Rep. Berman gets a friendly challenger for 2010

As I noted in my immigration story today, Los Angeles community activist David Hernandez, who ran against longtime incumbent Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) in 2002 and 2004, told me yesterday that he’ll most likely be running against Berman again in 2010. But have so many face-offs built any animosity between the two? Hardly, says Hernandez. In fact, he says by this point he’s good friends with Berman. “Our wives go shopping together,” Hernandez told me. And as a native Angeleno, I can confirm that there are few greater signs of friendship in SoCal than mutual mall-hopping.

Hernandez, who runs as a Republican, recently founded Los Angeles Conservative Hispanic Americans, but he says the organization is not about converting anyone to the GOP. Rather, he says, he wants to get Hispanic conservatives of both parties to the voting booth for local as well as national elections.