Minorities Lag in Clout in L.B. Despite New Numbers : Politics: Women and minorities predominate on the local school board, but white men continue to dominate election politics.

About half of this city’s residents are minority, but you would never know it by looking at this spring’s local elections. The slate of candidates was a monochrome of white in a town that more closely resembles a rainbow.

Council politics have lagged far behind the dramatic ethnic changes altering Long Beach’s complexion with the arrival of tens of thousands of Latin Americans and Asians in the last two decades.

In 1970, the city was 85% white. Unofficial estimates now place the white population at 52%, Latinos 19%, blacks 12% and Asians and other ethnic groups 17%.

The minority figures represent a potent political force that remains fragmented and largely unrealized. With the exception of the local school board, where women and minorities predominate, election politics in Long Beach continue to be dominated by white men.

Of the nine City Council seats, just one is filled by a minority person, Clarence Smith, who is black and represents a heavily black central district. Mayor Ernie Kell and his runoff challenger, Tom Clark, are both white and established members of the power structure.

A woman of Japanese ancestry, Eunice Sato, spent 12 years on the City Council before she was defeated two years ago, but a Latino has yet to be elected to the council.

“It’s really pretty dismal right now,” said Jenny Oropeza, the first Latino president of the Long Beach Board of Education.

Minority spokesmen cite familiar reasons for the low political profiles of their groups: Low voter registration, not enough time and money, fragmented ethnic identities, lack of organization and a struggle for survival that leaves newly arrived immigrant communities with little energy or interest in engaging in local politics.

“I think the city itself has such a strong white-dominated political (structure), you need a lot of money to run for political office,” said Gladys Gutierrez, who is on the city’s Human Relations Commission, a new board that reflects the city’s ethnic composition much more than the council does.

With some council contestants spending more than $100,000 on campaigns, Gutierrez wondered: “Who in the minority community do you think has $100,000 to throw down the tubes? People who want to run can’t afford it.”

“The Cambodian community is so new I don’t think we have any potential with a candidate,” said Than Pok, executive director of the United Cambodian Community, a nonprofit organization that works with the estimated 40,000 Cambodians in Long Beach, the largest Cambodian community in the nation.

“We’re still struggling to cope and to learn and to survive here,” Pok said.

Long Beach Latinos, the city’s largest minority, concede that they have failed to match the political gains of Latinos elsewhere.

“Long Beach is definitely way behind the times,” remarked Roberto Uranga, president of the local branch of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

“We haven’t taken advantage of” Latino numbers, he said, “and we haven’t exerted our power. We have zero power. . . . It’s something we let happen to ourselves. We’re not aggressive. We’re not out there taking a pro-active stand on issues and candidates.

“Now, I think that’s something that’s going to change in the future.”

The local Latino community has mushroomed from 7% of the population in 1970 to about one-fifth of the city’s 420,000 residents. But politicians say Latinos do not show up at the polls in those numbers. Some lack citizenship, others simply do not vote.

Uranga said past Latino attitudes toward the Long Beach power structure could be summed up this way: “Why should we participate? They can’t help us. They’re just there.”

To be sure, there has been a sprinkling of minority candidates over the years. Councilman Ray Grabinski ran against Sato and a black man when he won his Seventh District seat two years ago. And the creation of districts in the school board races two years brought about a blossoming of minority political aspirants.

Two minority members, Oropeza and a black woman, Bobbie Smith, now sit on the five-member school board that, with this month’s defeat of its only man, will soon be entirely female.

Moreover, Mayor Kell, who has been criticized in the past for not appointing more minorities, has in the last two years named more minorities to city commissions and boards, the traditional training ground for running for elected office.

Indeed, the council has become less conservative in recent years. Charles Townsend--chairman of the city’s public safety commission and vice president of the local chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People--said one of the reasons black candidates did not run this spring in the Seventh District, which has a large black population, is because Grabinski is perceived to be a good councilman.

Latino leaders also said they are trying to awaken the slumbering Latino vote. Uranga said that, for the first time in recent memory, the League of United Latin American Citizens made some political endorsements in this spring’s local races.

The group’s endorsements of Kell and Councilman Evan Anderson Braude, who both face runoff contests in June, came just a week before the April 10 election, too late to influence the races. But, Uranga said, the endorsements bode well for the group’s future political activism.

Perhaps even more telling, both the leading mayoral candidates, Kell and Councilman Clark, sought out the group’s support.

Oropeza, who ran for City Council before winning her school board seat in 1988, said her success has proven that Latinos can be elected in Long Beach: “You will see in the years to come a much stronger voice from the Hispanic community and a much stronger voice in this town. We tend to be a people who are concerned with home and family and things that are close to home. But we are learning, and I truly believe the future is ours in this town.”

Since James Wilson was elected the city’s first black councilman in 1970, the Sixth District has had a black representative and several black candidates. The success of blacks in that district rests largely on the area’s concentrated black vote. Other minorities are more diluted and spread across the city.

Some say the key to greater ethnic City Council diversity is creating new council districts in the heavily ethnic central city.

“I think that’s the only way the minorities are going to break through,” said Sid Solomon, political-action chairman of Long Beach Area Citizens Involved, a citywide group.

But adding council districts--which has also been suggested in connection with giving the mayor a council vote--has gotten a cool reception from council members concerned about the extra cost and demands on their staff.

Others see a coalition of minority interests as the ticket to office. “I think unless we form a coalition, I don’t think any minority can run on their own and have any chance of succeeding,” Pok said.

Indeed, former Planning Commissioner Manny Perez said the Latino community is so diverse that it may be better at helping other minorities get elected than one of its own.

“We have difficulty in organizing,” he said, “because we tend to define ourselves as much by our differences as by our similarities.”

There was evidence of a minority coalition this spring, when the gay community banded together with liberals, blacks and Latinos to win passage of a ballot item creating a citizen board to review complaints of police brutality.

In the end, minority political strength requires minorities to recognize that they have it.

“I think if people have been powerless for a long time, it’s hard for them to start acting powerful,” remarked Paul Schmidt, a political science professor at Cal State Long Beach. “I think that’s what we have here in part.”