NEWS ANALYSIS : Young Black Politicians Face New Fears : Council: As changing demographics threaten traditional inner-city seats, there is concern that races to fill the 8th and 9th districts produce winners with stature and staying power.

For black people in Los Angeles, an era of political stability is ending.

The funeral Friday of Gil Lindsay, the city’s first black City Council member, along with the news that another black council mainstay, Robert Farrell, would not run for reelection have brought home the message that black politics in Los Angeles isn’t what it used to be.

While there is optimism that the unexpected council vacancies finally have opened the gates for a younger generation of black political hopefuls, there also is apprehension. The city’s political landscape is changing in a way that will make it tougher for black politicians to succeed in their own back yards. And the changes are coming at a time when social problems in the districts long represented by Lindsay and Farrell are legion.

“We are entering a period of high anxiety,” said Melanie Lomax, a black lawyer and recent appointee to the city’s Police Commission. “African-Americans are facing a real possibility of shrinking political influence at the worst possible time, when, by every objective measure, we are losing ground--in affirmative action, court rulings, help from the federal government and acts of discrimination.”

Over the last quarter of a century, the local political geography has allowed blacks to control 20% of the seats on the City Council. Topped by a black mayor, city government gave African-Americans a respectable piece of the pie in a city in which the black population has been hovering around 15%.

However, the map is changing as middle-class black people move out of their traditional inner-city power bases and Latino and Asian immigrants move in. Political analysts say that by the turn of the century, blacks will not be assured of election to several traditionally “safe” seats on the City Council, in the state Legislature and in Congress.

For the time being, there is little worry that the replacements for Lindsay and Farrell won’t be black. Despite significant population changes in their districts, the majority of voters still are black. So far, all of the declared candidates for the April election in both districts are black.

But there is concern that the contests in the 8th and 9th council districts produce winners with stature and staying power. There is a citywide interest in the two district races by people who see the contests as long-awaited opportunities to cultivate new black leadership for the tricky times ahead.

Two of the community’s leading black politicians, Mayor Tom Bradley and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), have shown strong interest in both races. Bradley has said he will withhold making endorsements until after the Jan. 14 filing deadline for the races. Rodney Wright, a candidate in the 8th District who has worked for Waters, claims her support, as does Bob Gay, a longtime Lindsay aide, running in the 9th.

The mayor has signaled dissatisfaction with Gay and Wright. So it is quite possible that Bradley and Waters will wind up on opposing sides in both campaigns.

The winner in either district will face a grueling initiation in inner-city governance.

Together, the 8th and the 9th districts encompass some of the most distressed living conditions in the city. The 8th District, graced on the east by blocks of restored Victorian houses near the USC campus, plunges southwest toward Watts and much of what people refer to when they say “South-Central Los Angeles,” the local euphemism for ghetto. The 9th District extends from Chinatown, Little Tokyo and downtown to Central Avenue, the historic heart of black culture in the city.

Lindsay spent many of his 27 years on the council helping to build the city’s towering financial district at the northern end of his district. Farrell, during his 16-year tenure, has often been preoccupied with broader black causes. Meanwhile, poverty in both districts intensified. Decent, affordable housing all but disappeared. Crack cocaine began ravaging neighborhoods. Gang members shed handguns for Uzis and the era of the drive-by shooting dawned. “We can’t afford to settle for just any black leader,” said Mark Harris, an executive of the California State Bar. He is regarded as a rising star among the city’s black political activists.

Effective leadership begins with neglected services, from cleaning up vacant lots to closing down crack houses, Harris said. Beyond that, he said, black officeholders must figure out how to provide leadership on issues, like education and health care, where they don’t exercise legislative control.

“Black leaders can’t get away with saying ‘that’s not in my bailiwick,’ ” he said.

Inspiration more than legislation may be the key to effective leadership in the two districts, said the Rev. Joe B. Hardwick, a resident of the 8th District and the president of an organization that represents about 300 Baptist churches in Los Angeles.

“What we need is a sense of direction from the local level,” Hardwick said. “You’ve got to face the reality that city government cannot solve all of the problems. You’ve got to give people enthusiasm. Instead of going around cursing darkness, you’ve got to light a candle.”

Others stressed that the new council members will have to rise above parochial interests and ethnic squabbles and provide leadership to the changing populations of their districts.

The possibility of black voters becoming a minority in districts like the 8th and 9th, Harris said, “means that new black leaders have to be able to move very comfortably among a variety of people.”

The candidates in the 8th and 9th council districts say that they are keenly aware of the challenges.

“Gil Lindsay’s legacy is downtown. My legacy will be in South-Central,’ said Gay, 37, who was Lindsay’s chief of staff. “At my church, we have a saying: ‘A shepherd ought to smell like the sheep.’ That means you are out there with the people.”

“People want a change. They are tired of a municipal government that never comes when they call, whether it’s about drug dealers down the street or an abandonned building next door,” said Kerman Maddox, 36, a marketing and public relations consultant and a former aide to both Mayor Bradley and congresswoman Waters who is running for the 8th District seat. “The key to satisfying a district that is ethnically diverse is to give the service that everyone desperately wants.”

Thus far, in addition to Maddox, the field of candidates in the 8th District includes Wright, a 38-year-old political consultant; Mark Ridley-Thomas, 36, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Billy Mills Jr., 38, a lawyer whose father represented the same district from 1963 to 1974. In addition, state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) has not ruled out the possibility of running, according to an aide.

In the 9th District, Gay is being challenged by Brad Pye Jr., 59, an aide to Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn. A third contender could be Woody Fleming, political director of the California State Council of Service Employees Union, who said last week that he has not decided whether to run. Sources close to the race say that both state Assemblywoman Theresa P. Hughes (D-Los Angeles) and city school board member Rita Walters have been asked to consider running in the district.

The growing diversity of both districts is clearly on the minds of many of the candidates.

“The coalitions that need to be built are of utmost importance,” said Ridley-Thomas, who speaks Spanish and co-chairs a public interest group called the Black-Latino Roundtable. “This is more than just a damn campaign; this is what I have given my life to because I believe this is what has to happen in this hour.”

The race in the 8th District, where the four announced candidates are all under 40, is especially interesting to people who are putting their faith in a younger generation of black politicians.

“I’ve seen a tremendous antagonism on the part of old-style politicians who see only the interests of their own people. That’s not going to work anymore,” said Lomax, who is 39 and said she thinks young black leaders will do a better job of building coalitions of various ethnic groups.

Many of the candidates say that their youth will make a difference. In the 8th District, they will be vying for a seat held by a man who is 54. In the 9th District, the race is for a seat held by a man who was 63 when he took office and 90 when terminal illness forced him to suspend official duties.

“My generation is more educated and more well rounded thanks to the blood, sweat and tears of our elders,” said Maddox, adding that the approach to governing also would be different.

“The generation that preceded us put a tremendous emphasis on government service. I, for one, will put less emphasis on government programs and more on developing our own business base.”

In the midst of the excitement over the promise of at least one youthful campaign comes a few words of caution from an old-timer, John Mack, 53, president of the Los Angeles Urban League.

“The hard reality,” Mack said, “is that whoever wins is going to have a harder time than their predecessors because there are worse problems and much fewer resources.

“I don’t think anybody will be able to wave a magic wand and make things better.”