Gustavo Arellano: A year after the City Hall tape leak, where will Latino political power in L.A. go?

On a Tuesday morning in the fall of 1998, I waited in line at a polling precinct at Manzanita Park in Anaheim. I was 19, voting for the first time, and motivated by ethnic pride to do so.

Four years earlier, Californians had overwhelmingly passed Proposition 187, which sought to make life miserable for undocumented immigrants. It spurred my era of Latinos to get involved in local politics and fight for a democracy where people who looked like us would represent "us."

I admired from afar what was going on in Los Angeles, where crusading politicians with last names like Molina, Polanco, Alatorre, and Alarcón fought for their working class constituents and inspired Latinos across the state. They were on my mind at Manzanita Park as I leafed through an election guide, searching for a Latino candidate — any Latino candidate — to vote for.

That person was Alexandria Coronado. She became the first Latina elected to the Anaheim Union High School District board of trustees. A year later, she voted alongside the board's Republican majority to pass a resolution for educating the