Ernest E. Debs

Ernest Eugene Debs (February 7, 1904 – March 7, 2002), who went by Ernest E. Debs, was a California State Assembly member from 1942 to 1947, a Los Angeles city councilman from 1947 to 1958 and a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors from 1958 to 1974.

Debs was born in Toledo, Ohio, on February 7, 1904, and came to California in a box car when he was 20 to work in the motion picture industry as a dancer. He was also a salesman. "He had no college education and prided himself on being a self-made man," the Los Angeles Times reported in his obituary. Debs married Lorene Marsh Robertson of Placerville, California, in 1944; they had two adopted children, David and Catherine Clare. They lived at 2416 McCready Avenue in the Silver Lake district.

He was not related to Eugene V. Debs, the labor leader and Socialist candidate for president. He said in 1947:

We're not even remotely related. I am often asked the question, however, and generally it brings up the subject of my party affiliations and general philosophy of government. Well, I guess I'd be called a conservative Democrat. I was elected to the Assembly on both the Republican and Democratic tickets. Definitely I'm against radicals and Communists. At the same time I think the little fellow should get a square deal—I'm for that, too.

Debs, a resident of Indian Wells, Riverside County, at the time, died at the age of 98 on March 17, 2002. He was survived by his wife, Betty Debs; and children David Debs, Candi Debs, Stan Grant, Lonnie Gordon and Nancy Martel. A memorial service was held in the Los Angeles County Hall of Administration.

Debs ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Congressional seat in the 17th District in 1932. Nineteen years later, in the context of a heated City Council reelection campaign, he was accused by Walter C. Smith, an executive with Lockheed Aircraft, of having registered as a Socialist in both 1930 and 1931 and to have favored "government ownership of public utilities" during the 1932 campaign.

Debs gave up show business to become a sergeant-at-arms in the State Assembly, and in 1942 he won election to the Assembly in the 56th District. While in the State Assembly, he authored the bill establishing the California State University at Los Angeles campus.

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