councilmember Imelda Padilla, who grew up in the same part of the San Fernando Valley as Cárdenas and Sen. Padilla, is part of a younger generation of Latino politicians who were mentored by Cárdenas.
The councilmember, who was first introduced to Cárdenas when she was on the L.A. City Youth Council and who later received a scholarship from Cárdenas’ family foundation, said that as a young adult, she saw in him someone whose background mirrored her own.
Cárdenas was “someone that could be the son of a gardener, a graduate of (Los Angeles Unified School District) and make it into leadership,” she said. Councilmember Padilla’s own father was a gardener and, like Cárdenas, is a product of LAUSD.
“Doing the right thing”
For Cárdenas, uplifting Latinos and fighting for equality wasn’t just about getting more people from historically underrepresented groups to run for office. He wanted their stories told.
Fourteen years after a bill was introduced in Congress to open a national Latino museum and about 20 years after a bill to open a women’s museum was first brought up, Cárdenas, by 2018, was fed up with seeing those bills languish due to inaction.
“I got tired of waiting for it to happen and I decided to take it on, both of those museums, as my personal mission,” he said.
In all the years since both bills for the museums had been introduced, there had never been a committee hearing to advance the legislation.
“I said, ‘that’s enough. No, this is ridiculous.’ I went ahead and worked the process and got the chairmen and women of the various committees to commit to have a hearing. And we did and the ball got rolling,” Cárdenas said.
About a year-and-a-half later, Congress passed a law authorizing the building of the museums. Those museums are now slated to open around 2034, Cárdenas said.
The museums were among the things Cárdenas said he was proud of achieving while talking to reporters moments after being recognized by the L.A. City Council this month.
During that Dec. 13 council presentation, several current and former elected officials from the L.A. area highlighted Cárdenas’ work on issues related to criminal justice, youth development, environmental justice, immigration and mental health.
In remarks during the recognition ceremony, Cárdenas recounted a decision he made more than a decade ago that could have ended all of his future political aspirations – but which he chose to make because, as he saw it, it was the right thing to do.
He was referring to his decision to testify as a character witness on behalf of Alex Sanchez, a former gang member who started the L.A. branch of Homies Unidos, a nonprofit that focuses on gang prevention and supporting at-risk youth. In 2009, Sanchez was accused of conspiring to commit murder. But some community members – including Cárdenas – rallied to his defense.
The charges were eventually dropped.
Cárdenas, who at the time was on the City Council, said even his chief of staff advised him against being a character witness for Sanchez.
Cárdenas said, “99.99% of the time, you will listen to your advisors and your chiefs of staff and the people who love you and care about you. Because your career does matter and the decisions you make do matter. And how you can be labeled sometimes just by doing the right thing could end your career. And I knew that it could.”
But Cárdenas said it was important to him to be a character witness for a former gang member who had become a ...
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