When the world calls you “little al,” you’re going to do what you need to do so that it can be seen.
That’s what I thought after spending an hour with former city mayor Albert Robless at Carson’s Porsche Experience Center last week.
He is not Albert Robles, who was convicted of fleeing South Gate 19 years ago of $20 million in accounting. It’s a big Al Robles. Little Al has been trying to become someone political in Los Angeles County for over 30 years, and most of the time only lacks, his career is watchful from one controversy to another.
In 2006 he represented three men who moved to Vernon to take over the city council. They all lost. In the same year, Little Al represented Big Al – no, they were not really involved – in the latter ruling he argued that his client deserves generosity as he is common in California politics. The judge replied, “What you said is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard.”
At the Carson City Council meeting held at City Hall in 2015, then mayor Al Robles.
(Los Angeles Times)
The year after he was elected mayor of Carson in 2015, the Fair Political Practices Committee fined Robles $12,000 to resolve allegations of violation of the Campaign Finance Act. Two years later, his 24-year tenure on the board of Southern California’s Water Refill District, an obscure agency that provides water to 44 cities in Rawls, ended after a Superior Court judge ruled that he could not hold his seat while serving the mayor.
He lost his mayoral seat in the 2020 general election after bidding with the county supervisor in the primary earlier that year. Robles has failed in two other races in the 2022 LA County Superior Court seat and the state Senate primary where he won just 8.5% of the vote last year.
“I think I’m done, but it’s not,” the 56-year-old joked at one point in our conversation. “It’s like they pulled me back.”
We met to talk about his latest waltz. He is the lawyer for former Huntington Park Councillor Esmeralda Castillo. She is suing the city to get her seat back after it turns out that Castillo is not a resident of the Southeast County suburbs. The council declared seats open and then chose a replacement.
“Whether she lives there [Huntington Park]whether she is an angel, whether she is Charles Manson, that doesn’t matter. She was denied the process in which we are all entitled,” Robles said.
Um, Manson?
He also represents Valentin Amezukita, another former Huntington Park Council member, in another lawsuit against the city. It requires the city to hold special elections for its previous seats in Castillo.
Wait, are the cases contradict each other?
The judge told him the same thing, Robles admitted. He told me that he submitted to them what he described as “hypocrisy” at Huntington Park, which appears to follow the city’s charter over the issue of Castillo, to ignore it when he chose her replacement.
“It’s like what’s going on at the federal level as far as I can see,” Robles complained. Previously, he compared Castillo’s lack of due process allegedly faced with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who was illegally deported to his home country by the Trump administration. “It’s irritated.”
The more he talks, the more it becomes clear that Robles wants to be seen as a crusade he always imagined to be himself.
Carson Mayor Albert Robles will speak at the Carson Events Center in 2019 at the hearing on the proposed $480 million desalination plant in El Segundo.
(Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times)
His complaints are a lot.
He continues to hold grievances against the former LA County district. Atty. Steve Cooley said, “Rot…and I’ll call him in his face.” Cooley told the Times in 2013 when Robles escaped to him in 2008, he was “probably the least qualified candidate” due to his political past.
Robles boasted that he torpedoed Cooley’s career.
“On my part, it’s an exaggeration – an overarching organisation, but I actually trust it.” Cooley lost his bid to become California Attorney General in 2010. “Because when I ran against him, I let him spend the money. [Cooley] He might have won because he had another $500,000 he had to spend on the DA race. ”
He believes that Latino politicians need to close their ranks so that other ethnic groups feel that way.
Suitable Case: Operation Dirty Pond, an investigation by the LA County District Attorney, has been a long-standing investigation into Huntington Park Aquatic Park. In February, investigators stormed the city hall and seven private homes, including two former councillors and two current members. Robles said the investigation was not “meaningless” and is further evidence that Latino politicians are being held to a higher standard than other politicians.
“If Esmeralda was black or Asian, or hell, I dare say – even white, I think it would report it differently. I honestly believe it because those communities are willing to put their differences aside for better good.
After he wanted to discuss his own political predicament as much as his client, Robles said that the better setting for our chat was the Albert Robless Center, Pico Rivera’s water treatment centre that opened in 2019.
“That structure, you know, everyone loves it. Everyone is celebrating it being there. But surprise, surprise: not an environmental group, and not a supporter of our efforts to build it.
This caused more complaints.
Robles wasn’t bitter that the “Latin Power Elite” from LA hadn’t heard of him and spent more time and effort on South Bay.
“They just think of us as different and have the resources to organize and build on things that the political power base never came to,” he said. “I don’t know if they see it as ‘Oh, they’re a wealthier community and they don’t need our help.’ I don’t know. “
He was also “disappointed” by black residents who opposed the Carson district election, which probably brought more Latinos to the council. They were introduced in 2020 after a lawsuit in which Latino voters were allegedly disenfranchised within the city. Since then, no Latinos have been elected to the city council.
“A member of the African American community came and said, ‘Well, there’s a Latino mayor. You don’t need a district. Latino people should vote. Stop talking Spanish, learn to vote.’ And I said, ‘Everything you say white people said about black people in the South, so I forgot their history and now it seems like they’ve fallen into the politics of ‘If it’s not us, it’s not them.’ ”
We climbed up the viewing deck at the Porsche Experience Center on the second floor so that Robble could pos for the photo. The restaurant workers at the venue greeted him, drawing the first real smile, flashing throughout the afternoon.
He then stated that somewhere in the building he had his name. I thought it would be on Plaque to mark the debut of the Porsche Experience Center in 2016 when Robles was mayor. But it turns out to be his John Hancock along with a bunch of others on the whiteboard in the room facing the car park.
The room was locked.
Robles yelled at whether he should ask the staff to open it. Instead, I looked into the window.
“It’s there,” he told me. “Well, you’re not familiar with it, so you probably can’t see it.”
He could.
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