Big Numbers That Finally Add Up

It was inevitable.

Antonio Villaraigosa’s victory in the Los Angeles mayor’s race may not have been certain until the end, but no one has doubted in recent years that Los Angeles would one day have a Latino mayor. Recent history -- and changing demographics -- guaranteed it.

Villaraigosa’s victory was the culmination of years of effort by Latinos seeking to play a role in the political life of a city becoming ever more Hispanic.

The election of a Latino mayor is perhaps the strongest sign yet of the integration of Latinos into the mainstream of political life in California, a development that has been building steadily, if unevenly, for three decades. And the trend has probably not crested yet.

There are now hundreds of Latino elected officials throughout California, including Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles), Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, Los Angeles school board President Jose Huizar, seven members of Congress, 10 state senators, 19 state assembly members and dozens of county supervisors, council members, water board members and judges. “It’s becoming normalized in our political imagination that we can have a Latino speaker [of the Assembly], a Latino mayor, maybe a Latino governor without burdening the person with that label,” said Gregory Rodriguez, a Los Angeles political analyst and senior fellow at the New America Foundation.

That normalization of Latinos in politics came slowly.

One of its trailblazers was Gloria Molina, who in 1991 became the first Latina elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. She won in a reconfigured district after a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled that the previously all-white board had violated the federal Voting Rights Act by drawing supervisorial district boundaries in a manner that unfairly diluted the voting power of Latinos.

Four years earlier, Molina had become only the third Latino elected to the Los Angeles City Council in the 20th century. Her victory came after the city settled a lawsuit filed by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Justice Department by agreeing to reconfigure the boundaries of City Council districts so that Latino voting strength wasn’t diluted. By the 2001 municipal election, there were three Latinos on the City Council; a fourth was elected that year.

When James K. Hahn bested Villaraigosa in the June 2001 mayoral runoff -- dashing the hopes of Latinos that one of their own would be mayor for the first time since 1872 -- a disappointed liberal political commentator wrote in the New York Times: “The future didn’t happen here this week.”

Nonetheless, Villaraigosa crossed “the threshold of viability” in that race, said Eric Garcetti, who was first elected to the City Council that year.

And that wasn’t the only victory for Latino political aspirations in 2001. Although Villaraigosa eventually lost in the runoff election, Rocky Delgadillo was elected city attorney, becoming the first Latino to hold a citywide office in more than 100 years.

Two months later, Alex Padilla, then just 26, was chosen by his colleagues as City Council president. In turn, Padilla tapped 14th District Councilman Nick Pacheco to lead the council’s powerful Budget Committee.

By 2002, the number of Latinos in the city had increased so much that local officials no longer could reconfigure voting districts in an incremental fashion, as they had done through the 1990s, in order to comply with federal law. Instead, officials had to combine districts in the western part of Los Angeles, eliminating one Westside district entirely, in order to add a district in a heavily Latino section of the San Fernando Valley. That shift paved the way for a fifth Latino -- Tony Cardenas -- to be elected to the council.

In just 20 years, Latinos had gone from no representation on the council to having one-third of its seats.

“We should not underestimate the enforcement” of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in paving the way for that development and for Villaraigosa’s election, said Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

Vargas said he believed that Villaraigosa benefited from the fact that there are now so many Latinos in elected office and that most of them are performing well. “There is nothing to fear from having Latinos in elected office,” he said.

Villaraigosa’s victory is at its heart, though, one of demographics. Just a dozen years ago, Latinos represented only 10% of those voting in the mayoral election. By 1997, that had increased to 15%. Then, in 2001, with Villaraigosa in the race, the figure shot up to 22%. In Tuesday’s runoff, it was 25%, according to a Times exit poll.

About 336,000 Latinos were registered to vote in the city as of April 4, up 20,000 from 2001. During the same period, overall registration in the city dropped by nearly 69,000, according to figures released in early May by the William C. Velasquez Institute, a nonpartisan Latino-oriented think tank.

Voting records also show that in the years since Richard Riordan was elected mayor in 1993, the Latino population has increased in every City Council district. In addition, the number and percentage of Latino registered voters has increased in every district. Thousands of Latinos got the opportunity to become citizens as a result of immigration legislation in 1986. But many of the new citizens created by the 1986 amnesty didn’t become energized to vote until the bitter 1994 contest over Proposition 187, which would have denied many public benefits -- including schooling -- to illegal immigrants. Then-Gov. Pete Wilson supported the polarizing measure.

“I used to have a speech called ‘Thank You, Pete Wilson,’ ” said Antonia Hernandez, president and chief executive officer of the California Community Foundation and previously president of the MALDEF.

“He scared the bejesus out of the community and connected the dots between political inaction and people’s daily lives,” she said, prompting thousands of immigrants to become citizens and voters.

In three Los Angeles council districts -- the ones represented by Padilla in the Valley, Ed Reyes in the central city and Villaraigosa on the Eastside -- more than 50% of the registered voters now are Latinos; 45% of the registrants in Cardenas’ Valley district are Latinos. The fifth Latino on the council, Garcetti, represents a district in the eastern part of Hollywood where 37% of the registered voters are Latino.

After decades of being described as underachievers in politics, with much lower percentages of registered voters than their proportion of the population, Latinos are becoming a significant force.

But changing demographics alone do not automatically produce increased political power, said Harry Pachon, executive director of the Tomas Rivera Institute.

“Of 100 Latinos on the street, 34 are under 18,” he said. “And of the remaining 66, 33 are not U.S. citizens. That leaves 33 potential voters. Only 17 or 18 of them register to vote, and of those only 12 vote.”

“With Latinos, the politics of success is trying to catch up to their numbers,” said Raphael J. Sonenshein, a political science professor at Cal State Fullerton and an authority on Los Angeles city politics.

The realities of Latino political strength, which has never been in proportion to the number of Latinos in Los Angeles, have meant that any Latino running for city or state office has had to reach far beyond Latino voters.

After all, Villaraigosa lost to Hahn in 2001 despite getting 82% of the Latino vote, according to a Times exit poll.

“To win in Los Angeles, you have to be a mayor for everyone. You can’t be elected by one group,” said former Councilman Richard Alatorre, who advised Villaraigosa during the race.

Still, most Latino political leaders backed Villaraigosa, including Supervisor Molina and Alatorre, her longtime political rival. The new mayor also was endorsed by Padilla, Cardenas, Huizar, Reps. Hilda Solis (D-El Monte)and Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-East Los Angeles), former Rep. Esteban Torres and state Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sun Valley), who opposed him in the March election.

But that’s not to say the Latino political firmament speaks with a single voice. Councilmen Reyes and Garcetti endorsed Hahn before Villaraigosa declared his candidacy.

Delgadillo did not take sides in the race. Hahn’s most visible Latino supporter was state Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles), who was a close friend of Villaraigosa for years before breaking with him while both were serving in the state Legislature.

Some Latinos, particularly in Villaraigosa’s 14th Council District, have expressed anger at him, saying he broke a promise he made during his campaign in 2003 to serve four years on the council. Hahn’s campaign targeted those voters in its get-out-the-vote efforts, but apparently there weren’t enough of them to turn the tide.

And Villaraigosa was able to inspire the people he most needed to vote, drawing many more white, black and Asian voters than in 2001, according to exit polls.

Jaime Regalado, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute of Politics at Cal State L.A., said Villaraigosa was “an unusual candidate with pull power,” able to draw support from a variety of communities, particularly Westside “Jewish liberals.”

The breadth of that “pull power” was clear in Tuesday’s election. Villaraigosa did best among Latinos, who voted for him by a margin of 84% to 16%, according to Times exit polling. But he ran strongly among all ethnic groups and beat Hahn in all but two council districts. Hahn won his home district, the 15th, and the 12th District in the northwest Valley.

“People used to ask ‘why’ when the issue of a Latino mayor for Los Angeles was raised,” said Rodolfo F. Acuna, founder of the Chicano studies department at Cal State Northridge. “Now many say, ‘Why not?’ ”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Milestones for Latinos in L.A. politics

Since 1872, when Cristobal Aguilar finished his second term as mayor of L.A., there has been no Latino mayor. What follows is a chronology of breakthroughs for Latinos in 20th and 21st century L.A. politics.

1949 -- Edward Roybal becomes the first 20th century Latino elected to the City Council, representing a district that covers parts of downtown and the Eastside.

1962 -- Roybal is elected to the House of Representatives, leaving a Latino void on the City Council for the next 23 years.

1985 -- Veteran Eastside Councilman Arthur Snyder announces that he will retire, paving the way for Richard Alatorre, who had been a state assemblyman since 1972, to succeed him.

1985 -- The Justice Department and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund sue the city, contending that the reapportionment plan formulated by the city after the 1980 census violates the Voting Rights Act by reducing the possibility that a Latino could get elected in certain parts of the city.

1986 -- The city agrees to change the council boundaries to increase the chances that another Latino could be elected.

1987 -- Gloria Molina is elected to a new council seat created under the lawsuit settlement.

1988 -- The Justice Department and MALDEF sue Los Angeles County, asserting that the supervisors split the county’s 3 million Latinos among three districts, thereby diluting their voting strength.

1990 -- U.S. District Judge David Kenyon rules that the all-Anglo Board of Supervisors discriminated against Latinos in drawing supervisorial district boundaries in 1981 and orders the county to redraw boundaries.

1991 -- Molina is elected to the Board of Supervisors in a newly configured district that grew out of the court’s ruling. Mike Hernandez is elected to succeed Molina as councilman for the 1st District.

1992 -- New council boundaries are drawn based on the 1990 census, paving the way for greater Latino representation in a city with rapidly changing demographics.

1993 -- Richard Alarcon, Mayor Tom Bradley’s top San Fernando Valley Latino aide, becomes the first Latino elected to the council from the Valley, representing the 7th District.

1994 -- California voters pass Proposition 187, a measure that sought to deny certain public benefits to illegal immigrants. California’s Republican Gov. Pete Wilson spearheads the campaign for the measure, alienating thousands of immigrants. This spurs immigrants to take citizenship classes, become naturalized as U.S. citizens and gain eligibility to vote.

1998 -- Cruz Bustamante is elected lieutenant governor.

1998 -- Antonio Villaraigosa is elected speaker of the Assembly.

1998 -- Lee Baca is elected Los Angeles County sheriff.

1999 -- Alex Padilla, a 26-year-old graduate of San Fernando High and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wins a special City Council election to succeed Alarcon, who has become a state senator.

1999 -- Nick Pacheco is elected to the council from the 14th district, succeeding Alatorre.

2001 -- Eric Garcetti is elected to the council from the 13th district, succeeding Jackie Goldberg.

2001 -- Former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa and Rep. Xavier Becerra run for mayor, the first major Latino candidates for that post in decades. Villaraigosa leads the field in the primary but loses to City Atty. James K. Hahn in the runoff.

2001 -- Rocky Delgadillo is elected city attorney, becoming the first Latino elected to citywide office in more than 100 years.

2001 -- Ed Reyes is elected in the council’s 1st District, succeeding Hernandez.

2002 -- City Council boundaries are redrawn after the 2000 census, creating a new district in the Valley where a Latino would have a good chance to win.

2003 -- State Assemblyman Tony Cardenas is elected as the councilman for the new Valley district

December 2003 -- Fabian Nunez is elected speaker of the Assembly, becoming the third Latino to hold the position.

March 2005 -- Villaraigosa and Alarcon run for mayor. Villaraigosa comes in first in the primary and will face incumbent Hahn in a May 17 runoff. Alarcon finishes in fifth place.

May 17, 2005 -- Villaraigosa is elected mayor of Los Angeles.

Source: Times staff writer Henry Weinstein

Los Angeles Times