Hahn Salute Foreshadows End of Era

“This is not a funeral,” said Dr. Joseph Griffin, “but a time for rejoicing. Long may he live.”

The Rev. Griffin was speaking of Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, who was being honored by black ministers last Saturday at a luncheon at the First Church of God in Inglewood. Hahn is a fabled politician, a white man who has represented the heavily black South Los Angeles County 2nd District since 1952. “Kenny Hahn has done his work so well,” said Dr. E.V. Hill, “that the matter of color has never been brought up.”

Amid all the preachers, Hahn was a bit of a preacher himself. “The black church has been my strength and my shield, a shield to me against my enemies,” he said.

But the sad fact was that Hahn spoke from a wheelchair. A stroke has crippled him, and his political future is uncertain. His health argues against his running in 1992, although his supporters say he’d win campaigning in the wheelchair, just as he did two years ago. But there’s a strong sense among black political leaders that the Hahn era is ending.

That’s why there was an undertone of foreboding at the luncheon.

Black political power is waning in Los Angeles. The tide of demography is running against blacks. In the late 1960s and in the 1970s, blacks were the most powerful ethnic minority in the county. As the ‘90s begin, they are being replaced by Latinos and Asians.

There is potential for divisiveness, and perhaps the most delicate issue is health care. The poor from all three groups suffer from a shortage of public health care, and black leaders fear their community’s poor may be thrust into a losing competition for hospital and clinic care with impoverished Latinos and Asians.

The apprehension of blacks about the shifting demographics came out most clearly when some of the ministers spoke of the supervisor’s greatest triumph, the building of Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center in South Los Angeles.

There had been no big multipurpose hospital in the black community before the 1965 Watts riots. That lack, in fact, was cited by the McCone Commission, which investigated the event, as one of the underlying causes of the uprising.

Los Angeles County’s predominantly white voters were in no mood to give rebellious Watts a hospital. But Hahn ignored them. He traded votes with the other four supervisors, even though he was feuding with them. Once, he was explaining to me how he’d voted for some colleagues’ questionable projects. “What did you get out of it?” I asked. “I got Martin Luther King Hospital,” he replied proudly.

More money was needed. So Hahn flew to Washington to see President Lyndon B. Johnson. Hahn’s district had overwhelmingly supported Johnson in the 1964 election and the President never forgot a vote. Hahn told him federal bureaucrats were holding up an appropriation for the hospital. LBJ called a top assistant on the telephone. “I’m sending over Kenny Hahn,” he said. “Give him anything he wants.”

In recent years, things haven’t gone well at King. A national accrediting commission and state officials have criticized the hospital staff for providing poor care. A series of articles in The Times last year told of serious health care problems. Subsequently, county health officials shook up the staff and made changes in the hospital’s operation.

Hahn and King officials blamed a shortage of funds in the face of a heavy caseload. Some black leaders saw the criticism as an attack on the black community. There was a hint of that at the luncheon when Bishop Benjamin Reid spoke of the hospital. “I know there are a lot who would want to see it destroyed, but it’s still standing,” he said.

There are no proposals to tear down King. But the competition for diminished public health funds will be tougher than it was at the height of the Hahn era. And it will be complicated by ethnic rivalry. Vote trading and visits to the White House are no longer enough.

Skilled politicians are waiting to succeed Hahn. The early favorite is Rep. Julian Dixon, an African-American congressman from Southwest Los Angeles.

Dixon’s handled tough jobs. He’s been chairman of the House Ethics Committee, probing some of his colleagues, including the former Speaker, Jim Wright. But scrapping for money--and votes--in a volatile multiethnic political arena will be a new, and difficult, experience.

So the Rev. Griffin was guilty of a little pastoral exaggeration Saturday when he called the testimonial “a time for rejoicing.” A heartfelt tribute, certainly, but not a celebration.