LATINO POWER BROKERS-If Hillary Clinton wants to be president, her chances may depend on more than just wooing the record-setting Hispanic voting numbers who could determine the election in critical swing states.
Clinton’s best bet could be in hiring the one Latino who arguably could win her the presidency in a likely tough general election that may ultimately be decided by the rough and tumble politics played in the age of Tea Party zealotry.
That Latino is Michael Trujillo (photo), a 35-year-old Californian who has been immersed in politics since childhood – and who may be the most controversial, feared and hated political consultants in America.
“I would love the opportunity to carry the Hillary banner and carry it to those whether they be the Tea Party or some other organization,” says Trujillo, who helped win the Texas and California primaries for Clinton in 2008 and hopes to be on her 2016 campaign.
“I want the hardest race. I want the donnybrook … I want it to be a good old fashion political brawl.”
Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign is likely where the well-connected Trujillo will wind up, according to Democratic National Committee sources, though not without some critics gritting their teeth because he has proven to be a political maverick whose exuberance sometimes gets the best of him.
For instance, in a 2011 Los Angeles City Council campaign, an email was leaked to reporters in which Trujillo boasted to co-workers that he was about to “put a political bullet” in the head of the opposing candidate.
The email’s volatile rhetoric quickly became legendary in California politics, but it cost Trujillo, who was immediately fired from that job as well as from a local school board campaign.
“His name became synonymous with the cutthroat politics that had come to epitomize the (Antonio) Villaraigosa era,” The Los Angeles Weekly wrote in a profile of how controversial Trujillo has become.
But Trujillo is the consummate survivor, and he has remained invaluable to California political operatives and any politician looking to connect with the legitimate Hispanic voter enclaves in Los Angeles, especially in the San Fernando Valley.
Part of the reason is that he is boyishly likable and unabashedly self-deprecating about what he knows about politics – which is a lot.
Trujillo’s political education began as a kid at the side of his grandfather, who owned a construction company in the San Fernando Valley and became a politics guru to his grandson.
At 18, Trujillo then became the youngest person to serve on any Los Angeles city board — and the Commission for Children, Youth and Their Families became his calling card for getting known and becoming knowledgeable about how a big city works.
“I was literally a City Hall baby in every true sense of the word,” he told VOXXI.COM in an interview. “It was great. I soaked it in. I took mental notes… It was probably one of the greatest classrooms you can have.”
Soon he hooked up with Villaraigosa, then the State Assembly Speaker but whose rising star quickly carried him to the Los Angeles City Council and then to the mayor’s office, becoming the first Latino elected to the office in modern times.
That led to his role in Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign where he distinguished himself and where an NBC network reporter dubbed Trujillo and his boss, veteran national political consultant Ace Smith,“Clinton’s dream team.”
Now with the 2016 presidential campaign revving up, could it be that Michael Trujillo will get another shot at redemption for both himself and for Hillary Clinton?
A Democratic National Committee member from California who asked for anonymity says Michael Trujillo is one of the few political operatives he believes could captain a team that could successfully offset and even beat the kind of nasty campaign any opposition will muster against Clinton.
“Michael has ice in his veins,” says the DNC source. “In the Wild West, he would’ve been a helluva gunslinger.”
Trujillo says he’s ready.
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“I was brought up in a political culture where you trust the person to your left and to your right when you’re working on these things because you’re all sort of in a bunker,” says Trujillo in talking about his no-holds-barred approach to politics.
“You’re taking hits from the other side, and you’re emotionally investing in these campaigns, because if you’re a political operative and you don’t invest, then maybe you shouldn’t be a political operative any more. You should become a lobbyist.
“I was raised in a way that you tattoo what you believe on your chest and you wear it on your sleeve.”
(Tony Castro is the author of the newly-released "The Prince of South Waco: American Dreams and Great Expectations," as well as of the critically-acclaimed “Chicano Power: The Emergence of Mexican America” and the best-selling “Mickey Mantle: America’s Prodigal Son." Castro writes for voxxi.com where this piece was first posted.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 55
Pub: Jul 8, 2014
