Driven by Events, Hahn Turns to a Familiar Bloc

Prompted by events and political necessity, Mayor James K. Hahn has turned increasingly to African Americans to propel his candidacy as he heads into the frantic two weeks before election day.

Over the last nine days, he has darted across African American neighborhoods almost daily, attending church services, community meetings and a reception of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People. At a black heritage celebration on Friday, Hahn joined a choir in singing a civil rights anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”

Hahn’s appeals to African Americans -- formerly his most loyal voting bloc -- have dominated his public events just as the mayoral candidates have begun to catch the public’s attention with a burst of TV ads.

To some extent, an event outside his control has driven Hahn’s intense focus on black voters: the Feb. 6 death of Devin Brown, the 13-year-old African American boy who was shot and killed by a police officer in South Los Angeles.

Trying to blunt accusations that he was exploiting community anger over the shooting, Hahn did not attend Devin’s funeral. And he said it was offensive for opponents to suggest he was politicizing the tragedy by pushing for a quick revision of city rules on police shootings.

Still, the tense aftermath of the boy’s death has given Hahn a fresh opportunity to try to reconnect with black voters, some of whom have soured on Hahn over his first term.

“I know the anguish of the family, the frustration of the community,” Hahn told African Americans last week at a Power of Love Ministries church on West Manchester Avenue, where nearly 100 gathered to voice outrage over Devin’s death and what they see as a pattern of racial injustice.

The shooting has rippled through the mayor’s race at a time when polls show Hahn and two other candidates -- former Assembly Speakers Antonio Villaraigosa and Bob Hertzberg -- fighting for two slots in the expected runoff.

The election is March 8, the runoff is in May. Each candidate is appealing to the city at large, but their fates may well be determined by how much support they receive from their traditional base -- in Hahn’s case, among African Americans.

As a purely political matter, the opportunity for Hahn to talk on television about the shooting could amount to a welcome distraction that overrides rivals’ charges of misconduct in his campaign fundraising and city contracting.

For months, those accusations have formed the main line of attack on Hahn by his top four challengers. In effect, Devin Brown’s death has bumped ethics from the top of the campaign agenda.

The latest rainstorms to pound the city this winter have also helped Hahn nurture a more favorable public image. Fire Department rescue crews have been a favorite backdrop for mayoral announcements this month; over the weekend, he took to the airwaves from a city 311 call center and offered advice on staying safe during the storms.

Beyond their effect on the campaign agenda, the events have also given Hahn an opening to try to rebut his rivals’ charges that he lacks leadership skills. The top item on local television news broadcasts last Tuesday was Hahn -- live and unedited -- demanding that his Police Commission appointees tighten restrictions on officer shootings at motor vehicles. (Devin was behind the wheel of a stolen car, police say, when he was killed after a brief chase.)

“I want this issue resolved immediately,” Hahn told news crews on the steps of City Hall at 5:01 p.m. By the time he left, Hahn had used the word “immediately” nine times.

Exactly 24 hours later, Hahn led the newscasts again, this time from outside police headquarters, where he thanked his commission for swiftly meeting his demand for the rule change.

At his side, as he has been several times a week, was the popular police chief, William J. Bratton, his presence underscoring the mayor’s emphasis on public safety in his campaign advertising.

“I brought in a new police chief, Bill Bratton,” Hahn says in one of his first television ads. “Now violent crime is down 18%.”

While crime-fighting carries obvious citywide appeal, it is an especially potent issue among African Americans, the population most affected by crime. In the latest Times Poll, African Americans named crime as their top priority for the next mayor, while whites and Latinos listed education first.

For Hahn, restoration of his popularity among African Americans is crucial to his effort to win enough votes to capture a spot in the likely May runoff. The community has long been the Hahn family’s political base, one tended for decades by his late father, Kenneth, the revered former county supervisor.

In the April 2001 election, 71% of black voters supported James Hahn for mayor, making African Americans his strongest voting bloc by far.

Although African Americans made up just 14% of the electorate, they were critical to Hahn accumulating a quarter of the citywide vote to make it into the 2001 runoff -- roughly the same share he will probably need this time.

Hahn’s biggest obstacle is City Councilman Bernard C. Parks, the only African American among the top mayoral contenders. Hahn’s support for dumping Parks as police chief when he sought reappointment in 2002 undercut the mayor’s popularity among black voters. The Times Poll found Parks running ahead of Hahn among black voters in the mayoral race, but roughly a quarter were undecided, leaving the two to battle for their support.

Parks campaign manager Jewett Walker dismissed Hahn’s push to rebuild his African American base as “too little too late.”

“I have to believe that’s only the result of it being election time,” he said of Hahn’s extensive travels across South Los Angeles.

At times, Hahn’s effort to appeal to African Americans has been fruitful; he was well-received last week at a West Florence Avenue barbershop where he and invited regulars discussed the police and race relations for 90 minutes. But on other occasions, his quest has been awkward -- and a sobering reminder of the ground he has yet to make up.

Last week, Parks showed up midway through a Crenshaw Boulevard news conference in Leimert Park, where Hahn and others were denouncing owners of a weapons shop for selling guns in the neighborhood.

“This isn’t the kind of business we need here,” Hahn said before Parks began detailing his own efforts to have the city shut down the shop.

Rep. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles), who represents the area, invited Hahn and Parks several times to answer reporters’ questions on the matter, but only Parks stepped up to the microphones to respond. Hahn finally declined the invitation. “I think that covers it,” Hahn told Watson.

The next night, Hahn tried his hand with crowds at nearby African American churches, but his reception was icy or outright hostile. At the Crenshaw Christian Center, he spoke out against gun violence and explained his response to the Devin Brown shooting. The crowd greeted him with silence.

Later in the evening at the Power of Love Ministries church, Hahn invoked the 1991 police beating of Rodney King and other law enforcement clashes with African Americans.

“I know it’s a long history here that we need to overcome,” Hahn told the crowd. He promised “an open, transparent investigation” of the Devin Brown shooting “because the community wants answers.”

Looking solemn, Hahn fidgeted for much of the next half hour as one speaker after another expressed deep distrust of him and the Los Angeles Police Department.

“We don’t want to be lied to,” Nation of Islam Minister Tony Muhammad told Hahn, drawing applause from the crowd. “Don’t tell us that what you’re doing is transparent when you can’t even tell us what the officer did.” He was referring to the detailed police account of Devin Brown’s actions the night of the shooting, but the relative dearth of information on those of the officer who shot him.

“It is not transparent,” Muhammad said. “Don’t insult our intelligence, please.”

Rosie Milligan, an African American book publisher, questioned the sincerity of Hahn’s effort to understand African Americans’ complaints of “institutional racism.”

“We have heard so much over and over,” she said after he left. “Why should we trust what he has to say?”