Edging Away From Their Liberal Roots

The campaign for county supervisor shows the great social and economic changes that have swept through Los Angeles County’s Latino community.

Once the Latino population was centered east of the Los Angeles River in neighborhoods such as Boyle Heights and City Terrace. Residents began to move out after World War II, when returning GIs and others climbing the economic ladder began buying houses in the more prosperous suburbs of the San Gabriel Valley.

The trickle became a flow in the ‘60s and ‘70s as more Latino professionals and skilled blue-collar workers entered the home market and crossed Atlantic Boulevard, the great dividing line between L.A.’s Eastside and the new suburbs to the east. When you crossed Atlantic, it was a sign you’d made it.

“East L.A. is the port of entry, the first community,” said Dr. Harry Pachon, who heads the National Assn. of Latino Elected Officials.

“People remember growing up in East L.A., and then they moved to El Monte or Asuza. Their kids live in Claremont, Laverne or go into Orange County or Chino.”

That movement is often overlooked. Journalists write about the “Latino community” as if it was some monolith. I do it myself. But when you think about it, there are really two Latino communities, at least. One is urban and struggling. The other is suburban and more affluent.

That’s important for the county supervisorial runoff Feb. 19 between the top two finishers in Tuesday’s primary, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Gloria Molina and State Sen. Art Torres.

In the primary, Molina was strong in the urban community. She’s expected to hold that in the final. But the suburbs split among Molina, Torres and the other two candidates, Sarah Flores and State Sen. Charles Calderon. Calderon is a conservative Democrat; Flores, a Republican. Both are San Gabriel Valley suburbanites. So the real battle in the race is to pick up their votes.

It’s not a great battleground for Torres or Molina. For Latino suburbanization tends to mean Latino conservatism. And it would be hard to find two more liberal politicians than Torres or Molina.

Evidence of suburban conservatism was turned up in a study commissioned by The Times a few years ago. UC Berkeley political scientist Bruce Cain, then with Caltech, traced families as they moved from East Los Angeles into the suburbs. He found that they seem to become more Republican when they leave their overwhelmingly Democratic barrio neighborhoods.

This year, we asked the Rose Institute of Claremont-McKenna College to study the past voting behavior of the 1st Supervisorial District, which is predominantly Latino. It provided more evidence of the conservative tendencies of Latino suburbanites.

The district is strongly Democratic in registration. But the study found strong GOP enclaves in neighborhoods with substantial Latino populations. Some of these neighborhoods have Hispanic populations of 65% or more. They’re found outside Downey, in the Santa Fe Springs area along the Long Beach Freeway, and around the hillside communities on the San Gabriel Valley’s northern and southern edges. Not surprisingly, these were areas where President Bush won up to 35% of the Latino vote.

The nature of these potential voters is shaping the Torres and Molina campaigns.

Torres press secretary DeeDee Myers said Torres’ “message is he’s tough, he’s mainstream, more conservative, law and order.”

Molina, too, is running as a mainstreamer. For example, she’s working hard to line up the support of the many San Gabriel Valley suburban city officials who supported Flores.

So, when you hear Molina and Torres in the San Gabriel Valley, they seem divorced from their past.

Torres, in the early years, worked for Cesar Chavez’ farm workers union. In the Legislature, he’s been a liberal stalwart. Molina was an aide to Torres. When she was in the state Assembly and in her present job on the council, she’s been a strong advocate for the poor. They’re not covering up that record. It’s just that they’re not mentioning it much.

Rather, both of them are running as law-and-order economizers. Efficiency, bringing people together, making the system work, integrity--these are the catchwords of two candidates edging away from their liberal roots.

When the election campaign began, many expected the high-flown rhetoric of change to match the history of the occasion, the election of the first Latino county supervisor in many years. The reality is that the campaign must match the more down-to-earth conservative mood of the Latinos who crossed over Atlantic Boulevard.