Home lost, she seeks House

Calif. lawmaker's constituents leery

LONG BEACH, CALIF. -- Like many voters in this port city and the gritty urban areas of Rep. Laura Richardson's political turf, Johnetta Walker is disenchanted with the lawmaker whose meteoric rise has been marked with personal financial failures.

Richardson's ambitious one-year ascent from City Council to state Assembly to Congress gained national attention in May when one of her houses was sold in foreclosure, followed by news of several loan defaults.

"How can you be a leader of anything if you can't be a leader of your home?" asks Walker, a bus driver who lives in Compton, a working-class city in Richardson's Southern California district.

Walker says she won't vote for Richardson in November, but her effort will most likely be in vain. A disorganized field of last-minute challengers and a lack of a recall option means there's little that angered constituents can do to unseat her.

After news came out about the foreclosure and sale of Richardson's Sacramento home, which she bought in January 2007 after winning a seat in the state Assembly, a pattern of years of financial irresponsibility emerged.

A few days before the June primary, the Long Beach Press-Telegram reported that Richardson, a Democrat who won her House seat last year in a special election, had been issued multiple default notices on two Southern California homes.

Five of those occurred in the previous 13 months, while Richardson was using $177,500 of her own money to finance her political career.

Still, Richardson coasted through the primary with nearly three-fourths of the vote, setting her up to run unopposed in November.

The Press-Telegram reported that she didn't pay car repair bills for years and failed to disclose certain financial details, including a loan from a strip club owner.

A Washington watchdog group called for a House Ethics Committee investigation into Richardson's personal finances. It cited her history of defaulting on home loans and suspicions of special treatment when her bank rescinded the sale of her foreclosed Sacramento home.

She and the bank denied the allegation after the property was returned to her, but it has fallen into disrepair and was recently declared a public nuisance.

As Richardson's problems surfaced this summer, so did three challengers: two write-ins, Lee Davis and Peter Mathews, both of whom lost to Richardson in the primary, and independent Nicholas Dibs, a teacher and political novice.

The three candidates say they were encouraged to run by people unhappy with Richardson. They point to voter discontent as a sign that their challenges could be successful.

"I walk the streets and people say, 'Please run as a write-in. We will vote for you. We don't want her,' " said Davis, publisher of the Wrigley Bulletin and News, a community paper.

The people's plight

Richardson -- who voted for a mortgage debt forgiveness bill that later passed -- has portrayed her foreclosure as an example of how even a member of Congress can suffer a plight faced by tens of thousands of hapless Americans.

That explanation hasn't impressed some of her constituents.

"If she can't take care of herself, then how is she going to take care of other people [while serving] in Congress?" asked Juliana Flores, who works at a store in Carson.

Richardson refused to be interviewed for this report, but campaign spokesman William Marshall Jr. issued a statement saying Richardson has consistently gained voter support because of her legislative record and achievements in less than a year in Congress.