Montebello's ex-mayor now works to root elected Republicans out of Orange County
Frank Gomez was born to be an L.A. County politician.
His grandfather attended Roosevelt High with pioneering Eastside congressmember Ed Roybal and helped to fight off a proposed veteran's hospital in Hazard Park. His mother went to Belvedere Middle School with longtime L.A. councilmember Richard Alatorre. His father taught Chicano political titans Gil Cedillo and Vickie Castro in high school. When Gomez won a seat on the Montebello Unified School District board of trustees in 1997, Richard Polanco — the Johnny Appleseed-meets-Scrooge McDuck of Latino politics in California — helped out his campaign.
That's why people were surprised in 2013 when Gomez — by then a Montebello council member who had served a year as mayor — announced he was leaving L.A. County altogether to marry his current wife.
'I had the choice between politics and love,' said the 61-year-old during a recent breakfast in Santa Ana. 'It was an easy choice.'
Gomez couldn't stay away from politics for long
Today, Gomez leads STEM initiatives for the Cal State system and is also the chair of the Central Orange County Democratic Club, which covers Orange, Tustin, parts of unincorporated Orange County 'and a few voters in Villa Park,' Gomez told me with a chuckle.
He's headed the Central O.C. Dems since last year, and has grown them from about 60 members to over 300. Soft-spoken but forceful, Gomez likes to apply his background as a chemistry professor — 'We need to be strategic and analytical' — in helping to build a Democratic bench of elected officials in a region that was a long a GOP stronghold before becoming as purple as Barney the Dinosaur.
I knew Gomez's name but didn't realize his L.A. political background until we met last month. That makes him a rare one: someone who has dabbled in both L.A. and Orange county politics, two worlds that rarely collide because each considers the other a wasteland.
As someone who has covered O.C. politics for a quarter century but has only paid attention to L.A. politics in earnest since I started with The Times in 2019, I have my thoughts about each scene's differences and similarities. But what about Gomez?
From one cutthroat political scene to another
'In L.A., it's Democrats against Democrats,' he replied. 'It's not like I didn't know' what to expect when moving to O.C., he said. 'But it's the difference between Fashion Island and the Citadel.'
He thought his days in politics were over until 2022, when his stepson — who had interned with longtime Irvine politico Larry Agran — urged him to run for a seat on the Tustin City Council.
Commence Gomez's true 'Welcome to the O.C., bitch' moment.
Opponents sent out mailers with photos of garbage cans and graffiti and the message, 'Do not bring L.A. to Tustin,' a political insult introduced to Orange County politics that year by Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer.
'Those gated communities still try to keep their unsaid redlining,' Gomez said. 'It wasn't like that in L.A. politics because there was no place for it.'
Racist L.A. City Hall audio leak notwithstanding, of course.
Trying to topple O.C.'s last remaining GOP congressmember
Gomez unsuccessfully ran last year for a seat on the Municipal Water District of Orange County. He now plans to focus his political energies on growing the Central O.C. Dems and figuring out how to topple Rep. Young Kim, O.C.'s last remaining GOP congressmember. In the meanwhile, he will continue his political salons at the Central O.C. Dems' monthly meetings at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Tustin — I was on the hot seat in April, and upcoming guests include coastal O.C. Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, O.C. supervisorial candidate Connor Traut and former congressmember and current California gubernatorial candidate Katie Porter.
'It's like being in the classroom,' Gomez said as he packed up his leftovers. 'All I do is ask the questions and keep it flowing.'
He smiled. 'Johnny Carson on intellectual steroids.'
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