With Trutanich, San Pedro docks are home to a contender

By STEVE LOPEZ

May 10, 2009 7 AM PT

This column was supposed to be about Carmen “Nuch” Trutanich, but then San Pedro stole the show.

The deal was to meet the candidate for Los Angeles city attorney at the San Pedro Fish Market and Restaurant and get to know the lesser-known of the two candidates in the city attorney’s race. Trutanich is a local boy who hung out on the docks and punched in at the StarKist cannery, and I like getting to know a man on his turf.

Especially if the turf is Pedro, as they call it, a blue-collar burg without polish or pretense, shouldered up high on a hill above the port, a million miles from L.A.

By rights, Trutanich should have been out of the race by now and back to his law practice. Yeah, he was tapped to run by L.A. Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, but City Councilman Jack Weiss practically had his name on the city attorney’s door already. Generally, in L.A., we don’t elect, we anoint.

Weiss had Westside money. He had Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa as head cheerleader. He had been a prosecutor for the U.S. attorney, and he was the undisputed favorite.

And then a guy many of us had never heard of forced this runoff. The election is nine days away and too close to call, especially after a city pension board member resigned last week for co-hosting a Weiss fundraiser in violation of city rules. That’s just the kind of audacity Trutanich says he’s trying to run out of City Hall.

“You must be Mr. Lopez,” Trutanich said after popping out of his Mini Cooper like Charlie the Tuna out of a can.

His eyes were red and his shoulders rounded despite an optimistic smile. He had slept only two hours, he said, but he thinks he can win, and sleep is a luxury he can’t afford.

“Let me see if I can find Tommy to have lunch with us,” Trutanich said inside the fish market as he wormed back behind the counter as if he were an employee.

Tommy Amalfitano, the founder, wasn’t around. Neither was his mother, who’s 86 but still comes to work every day and once a week hosts a fish dinner at her house for family and friends like Trutanich.

Trutanich moved across the bridge to Long Beach’s Naples neighborhood for several years before hopping back over to Harbor City so he could run for office. But you’d never know he left Pedro.

“Hey, how’s Sonny?”

“You seen Jimmy?”

“Yeah, I got signs for you but I was out last night. Why don’t you come by the house later?”

Trutanich took me out to look at the sooty collision of ships and cranes and port factories, and there was a glint in his eye, as if we were at the world’s greatest museum and needed a moment of silence.

When we got back inside, Amalfitano was at a lunch table with Matt Matich, Pete Bosnich and Mark Karmecich, all of whom worked with Trutanich’s dad at StarKist, which closed in the 1980s. If his dad were here, Trutanich said, he’d be so proud that the son of a cannery worker was running for city attorney.

The others nodded, and we ordered marinated octopus and fried calamari for the table.

But come on, I said. Didn’t anyone at the table think it was crazy for Trutanich to give up a healthy law practice for a pay cut and a horrible commute?

“He’s a little goofy,” Karmecich said.

“What do you mean, goofy?” asked Trutanich, who, like a good attorney, coached Karmecich into explaining that he was trying to say Trutanich had guts.

Speaking of good attorneys, I had to ask Trutanich about Weiss’ primary line of attack in the campaign. He says Trutanich is an NRA-apologist and a hack whose list of clients includes gunslingers, polluters and seal killers. And since Trutanich won’t provide a full list of the clients he and his law partner have represented, who knows what other skeletons he’s hiding.

So why not just give up the list and put the issue to rest?

Trutanich turned to Amalfitano. “Tommy, when’s the last time I talked to you.”

“I don’t know,” Amalfitano said. “A few days ago at the Dalmatian Club?”

They argued about when it might have been before Trutanich made his point:

“When have I ever been known to talk about a gun? This is all B.S.”

Trutanich argued that despite what UC Irvine law school Dean Erwin Chemerinsky wrote in an L.A. Times opinion piece, he has an obligation to protect the identities of his clients unless his work for them is already a matter of public record. The issue has led to a running debate among lawyers, many of whom agree with Trutanich.

“Let’s say your wife comes to me and says, ‘I want to divorce my husband,’ ” Trutanich said.

If I called and asked about it, he said, he wouldn’t be able to acknowledge that he’d met with her. So why would he tell Jack Weiss?

As for cases that went to court, he said, they’re easy enough to find in public records. Actually, they’re not. Unless you know the name of the defendant or plaintiff, it’s hard to track down 30 years’ worth of clients. And I have to agree with Weiss that we should know in advance if any of those clients might end up creating conflicts of interest for Trutanich if he becomes city attorney.

At the very least, Trutanich should come clean, and then he should remind voters that our legal system is founded on the principle that anyone accused of a criminal or civil offense has the right to an attorney.

Or, as Amalfitano and Karmecich put it, Trutanich has defended criminals and he’s prosecuted them while working gangs in the D.A.’s office, and there’s no dishonor in either.

“You’re just doing your job,” Amalfitano said.

After lunch, Trutanich whipped me around in his Mini Cooper to show off Pedro, pointing out where he used to jump into the water when he was too young to worry about what was in it.

Later, we dropped by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union offices, where union officials who support Trutanich griped about Villaraigosa engineering support for Weiss by the County Federation of Labor.

I’m not predicting the outcome on May 19, but I know Weiss is in trouble on his own turf in West L.A., where some constituents found him so arrogant and indifferent to their concerns that they launched an unsuccessful recall.

Before I left San Pedro, Trutanich wanted to show me the street he grew up on. As he drove down the block, near Mary Star of the Sea Church, Trutanich pointed out the homes of one sister, then another sister, then a nephew, then his mother’s house.

As for the statue of Mary Star, he noted, Mary isn’t looking toward the water, but in the direction of the house Trutanich grew up in.

And why is that?

His late father did a lot of work for the parish, Trutanich said, so the pastor wanted Mary to watch over his mother.

You gotta love Pedro. I don’t know if Trutanich will win or lose, but either way, I’ll be back.

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