Long Beach’s Cordero ready for national stage

Long BeachÆs Cordero ready for national stage    The proposed appointment this week of Long Beach Harbor Commissioner Mario Cordero to the Federal Maritime Commission is notable for a couple of reasons.
   For one, Cordero would bring a West Coast voice to a council totally devoid of such representation at present. Second, Cordero would bring with him a heavy emphasis on environmental issues.
   Cordero arrived on the scene as a port commissioner in Long Beach the same time I did as a business reporter for the local newspaper, the Long Beach Press-Telegram. The ports and goods movement industry provided a steep learning curve for both of us. Aside from his role as a harbor commissioner, Cordero is a workers' compensation defense attorney and a political science professor at California State University, Long Beach.
   Yet Cordero grew into his role on the harbor board and carved out a niche early on as a champion of the ports' fledgling green movement. That movement's momentum is clear to see these days, with Long Beach's and Los Angeles' joint Clean Air Action Plan moving from strength to strength.
   In an industry that's loathe to change, the greening of the port hasn't always gone down well with shippers, carriers or drayage firms, but Cordero's steady style seems to have won out. To wit, he's now the longest-serving commissioner on Long Beach's board, the veteran voice who now appears set to move to the national stage.
   It'll be a leap, especially as the FMC (behind the ambitious leadership of Chairman Richard Lidinsky) seems set to tackle some major issues. But Cordero has seen quite a bit overseeing one of the world's biggest ports. He came after the dockworker lockout of 2002, but just in time for the capacity crunch in 2004, the environmental push to cut port pollution, the move to nighttime gate operations by terminal operators, and then the economic crisis that decimated port volumes.
   If he's approved for the FMC, he could step directly into a fight over whether liner carriers should be allowed to preserve their limited antitrust immunity in the United States. In short, out of the frying pan and into the fire.
   But Cordero's mellow nature — seven years ago, I never would have guessed he would be a presidential nominee for a national post — has served him well, and it would likely serve the FMC well, too.
   And finally, let's not discount how important it could be for the West Coast to have a voice on the FMC. For the commission to be without a single voice west of the Mississippi seems somewhat ludicrous in retrospect — the West Coast is where the lion's share of containerized goods enter the country, after all. Yet go down the list of former commissioners and — aside from Hawaii-born Delmond Won — there's been nary a West Coast voice on the commission in the last two decades.
   Cordero's appointment could go some way to changing the perception that California and the West Coast are forgotten in matters decided in Washington. ' Eric Johnson