The Voice of Valley Populism

The San Fernando Valley is so big that a journalist can have trouble finding the appropriate cliche to describe it.

Sometimes it’s easier to find a person who sums it all up, like Ernani Bernardi, a Valley councilman since 1961. His specialty is Valley populism, a loose, informal movement that has helped shape the city for 30 years.

Bernardi’s turf is not the Valley of Ventura Boulevard Sunday brunches. His people are working class homeowners in places like Van Nuys who feel they’ve been made the victims of a city government dominated by the more politically powerful downtown and Westside.

Valley populism, a loose, informal movement, was born when post-World War II Valley subdivisions opened up for middle-class Angelenos sick of the city.

Valley-ite Sam Yorty was the first to see the discontent when he ran against “the downtown machine” in 1961 during his successful campaign for mayor. Later, as state and federal governments began to pump tax dollars into ghettos, Valley residents turned their political anger toward Sacramento and Washington. Discontented blue-collar Democrats in the Valley cheered Republican Ronald Reagan and helped put Howard Jarvis’ tax revolt on top. The Jarvis movement, in fact, started in homes and storefront headquarters in Bernardi’s Van Nuys district.

Although he was never a member of the Yorty, Reagan or Jarvis teams, independent Democrat Bernardi has tapped the same feelings of discontent.

Reporters like to call Bernardi “The Conscience of the Council” because he’s always pushing reform legislation and objecting when his colleagues try to sneak a special deal through for a campaign contributor. I’ve never liked that title. It makes Bernardi seem too saintly.

He’s not at all like that. Bernardi, an energetic man beginning to show his age at 78, resembles the obsessive, conspiracy-hunting gadflies who haunt Civic Center meetings, burdened with minutes of forgotten official proceedings. He loses himself in small details and his speeches can ramble until council President John Ferraro shuts him off. Bernardi’s immediate neighbor in the council chamber, Richard Alatorre, who’s bored during the most lively council debates, buries himself even more deeply in his newspaper when Bernardi speaks.

What distinguishes Bernardi from the usual gadfly, however, is that he has the same gift that elevated Yorty, Jarvis and Reagan above the herd: the gift of communication. Just as they did, Bernardi expresses the frustrations of the family living in Van Nuys.

Like Reagan, Bernardi used to be a performer. Not an actor, but a big band saxophone player for Benny Goodman and Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey. From those musicians, he learned how to reach an audience. If you couldn’t do that, he told me one day, you were out.

This quality is displayed during his television show, L.A. News in Review, on the Valley’s United Artists Cable Television. Twice a month, he invites four Civic Center reporters (occasionally myself) to discuss the week’s events.

He has the performer’s eye for detail. He warns his guests, “Don’t cross your legs, don’t show the audience any skin. Don’t call me councilman, call me Ernie.”

He says the format is patterned after Washington Week in Review, a real news review show, with Bernardi playing the moderator role. But really, it’s subtle political propaganda.

Bernardi picks the topics. We’re free to say what we want. But often we’re talking his issues--corruption, government waste, water, downtown Los Angeles redevelopment. Thus Bernardi’s issues are spotlighted without him having to give a political pitch. If Bernardi weren’t such a nice guy we wouldn’t go on the show.

The kind of skill, cunning and rough-hewn charm he uses on the show are the qualities that have helped him enact a substantial part of the Valley populist agenda. A Bernardi-sponsored voter initiative limited political campaign contributions. Bernardi lawsuits and council action has reduced the power of the downtown-oriented Community Redevelopment Agency. More recently, he helped defeat Mayor Tom Bradley’s mandatory water rationing plan. Downtown can’t tell the land of big back yards how to save water.

The big names are gone now, Jarvis dead, Yorty and Reagan retired. But little Ernani Bernardi remains, the voice of the discontented, still the Valley populist.