Valle says Legaspi, Trujillo visited him days before starting campaign

City Council District 3 candidate Ernesto Valle says opponent Gil Legaspi and Mayor Pro Tem Trujillo visited him at his home to try and dissuade him from running.

DOWNEY - Downey City Council District 3 candidate Ernesto Valle was visited at home by opponent Gil Contreras Legaspi and Mayor Pro Tem Mario Trujillo in what he says was an attempt to persuade him not to run.

According to Valle, Legaspi contacted him just days before the candidate’s filing deadline and asked if he could come over to his home and speak to him, to which Valle agreed.

Valle was surprised, however, when Trujillo joined Legaspi.

“I didn’t really know it was Mario Trujillo, because I had never met him in person, never talked to him, never spoke to him,” said Valle. “[Legaspi says] ‘Hey Ernie, I want to introduce you to Mario Trujillo.’ I’m like, okay, wow. I had no knowledge that he was coming, I wasn’t told beforehand, nothing that Mario Trujillo was coming with Gil. I didn’t even know what Gil wanted to talk about.”

Trujillo has not officially endorsed Legaspi.

Valle says he first addressed Trujillo, speaking of his dislike of District Attorney George Gascon, whom Trujillo previously served as a special advisor to.

He continued that Trujillo said that he had “heard a lot of great things” about Valle, adding that he should work with Legaspi and that he’d “be great as a commissioner, if not in District 3, in [Trujillo’s] District next year.”

“Nothing promised, just that I had a future in the city of Downey,” said Valle.

Still, Valle feels that there may have been an indirect offer for a future position.

“Indirectly, I believe it was offered. I don’t know that it was offered for not running,” said Valle. “To me, indirectly, it was offered. I felt flattered that, hey, this guy knows of me and thinks highly of me. Definitely, I felt that it was offered.

“Now, were the words said, ‘I will offer it to you if you don’t run’? No. But, definitely do I feel that something was offered and put on the table for me to be part of ‘Gil’s team’ or support or be part of that connection, yes.’”

Valle first made the claims on the Talking Downey Podcast.

Legaspi denied offering anything to Valle, claiming that he introduced him to Trujillo only because Valle had previously been unable to make contact with Mayor Claudia Frometa.

Still, he called Valle a “great guy” and described themselves as “nice and friendly competitors.”

“He wanted to run, and that’s why he’s running,” said Legaspi. “I wanted to run, and that’s why I’m running.”

Trujillo confirmed that Legaspi had asked him to meet with Valle, describing the interaction as an “introduction.” He called any claim or insinuation that he had offered Valle a position of any kind “slanderous and false.”

According to all parties, the conversation only lasted around 10 minutes before Trujillo had to leave to attend a City Council meeting.

The home meeting was only one of several attempts by Legaspi to get Valle off the campaign trail, according to Valle.

Valle says Legaspi made several attempts to convince him to ditch his campaign, beginning with a phone call sometime around mid-May when Valle was preparing to officially announce his intent to run.

“We had closing ceremonies [at Northwest Downey Little League], and the morning of I get a call from Gil, and he starts talking to me, and he says, ‘Hey, I want to meet you, I really like your stuff, yadda yadda, I want to talk to you about running,’” said Valle. “I said, ‘Well, you know what, you picked a bad day because I’m about to announce my retirement from Little League and I’m going to make my announcement.’”

Valle says the two talked for around 30 minutes that day, with Gil offering to have lunch with one another, saying “We could work well together.” Still, in regards to dissuading him from running, Valle says it was “a little too late.”

“He came out as a nice guy. I didn’t know him, I don’t know how he got my number,” said Valle.

Not long after, Valle says they met for lunch, where again, Legaspi made a plea to not run, arguing that he had a better chance of winning and that they “shouldn’t divide the vote.”

“At that point, I told him I was going to run, and he said, ‘Great, you know what, I respect that,’” said Valle. “He did mention something about talking to Dorothy [Pemberton], and meeting with Dorothy…apparently there was a misunderstanding about who was going to run or what not between them two, and he said, ‘I respect you because you’re telling me upfront that you’re going to run...’”

Legaspi and Pemberton both verified that they had met for lunch and discussed the upcoming race, but their stories too have inconsistencies between them.

According to Legaspi, Pemberton asked him to hold off on running until 2024 during the regular election, allowing her to serve the remaining one year of the current District 3 term before challenging Trujillo for District 5.

Pemberton, however, says that they “didn’t know who was going to run” when they met.

“We were deciding who has the most experience to run, because we wanted to make sure a Downey person would get in. We talked about, yes, it’s only going to be for one year,” said Pemberton.

According to Pemberton, the two agreed that she had the most experience between the pair and should be the one to run. She also says that Legaspi asked her to appoint him as one of her representatives if elected.

“He was saying, ‘You have a lot more [experience] than I do,’ you should run. I said, ‘Okay, I’m going to run because I think I have more people that know me than you, and then you can get more experience after this one-year term.’ We were just going to talk, that’s about it,” said Pemberton. “He says…you run, and you appoint me to Planning Commission.

“I didn’t know that was such a coveted position. And I go, ‘Let’s just get going with the election.’ A couple of months later, I get the call [from Legaspi, saying] ‘I changed my mind, I’m going to run.’”