TheBakersfieldCalifornian.com

This is the fourth of six introductory candidate profiles for the Bakersfield City Council Ward 1 race. Remaining profiles will be published in subsequent days.

Candidate: Rudy Salas Jr.

Age: 33

Rudy Salas Jr. might strike some as a carpetbagger in the Ward 1 race.

There's his rented house-slash-campaign office on South Chester Avenue, where he's been registered to vote less than a year. There are also his years spent outside the area in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Sacramento.

But Salas is no newcomer to southeast Bakersfield.

He grew up in neighborhoods around the fairgrounds, attended Wayside Elementary, was bused to Curran Middle School and graduated from South High. His first communion was at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church on East California Avenue.

He excelled in school partly because his father had him spend several summers in the fields, where he made boxes for harvested grapes.

"Dad would say: 'I want you to learn -- out here in the sun -- so you go to school,'" Salas said.

The lesson worked.

"I was the first in my family to go to college and graduate," he said.

Salas says he stayed clear of mischief growing up, even though there were gang members in his neighborhood. He never felt threatened.

"It's your home. You know everybody there," he said. "Everyone always saw me as the academic, studious one: 'He's the guy that's gonna do something.'"

Ben Perlado, a friend of Salas' since junior high, said they were part of a program called Project 2000. Average students who wouldn't typically be college-bound were immersed in college-prep courses and taught skills to navigate the path.

"We excelled in that," Perlado said. They moved on to honors and advanced-placement classes and took part in all the extracurricular activities and sports they had time for.

Salas was accepted at every college he applied to -- more than a half-dozen -- and chose the one everyone seemed most impressed with: UCLA.

He started out in chemistry ("I loved o-chem," he said, meaning organic chemistry) but was soon enthralled by politics, by a sense of history unfolding around him from the real-world impacts of policies he read about and watched on the news.

Salas graduated in 2000 with a double-major in political science and history, then headed off to the White House for an internship with then-Vice President Al Gore. The position soon turned into a full-time job but didn't last long.

"When Al Gore gave his concession speech, I was down the hall," he said.

Being in the thick of political goings-on "kind of made me feel warm and fulfilled inside," Salas said.

He worked at Cal State Bakersfield two years before heading up to Sacramento and eventually landing a job with state Sen. Dean Florez, the Shafter Democrat. Salas is currently district director for Florez, who will be termed out of the state Legislature this year.

PUBLIC RECORDS

The Californian's profiles of political candidates include results of public records searches for criminal, civil and financial filings.

Salas has no criminal convictions in Kern County, online court records going back to 1989 show.

There are also no civil cases or financial judgments.

NO CLONE

Terri Stanton taught Salas in her honors English classes at South High.

He was in a group -- the final class she taught, in fact -- of "extremely bright, articulate students" who were great fun to teach, Stanton said.

"I think he always had leadership quality," she said. "Other kids looked to him as a leader."

Like another one-time Florez staffer -- Michael Rubio, the county supervisor now running for Florez's seat -- Salas is aware of the benefits and baggage of being associated with the veteran politician's machine.

"I'm my own individual with my own thoughts," Salas said. "He is a mentor -- that doesn't mean I'm a clone."