Villaraigosa’s Support Goes Beyond Latinos

Antonio Villaraigosa won a crushing victory in the Los Angeles mayoral race by spurring a record Latino turnout and broadening his support across the city among voters of every stripe, who deserted incumbent James K. Hahn in droves.

For all the significance of the victor’s breakthrough as the first Latino elected mayor of modern Los Angeles, ethnic pride was just part of what powered his 17-point win.

By overwhelming margins, Villaraigosa captured Democrats, liberals and younger voters, according to a Times exit poll. He also won a majority of San Fernando Valley residents, union members and Jewish voters. His support among blacks more than doubled from what he won in his 2001 mayoral contest against Hahn -- although it fell just shy of half.

But it was Villaraigosa’s huge support among Latinos that turned his victory into a landslide, ushering Hahn out of office -- effective July 1 -- after a lone term. The city councilman sparked a surge in Latino turnout and won 84% of those voters.

For the first time in modern Los Angeles, the Times Poll found, the Latino share of the city’s electorate reached 25% -- up from 22% in the Villaraigosa-Hahn contest four years ago, and up from a mere 10% in the 1993 mayoral race.

The city’s heavily Latino Eastside produced the strongest turnout in the city, preliminary election results show. Although the city clerk expects the final tally to show citywide turnout at about 33%, on the Eastside it ran as high as 38% and could climb further as the last batch of votes are counted.

“Clearly this energized Latinos more than people’s perception of the campaign would have indicated,” said Raphael Sonenshein, a political science professor at Cal State Fullerton.

For Hahn, the election marked a collapse in support across the spectrum of voters. Even among groups that clearly favored him over Villaraigosa -- Republicans, conservatives, Asian Americans and voters age 65 and older -- Hahn ran weaker than he did four years ago, according to the exit poll.

Voters had a strongly favorable view of Villaraigosa, but even those who backed Hahn were unenthusiastic about their choice. Two-thirds of Villaraigosa supporters voted for the councilman because they liked him and his stands on issues. But for Hahn, about 6 in 10 supporters said they saw him as “the lesser of two evils.” Nearly 3 in 10 Hahn backers offered no positive reason for their vote.

“Doing nothing but smearing Antonio might have persuaded conservatives that he was the lesser of two evils, but it didn’t give anyone a motivation to vote for him,” said Villaraigosa strategist Parke Skelton, referring to Hahn’s decision to run television ads attacking his rival instead of promoting his own record.

Hahn strategist Bill Carrick described the mayor as a victim of his own success. He said Hahn’s effort to trumpet the drop in violent crime on his watch had difficulty gaining traction, because the mayor’s success diminished the issue’s importance to voters.

“Crime goes down, and people take it for granted,” the strategist said.

Carrick also attributed Hahn’s performance partly to the harm he suffered in the first round of the mayoral race, when Villaraigosa and three other candidates reinforced one another’s attacks on the mayor. That dynamic both shaped voters’ impressions of Hahn and hurt him in the eyes of donors who ended up being far more generous to Villaraigosa, Carrick said.

“There was a tremendous case to be made for the city being in pretty good shape,” he said. “But at the end of the day, when you get four people pounding you all the time, talking about how bad things are in the city, that drives the numbers down, and people develop an attitude: ‘We need a change.’ ”

Overall, although the Times poll found education to be the most important issue for voters, there were distinctions depending on which candidate they backed.

Among Hahn voters, the most important factor driving their decision Tuesday was concern about crime and gangs. That reflected Hahn’s sharp criticism of Villaraigosa’s past opposition to legal injunctions against gang members.

Among Villaraigosa supporters, the top concern was education -- a view reinforced by his commercials, which cited the job of his wife, Corina, as a schoolteacher and his promise to salve the Los Angeles Unified School District’s woes.

The voter survey, supervised by Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus, interviewed 3,191 voters as they left precincts across the city. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 2 percentage points overall, and more for smaller voter groups.

Among the survey’s more striking findings was its confirmation of Hahn’s loss of support among African Americans and Valley voters, the once-sturdy coalition that drove his 2001 triumph over Villaraigosa.

The mayor, whose father, Kenneth, built an African American political base for the family decades ago as a county supervisor, won 80% of the black vote four years ago. But on Tuesday, he captured just 52% of those voters.

Among blacks who supported Villaraigosa, nearly two out of five cited the ouster of Police Chief Bernard C. Parks, an African American, as a main reason for their vote. Also, 59% of the blacks who voted for Parks in the first round of mayoral voting in March shifted to Villaraigosa in the runoff. Parks had endorsed and actively campaigned for Villaraigosa.

Yet the survey found sharp distinctions within the black community. Black voters 45 and older -- those most apt to fondly remember the legacy of Hahn’s father -- strongly favored the mayor over Villaraigosa. Younger blacks leaned heavily toward the challenger.

Also, black men favored Villaraigosa, while black women strongly supported Hahn.

Villaraigosa, who won 48% of the black vote, had campaigned aggressively for African American support. A large group of black leaders who backed Hahn in 2001 -- among them former basketball star Magic Johnson, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and various church pastors -- abandoned the mayor this year and vouched for Villaraigosa. An ebullient Johnson helped introduce the winning candidate at his victory party.

“The really interesting and intriguing question is what happens to relations between Latinos and blacks now,” Sonenshein said. “Because by no means is this the sign of a full-scale coalition. But it is certainly a bridgehead in what could have been a purely competitive relationship.”

In the Valley, as among blacks, Hahn suffered a sharp reversal of fortune. In 2001, the Valley favored Hahn over Villaraigosa, 55% to 45%. The election Tuesday flipped that precisely: The Valley opted for Villaraigosa over Hahn by the same 10-point margin.

A key problem for Hahn, the poll confirmed, was his 2002 campaign to kill the proposed secession of the Valley from the rest of Los Angeles. Nearly three in 10 of the Valley voters who supported Villaraigosa cited secession as a main reason for their vote.

The preliminary election returns showed that Hahn carried the predominantly white parts of the Valley that he targeted heavily in his campaign, including Granada Hills, Chatsworth, Porter Ranch, West Hills, Tarzana, Sunland and Tujunga. Many of the city’s Republicans are concentrated in those areas.

Villaraigosa swept the central and eastern Valley, much of it populated by Latinos and white liberals. Among the areas he won were Studio City, North Hollywood, Van Nuys, Canoga Park, Sylmar and Pacoima.

Outside the Valley, Hahn’s strongest performance was around San Pedro, where he lives, along with scattered pockets of support in areas such as Brentwood, Bel-Air and downtown.

Another source of strength for Villaraigosa was union members: 60% backed him over Hahn even though the bulk of organized labor leadership endorsed the mayor’s reelection.

It was another sharp turnaround for Hahn from four years ago. In the 2001 campaign, when organized labor endorsed Villaraigosa, a majority of union members supported Hahn.

The result: Organized labor’s endorsed candidates are 0 for 2 in recent mayoral elections -- although rank-and-file union members have sided with the winner each time.

Skelton said Hahn’s strong showing four years ago among African Americans depressed Villaraigosa’s support among union members, because many are black. In general, he added, union members’ votes are guided by a “whole range of influences” beyond union leaders.

“They never vote in lock step with the union,” he said.

Villaraigosa’s standing with a host of other voting blocs also rose sharply from four years ago. Among whites, his share of the vote grew from 41% to 50%. Among Asian Americans, it jumped from 35% to 44%.

On the Westside, his support grew from 52% to 57%. In South L.A., the jump was from 33% to 51%. In the central and eastern portions of Los Angeles, from the Fairfax district to Boyle Heights to Eagle Rock, Villaraigosa’s share of the vote surged from 58% in 2001 to 71% on Tuesday.

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Times staff writer Richard Fausset and Times Poll Associate Director Jill Darling Richardson contributed to this report.

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The 2005 mayoral election compared to 2001

These data from the Los Angeles Times exit poll show how various groups of Los Angeles voters cast their ballots for mayor in Tuesday’s election and in the candidates’ previous contest four years ago. The columns of percentages under the candidates’ names read horizontally. For example, of all Westsiders who cast ballots for mayor on Tuesday, 43% voted for James K. Hahn and 57% voted for Antonio Villaraigosa.

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2005

*--* % of all James Antonio voters Totals K. Hahn Villaraigosa 100% All voters* 41% 59 When decided to vote 13% Yesterday/today 52% 48 4 Weekend 43% 57 83 Earlier 40% 60 Region of the city 17% Westside 43% 57 38 San Fernando Valley 45% 55 (25) S.F. Valley whites** 52% 48 25 Central (incl. east/N.E.) 29% 71 20 South 49% 51 Race/ethnicity 50% Whites 50% 50 15 Blacks 52% 48 (5) Blacks 18-44** 41% 59 (10) Blacks 45 and older** 57% 43 25 Latinos 16% 84 5 Asians 56% 44 5 Other/mixed race 38% 62 Gender 48% Men 40% 60 52 Women 42% 58 Age 9% 18-29 23% 77 24 30-44 30% 70 46 45-64 44% 56 21 65 or older 57% 43 Annual family income 11% Less than $20,000 33% 67 16 $20,000 to $39,999 36% 64 17 $40,000 to $59,999 34% 66 29 $60,000 to $100,000 45% 55 27 More than $100,000 46% 54 Education 40% Less than college 37% 63 60 College degree or more 44% 56 Union membership 21% Union members 40% 60 79 Not union members 42% 58 Religion 29% Non-Catholic Christians 56% 44 29 Catholics 33% 67 17 All Jews 45% 55 (6) Westside Jews** 42% 58 (8) SFV Jews** 46% 54 Political ideology 47% Liberals 28% 72 27 Moderates 47% 53 26 Conservatives 58% 42 Party registration 70% Democrats 33% 67 10 Independents 41% 59 18 Republicans 73% 27 Ideology and party 41% Liberal Democrats 28% 72 29 Moderate Democrats 40% 60 7 Moderate Republicans 61% 39 11 Conservative Republicans 80% 20

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2001

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*--* % of all James Antonio voters Totals K. Hahn Villaraigosa 100% All voters* 54% 46 When decided to vote 16% Yesterday/today 51% 49 7 Weekend 66% 34 77 Earlier 53% 47 Region of the city 18% Westside 48% 52 42 San Fernando Valley 55% 45 (26) S.F. Valley whites** 66% 34 21 Central (incl. east/N.E.) 42% 58 19 South 67% 33 Race/ethnicity 52% Whites 59% 41 17 Blacks 80% 20 (7) Blacks 18-44** 73% 27 (10) Blacks 45 and older** 85% 15 22 Latinos 18% 82 6 Asians 65% 35 3 Other/mixed race 52% 48 Gender 47% Men 52% 48 53 Women 56% 44 Age 9% 18-29 42% 58 29 30-44 44% 56 40 45-64 57% 43 22 65 or older 67% 33 Annual family income 11% Less than $20,000 47% 53 19 $20,000 to $39,999 54% 46 18 $40,000 to $59,999 52% 48 28 $60,000 to $100,000 57% 43 24 More than $100,000 51% 49 Education 43% Less than college 56% 44 57 College degree or more 52% 48 Union membership 22% Union members 52% 48 78 Not union members 55% 45 Religion 32% Non-Catholic Christians 69% 31 28 Catholics 40% 60 18 All Jews 54% 46 (5) Westside Jews** 46% 54 (8) SFV Jews** 57% 43 Political ideology 49% Liberals 41% 59 29 Moderates 62% 38 22 Conservatives 73% 27 Party registration 70% Democrats 48% 52 8 Independents 48% 52 20 Republicans 79% 21 Ideology and party 41% Liberal Democrats 41% 59 28 Moderate Democrats 58% 42 9 Moderate Republicans 70% 30 11 Conservative Republicans 87% 13

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* Percentages in this row are from actual returns. They do not include several thousand uncounted absentee and provisional ballots.

** Indicates a percentage in a subcategory, not part of the total.

Source: L.A. Times Poll

Note: Numbers may not total 100% where some voter groups are not shown.

How the poll was conducted: The Los Angeles Times Poll interviewed 3,191 voters as they left 59 polling places across Los Angeles during voting hours on Tuesday. In the 2001 runoff, 3,427 voters were interviewed as they left 62 polling places across the city. Precincts were chosen based on the pattern of turnout in past citywide elections. The survey in each election was a self-administered, confidential questionnaire. The margin of sampling error for percentages based on the entire sample is plus or minus 2 percentage points for both elections; for some subgroups the error margin may be somewhat higher. Because the surveys do not include absentee voters or those who declined to participate when approached, actual returns and demographic estimates by the interviewers were used to adjust the samples slightly and the samples were weighted to reflect the outcome. Questionnaires were available to voters in English and Spanish. Interviews at the precinct level were conducted by Davis Research of Calabasas. Raphael J. Sonenshein, political scientist at Cal State Fullerton, was a political consultant to the Times Poll.

Poll results are also available at https://www.latimes.com/timespoll.