Part II

Nell Soto Part II The 1960s: Politics, the Fair Housing Act & Other Progressive Legislation - the Real Estate Industry, ‘Hit’ Pieces, ‘Limousine Liberals,’ Headstart and Parks.

By Julian Lucas
Edited by Pamela Casey Nagler

Published August 15, 2023 9:41 Am PST

Excerpts from Nell Soto’s 1988 interview conducted by Carlos Vasquez with the UCLA Oral History Program, California State Archives, State Government Oral History Program.

Nell Soto on Fair Housing

The Rumford Fair Housing Act (AB 1240) passed in California on September 20, 1963. Its goal was to end unfair discrimination against people of color who were seeking housing, a common occurrence at the time. All too often, white landlords and property owners would not rent apartments or sell houses to ”colored people'' or “brown people.”

The Rumford Act stated that ”the practice of discrimination because of race, color, religion, national origin, or ancestry in housing accommodations is declared to be against public policy.

Nell Soto reveals in her interview that it was the Real Estate lobby that provided powerful opposition to the Fair Housing Act. They circulated racist flyers to spread fear among voters.

NELL SOTO: [My husband, Phil Soto] got elected [to the assembly] in 1962. He was a party man. In 1964, he almost lost because of the famous Rumford [Fair Housing] Act. (33)

CARLOS VASQUEZ: Did the Rumford Act [or Fair Housing Act of 1963] hurt Democrats that badly?

NELL SOTO: Oh, yeah. Yeah. There was a big campaign in the San Gabriel Valley against it, against him because of that.

Carlos Vasquez: Who headed that campaign?

Nell Soto: Campbell’s people [her husband’s opponents’ people].

Carlos Vasquez: Was he tied into real estate?

Nell Soto: Sure. Herbert Hawkins [Realty]. A lot of the big realtors were against it and debated him on the logic of why he was supporting it. San Gabriel Valley is very conservative. Even though they vote for Hispanics, they expect you to be as conservative as they are. (37-8)

Carlos Vasquez: What kind of campaign was it at the local level that William Campbell was able to mount? What kind of issues did he raise?

Nell Soto: The issue was fair housing. That's what the issue was.

Carlos Vasquez: In 1968, four years later?

Nell Soto: Yes. He was still doing the same thing . . . (39-40)

Carlos Vasquez: How much did the reaction to the Rumford Fair Housing Act as expressed in the Proposition 14 campaign have to do with Mr. Soto's loss in 1968?

Nell Soto: I think it had a lot to do with it. In 1964, he barely squeaked through. He only won by about 1,600 votes . . . Again, that area, the West Covina area. . . . There was a very strong campaign waged against him in 1964.

Carlos Vasquez: By?

Nell Soto: By the same guy who beat him. Bill Campbell.

Carlos Vasquez: Did the real estate lobby play much of a role?

Nell Soto: Absolutely . . .

Carlos Vasquez: Doing what?

Nell Soto: Well, editorials, ads. I don't know who paid for the "hit piece" that went out. There was one very bad one. At that time, they weren't known as hit pieces . . . I just picked up that term from other politicians. A hit piece is something put in the mail that says something bad about the office holder or candidate . . . It was in reference to the Rumford Act. [It said] “If you don't sell to a black, you're going to wind up behind bars."

It had a picture of a white couple behind bars with a black couple outside of the jail laughing at them. That was circulated in the district.

All of that had an Impact, like the editorials against the Fair Housing Act calling it the "Rumford-Soto Act." Although all the Democrats had co-authored it, they acted as if he was the only one . . . Incidentally, Rumford also lost, as did most of the people who signed that bill.

Carlos Vasquez: What do you think it was about the Rumford Act that made people react, or that others were able to exploit in order to make people react? What was the argument that made people go the direction that they did?

Nell Soto: It was called the Fair Housing Act. It made it illegal to discriminate against anybody because of race, color, or creed, in selling or renting them a house. That's all it did. But it was distorted to the point where it caused a lot of paranoia with people who owned houses they wanted to sell. People would say, "I don't want to sell my house to a black, and nobody's going to make me do it."

The average, redneck WASP who all these years had felt very, very secure and complacent in their own little bailiwick, their all-white neighborhoods, now, all of a sudden, here was a law that was going to require them to sell to or rent to people of color, be they brown, or black, or yellow, or whatever. That was not something they appreciated or were looking forward to. To this day, I think that there's more of those people than we like to think there are.

Carlos Vasquez: People in the Brown administration that I and others have interviewed were profoundly surprised by the reaction to the Rumford Housing Act. Were you surprised?

Nell Soto: No. What I'm telling you is that the limousine liberals who live in Beverly Hills and send their kids to parochial or private schools author or help to author liberal legislation, yet they wouldn't live next door to a black if they got paid to or under any circumstances. They espouse liberal legislation because they think that's the right thing to do, even though if push came to shove they wouldn't like it for their own neighborhood.

Carlos Vasquez: Could you give me an example of such a “limousine liberal”?

Nell Soto: No, I wouldn't care to do that.

Carlos Vasquez: How about another issue where "limousine liberals" may have carried the day and yet not had to pay the piper?

Nell Soto: Well, I think it's everywhere.

Carlos Vasquez: Do you think affirmative action is an example?

Nell Soto: Affirmative action, absolutely. Just think of any type of legislation where they've had to literally legislate morality. They say, "Well, you can't legislate morality." I say, "The hell you can't." If it wasn't for legislation, we would not have civil rights, we would not have fair housing. There are so many things we would not have if it had not been for legislation . . .

On education . . . I don't think we've done enough, not even for the Anglo kids, let alone for minorities. In the Brown administration, you had a lot of people who were philosophically liberal but who had never been down to or lived in the ghetto, never been poor, never known what it was like to have to go to bed hungry. I appreciate the fact that they're at least attempting to provide through legislation the means to help the people who are in those circumstances . . . [but] there are very few people in government who have been through the agony of poverty. It's because people in poverty don't have the opportunity for an education, to go through the different steps to become a bureaucrat and be able to make some of these decisions.

So for the most part . . . I'm not saying 100 percent, but I would say 99 percent of the people who are making these decisions have never been poor. They've never known what it's like to go hungry. They've never lived in a ghetto or a barrio, even though they try to legislate to help these people. It's appreciated, and if it wasn't for them we probably wouldn't be this far in legislating, if you will, morality.

I really do wish that they would come out and live here. Try it. Then they could really write some good legislation, because then they would really know what it's all about. Maybe some of the legislators, themselves, know, because they come from a different point of reference than the people in government making decisions who are not legislators. I think the advisers that the elected people hire are the ones who should really know what it's like.

Especially in the old days, nobody came from a barrio. They mostly came from agricultural areas or were attorneys or businessmen who got elected. And while they might have been poor growing up or might have been poor farmers, it was a long time before anybody was elected with a really liberal philosophy to help generate some of the liberal legislation that we've had in the last twenty or thirty years . . .

Structural Racism and Land Use Redlining Map
Pomona, CA

[Just think], the Rumford Act was voted down. People voted against it! Fair housing! The state supreme court said it's unconstitutional to vote down a fair housing situation, so the fair housing law stood. 85-94

Nell Soto on Other Progressive Legislation - The Compensatory Education Bill (Headstart) of 1865 & the Quimby Act of 1965 (Requiring Developers to Set Aside Land for Park and Recreational Use)

CARLOS VASQUEZ: During the time he [Nell Soto’s husband] was in the Assembly, what issues particularly got you involved in politics as a wife of an assemblyman, do you remember?

NELL SOTO: Oh, I was interested in everything he was doing. Some of the things I brought up to him, he would take them in. We drew up—he didn't get the credit for it--the 1965 Compensatory Education Bill of 1965, Headstart (AB. 1331). a lot of those things for disadvantaged children, Phil and I thought of. He would take them up with him, they would get put into the hopper, and it would come out as some kind of a bill sponsored by somebody else . . .

Another thing that was my idea, that he [Phil] did and took back, came out as the Quimby Act of 1965 (AB 1150). I think it's very important that every developer putting in a new subdivision now has to dedicate a little bit of land commensurate with the amount of children that are projected to be in the tract [for parks or other recreational purposes.] That idea was conceived in my home . . .

I said, "You know what you ought to do? You ought to make it a law that every developer that puts in houses should leave some land for kids to play in.”

And they did.” 42-5

LINKS
UCLA Archive

Julian Lucas, is a photographer, a purveyor of books and writer in training, but mostly a photographer. Julian is the founder of Mirrored Society Books. Julian was once called a “bitter artist” on the Nextdoor app. Julian embraces name calling, because he believes when people express themselves uncensored, they are their most creative self. Unless of course it’s by someone who holds a leadership position.

Pamela Casey Nagler, Pomona-born, is an independent scholar, currently conducting research on California’s indigenous people, focusing on the Spanish, Russian, Mexican and US invasions between 1769 and the 1860s. The point of studying this history is to tell us how we got here from there.