Commentary: Back in the news, Albert ‘Little Al’ Robles still has a lot of bones to pick

When the world calls you “Little Al,” you’re going to do what it takes to be seen.

That’s what I thought after spending an hour last week at the Porsche Experience Center in Carson with the city’s former mayor, Albert Robles.

He’s not the Albert Robles who was found guilty 19 years ago of fleecing South Gate out of $20 million as treasurer — that’s Big Al Robles. Little Al is the one who has tried to be a political somebody in L.A. County for over 30 years, only to almost always fall short, his career careening from one controversy to another.

In 2006, he represented three men who moved to Vernon in an attempt to take over the City Council; they all lost. That same year, Little Al represented Big Al — no, they’re not actually related — at the latter’s sentencing and argued that his client deserved leniency since what he did was common in California politics. The presiding judge replied, “What you have just said is among the most absurd things I have ever heard.”

The year after he was elected Carson’s mayor in 2015, the Fair Political Practices Commission fined Robles $12,000 to resolve allegations of campaign finance law violations. Two years after that, Robles’ 24-year tenure on the board of directors for Water Replenishment District of Southern California — an obscure agency that provides water for 44 cities in L.A. County — ended after a Superior Court judge ruled he couldn’t hold that seat at the same time that he was serving as mayor.

He lost the mayoral seat in the 2020 general election after striking out in his bid for county supervisor in the primary election earlier that year. Robles has been unsuccessful in two other races since — for an L.A. County Superior Court seat in 2022, and a state Senate primary last year where he garnered just 8.5% of the vote.

“I keep thinking I’m done and then I’m not done,” the 56-year-old joked at one point in our conversation as Caymans and Carreras roared through the test track as we lounged in a nearby patio. “It’s kind of like they dragged me back in.”

We met to talk about his latest waltz with the headlines: He’s the lawyer for former Huntington Park Councilmember Esmeralda Castillo. She’s suing the city to get her seat back after an internal investigation found Castillo wasn’t a resident of the southeast L.A. County suburb. The council declared the seat vacant and then picked a replacement.

“Whether or not she lives in [Huntington Park], whether or not she’s an angel, whether or not she’s Charles Manson, that doesn’t matter: She was denied the process that all of us are entitled to,” Robles said.

Um, Manson?

He’s also representing another former Huntington Park council member, Valentin Amezquita, in another lawsuit against the city. That one demands the city hold a special election for Castillo’s former seat, which Amezquita unsuccessfully applied for.

Wait, aren’t the lawsuits contradicting each other?

A judge told him the same thing, Robles admitted. He told me he filed them to expose what he described as Huntington Park’s “hypocrisy” for supposedly following the city charter over the Castillo matter, but ignoring it when choosing her replacement.

“It’s just like what’s happening at the federal level, as far as I see it,” Robles grumbled. Earlier, he compared the lack of due process Castillo allegedly faced to Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran national illegally deported by the Trump administration to his home country. “It’s frustrating.”

The more he talked, the more it became evident Robles wants to be seen as the crusader he’s always imagined himself to be and is annoyed that he’s not.

Carson Mayor Albert Robles speaks during a hearing about a proposed $480-million desalination plant in El Segundo in 2019 at the Carson Event Center.

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

His grievances are many.

He continues to hold a grudge against former L.A. County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, whom he described as “corrupt … and I’ll call him that to his face.” Cooley, for his part, told The Times in 2013 that when Robles unsuccessfully ran against him in 2008, he was “probably the most unqualified candidate ever” because of his political past.

Robles bragged that he torpedoed Cooley’s career.

“It’s an exaggeration — over-embellishment — on my part, but I actually take credit for” Cooley losing his 2010 bid to become California attorney general. “Because when I ran against him, I caused him to spend money — money that he otherwise would have had for the AG race. And if [Cooley] had that additional half a million dollars that he had to spend for the DA race, he may have won.”

He thinks Latino politicians need to close ranks like he feels other ethnicities do.

Case in point: Operation Dirty Pond, an L.A. County district attorney probe into a long-delayed Huntington Park aquatic park. In February, investigators raided City Hall and the homes of seven individuals, including two former council members and two current ones. Robles said the probe doesn’t “make sense” and is further proof that Latino politicians are held to a higher standard than other politicians.

“If Esmeralda were Black or Asian, or hell — dare I say — even white, I think it would be reported differently. I honestly believe that. Because those communities are willing to set aside their differences for the better good, because they know that, hey, if one person is being mistreated, we all are.”

Once he realized I wanted to discuss his own political travails as much as of his clients, Robles said the better setting for our chat would’ve been the Albert Robles Center, a water treatment center in Pico Rivera that opened in 2019.

“That structure, you know, everyone loves it now. Everyone celebrates that it’s there. But surprise, surprise: not one environmental group, not one came out and supported our effort to build it up. … Nobody fought more for that building, for that project, than me.”

This set off more grievances.

Robles was bitter that L.A.’s “Latino power elite” hadn’t listened to him and invested more time and effort in the South Bay, where Latinos make up a majority of the population in many cities but have little political representation.

“They just see us as differently and the resources to organize and build up that political power base never materialized,” he said. “I don’t know if they see it as ‘Oh, those are more affluent communities, they don’t need our help.’ I don’t know.”


He was also “disheartened” by Black residents that opposed district elections in Carson that would have probably brought more Latinos onto the council. They were introduced in 2020 after a lawsuit alleged Latino voters were disenfranchised in the city. Since then, there hasn’t been a Latino elected to the City Council.

“We would have members of the African American community come up and say, ‘Well, we have a Latino mayor. We don’t need districts. Latinos should vote — stop speaking Spanish, and learn to vote.’ And then I would say, ‘You know, everything you’re saying is what whites said about Blacks in the South. And they’re like, ‘That’s not true.’
So, like, some forgot their history and now we seem to have fallen into the politics of, ‘If it’s not us, it can’t be them.’”

We climbed upstairs to the Porsche Experience Center’s viewing deck so Robles could pose for photos. Workers at the venue’s restaurant greeted him, drawing the first genuine smile Robles had flashed all afternoon.

He then mentioned that somewhere in the building was his name. I thought it would be on a plaque commemorating the debut of the Porsche Experience Center in 2016, when Robles was mayor. But it turned out to be his John Hancock alongside a bunch of others on a whiteboard in a room facing the parking lot.

The room was locked.

Robles wondered out loud if he should ask the staff to open it so we could take a better look. Instead, we peered through a window.

“It’s right there,” he told me, trying to describe where exactly it was among all the other signatures. “Well, you’re not familiar with it so you probably can’t see it.”

He could.