Mike Valles speaks
Just interviewed Mike Valles. He denied targeting Latino voters only for the Judith Valles attack letter that suggested Joseph Turner would use the office as an instrument of immigration enforcement.
This is Mr. Valles, pictured below outside of Monday council meeting at City Hall:
Here are Valles' answers to questions I asked this morning:
Mike Valles, a retired state legislative consultant, has served as City Clerk Rachel Clark’s campaign boss in her race versus challenger Joseph Turner this year.
Valles is a veteran of many campaigns over the years in San Bernardino, including two successful races he ran for his younger sister, Judith Valles.
Here is the interview:
*Rogers: A scathing letter writen by Mayor Judith Valles in opposition to Joseph Turner’s campaign was distributed by you. Some have suggested you only targeted voters with Latino surnames, is that true?
Valles: "No, what we did was target voters who were strong for Mayor Valles in the past, voters in precincts of the 1st, 3rd, 6th and 7th Wards. When you look at the demographics of the city and those wards in particular, a high preponderance of residents happen to be Hispanic.
But they were not earmarked to only Hispanic (voters), no."
* Rogers: You’ve run many campaigns in the past. How do you decide who to support?
Valles: I have to believe in the person or the candidate or the issue. For instance, with Rachel Clark, I’ve known her family for over 40 years.
I’m working for Rachel for free. What else have I got to do. I strongly believe in her. She has a tremendous amount of integrity, and when a politician has integrity you fall in line quite easily.
* Rogers: What job are you most proud of?
Valles: Reuben Ayala, the late 1960s board of supervisors member I helped into the state senate in the late 1960s.
Here you had a long established and well known and popular assemblyman in Jerry Lewis. Lewis had all the money and endorsements, and Ayala, nobody knew him, he was just a supervisor. That was an uphill battle.
I dedicated myself 24-7 to that campaign and we were succesful.
This was the only political defeat for Jerry Lewis in his political life.
*Rogers: What is your strategy to keep Clark in her office?
Valles: The retaining of that office is key because you have to be nonconfrontational, and honest and with integrity. Clark has never used a bad word or had a confrontation with anybody. She is a very sincere and honest person. I’ve known this lady for many years.
Our strategy is look at the opponent, why is he running? He didn’t read the duties for city clerk. He’s looking for an office to run for. I don’t criticize anybody seeking public office, however, you have to have a background in the work to have any success at it.
*Rogers: What do you see in terms of the future of San Bernardino politics?
Valles: When you look at the political landscape, the closest race of all is going to be for city attoerney. Penman will succeed, but barely. If he continues his battle to be the watchdog, the city will keep being in trouble. That’s the responsibility of the city manager and the mayor.
Jim loves power. He didn’t enjoy that power with Mayor Valles because she challenged him on numerous occasions. He enjoyed tremendous power under Wilcox and Minor.
The city, I believe, is in good hands. The city will survive way beyond the current encumbents.
I have always maintained that term limits should be imposed because these people get too close to special interests.
Rogers: What about Joseph Turner?
Valles: You have to read and listen to some of Turner’s literature as well as misleading statements.
He wants to be elected in the worst way. He wants a springboard. He lists himself as a businessman, but what kind of business is he in.
He’s tried to run for schoolboard, and some of his platform was the illegal alien issue. He was very much involved in the city of Riverside to gather support regarding eminent domain issues.
I didn’t read the letter until after ... when I took it to be mailed I read it, and I said to myself I don’t think there’s an inkling of untruth to it, and the innuendo about the INS or whatever, I don’t know that that is something people will all understand anyway.
Rogers: What about Clark’s pledge to focus on herself, not her opponent, isn’t it contradictory to her attack on Turner?
Valles: There is one thing, she is not the author of the letter. She did not have any input into the contents of the letter. This was mailed out after Judith Valles wrote it and I sent it.
Rogers: Isn’t she responsible? It’s Clark’s campaign?
Valles: What do you see in the letter that is incorrect? Nothing.
In Turner’s reference about being in a committed relationship and having children.
In my words that’s a a shack job. Mr Turner appeared before the unified school district and had a pitch about illegal alien children, and Mayor Valles heard it, and now writes about it in her letter.
* Rogers: Why the change to hit pieces?
Valles: We’re not, we’re running a clean campaign. That’s what we’ve been doing. We have people walking and giving out hand pieces about Rachel and why we should be voting for her. The candidate herself is walking.
Look, I’ve never reduced myself to a campaign with hit pieces. If there’s a specifice negative factor about an opponent, I’ll extract it and give evidence about where I got the information.
It’s like a game of chess. It’s startegy in that you use information that your opponent gives you.
*Rogers: Is Turner bad for the city, why?
Valles: He’s not suited for the office.
He has to read the charter for what the duties are. If its mayor or city attorney he’s running for, that’s a different story. The clerk though is, come on, an administrative position.
Group homes, which he wants to be his issu, came from Ronald Reagan as governor, when he was shutting down facilities for adults and children who were wards of the court to give them a family neighborhood way of life or whatever, which gives us what we have today.
I firmly believe that the mayor and council are the policy-setters for the city, and they are the watch dogs.
Turner is seeking an office to use as a platform to launch himself into sometihing that he wants very bad, a bigger political career.
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Andrew Edwards. E-mail Andrew here.
My goodness, how old weasels love to try to snow young reporters!
So Superman Valles ushered Ruben Ayala, whom nobody knew, into the state Senate in the late '60s, did he?
Well, of course, Ruben' run for the Senate took place in 1974 (the extremely late '60s, I guess.
And to be sure, Ruben was so obscure that he had merely been the powerful chairman of the Board of Supervisors for four years and had pushed through the Corps of Engineers Santa Ana River survey, the City Creek-Mill Creek levees and the Mentone Dam. The 167-square-mile suvervisor's district that Ruben represented in those days embraced much more of the old 32nd Senate District than did his opponent's Assembly district. As president of the Southern California Regional Association of County Supervisors, Ruben was probably far better known in the Pomona portuion of the Senate district than his opponent. The too, we must not forget that 1974, being the year of the Watergate revelations, was a less-than-stellar year for GOP candidates in general. (Ruben is a Democrat.) There wewre a lot of wild cards in the deck, but how lucky for poor old unknown Ruben to have had Mike Valles in his corner. Otherwise, he probably couldn't have gotten out of bed in the morning successfully.
Oh yes, with those fine old political warhorses like Mike Valles leading the charge for so many decades, it is easy to see why San Bernardino enjoys its present efforescence.
What is wrong with wanting to have a political springboard? Nothing. I would much rather elected someone with goals, because you know that they are going to be a hard charger. You know that they will want to affect change and be a positive leader. These are all of the things that San Bernardino needs right now. I would be very leery of a person that describes their own political position as pedestrian and administrative. It sounds to me like she spends too much time planning her retirement and not enough time innovating in a city that is in desperate need of innovation.
Vote for change. Vote Turner for City Clerk.
Unfortunately, you simply cannot believe anything that comes out of these peoples' mouths.
Rachel Clark says that Judith Valles wrote and sent the letter. Valles says she wrote it, but doesn't know who sent it.
Then we find out it was her own brother who sent it.
Mike Valles then claims that the mailer was sent to identified Valles supporters.
There is only one problem with that statement...the last time Valles ran in a competitive race was 1997!
She was unopposed in 2001.
Is Valles really basing campaign strategy on 1997 data?
Didn't we redraw districts since 1997? I may be wrong, but I am pretty sure we re-draw the districts every 10 years.
Are these precincts even the same precincts?
What a joke of an excuse. All of the people I have talked to about this letter have Hispanic surnames.
I'll leave it to the readers to decide who is more credible.