Young first-time candidate roils race

Eric Hacopian, an experienced local consultant who is overseeing Pleitez's campaign, insists that the newcomer has a shot at pulling off an upset.

"We're in it to win it," Hacopian said, "not for some respectable showing for the future."

By election day, the campaign will have raised "well over" the $202,000 reported so far, he said. That is substantially less than Chu. But it is enough to enable the campaign to send 12 or 13 political mailers to targeted voters, Hacopian said.

Volunteers are making contact with 1,200 to 1,500 registered voters a day, he said.

Pleitez is offering himself as a fresh alternative to voters disillusioned with the political establishment.

Born to immigrant parents and raised in poverty by a single mother on Los Angeles' East Side, Pleitez likes to tell voters that the family moved 10 times by the time he was 9, sometimes living in converted garages and friends' bedrooms. He excelled at Woodrow Wilson High School and attended Stanford University on a scholarship.

"I want to give back to this community, which gave me so many opportunities," Pleitez said.

He campaigned for John Kerry for president in 2004 and Obama in 2008 and got involved in several community service projects, including helping found an alumni support group for Wilson High and mentoring students. He quit his job as a financial analyst with Goldman Sachs to join the transition team.

The Cedillo and Chu campaigns predicted that Pleitez would not have much effect.

"I think he's doing a good job of mobilizing a nontraditional base," said Chu campaign consultant Parke Skelton, who said he thinks the likely low turnout would hurt, not help, Pleitez.

"He'll be a factor, but not a huge factor," Skelton said, adding that he believes that Pleitez could draw as many voters from Chu as from Cedillo -- an assessment most others interviewed did not agree with.

"I don't think he plays a major factor . . . except among the chattering class," said Derek Humphrey, who is managing Cedillo's campaign.

Nonetheless, the Cedillo campaign sent out a mailer recently that featured photos of a partying Pleitez that it said it got from his Facebook page. "Should this man represent you in the House of Representatives?" the mailer asks, "Or in Animal House?"

Most saw the mailer as evidence that Cedillo is worried.