Armenians View Election as Political Step Forward : Vote: With the selection of its favored candidates to the City Council, the community feels its gradually growing clout.

In the 1989 Glendale City Council election, the city’s Armenian community suffered a humbling defeat in its first local political venture: Three Armenian candidates lost, no major voting bloc materialized and raising Armenian issues in campaign debates increased ethnic tensions.

This year, Armenian leaders are quietly celebrating the April 2 council election as a significant political step forward--particularly because widespread support from Armenian-American voters helped elect Eileen Givens, who sought to open channels to their community.

Larry Zarian, who served previously as Glendale’s first Armenian mayor, was reelected to the City Council, and an unprecedented drive by the Armenian National Committee, a major Armenian political group, helped draw about 55% of Glendale’s registered Armenian-American voters to the polls, according to estimates by some community leaders.

“It’s an improvement,” said Berdj Karapetian, executive director of the ANC’s Western region and an unsuccessful City Council candidate in 1989. “There is at least one more council member with whom a significant number of community members are in contact.”

Although it is unclear how Givens’ election--and Zarian’s reelection--will translate into Armenian influence on the council, Karapetian and other Armenian leaders said they consider the results and the local voter registration drive to be signs that their political clout may be increasing.

That is a sharp change from two years ago, when the ANC suffered a multifaceted defeat.

Three Armenian-American candidates, two endorsed by the ANC, placed near the bottom of a field of 13 contenders. No Armenian voting bloc materialized, and some voters resented what they perceived as an Armenian attempt to dominate the council, said Arick Gevorkian, a local businessman and chairman of the ANC’s Glendale branch.

“The last time, when three Armenians were running, we worked hard, but somehow we had the feeling that they weren’t welcome because of their last names,” Gevorkian said. “We learned from the experience, and this time I think we were successful.”

“The last election was an eye-opener,” said Harmik Poghossian, owner of a real estate business in Glendale and an avid supporter of Givens in this year’s election.

“It proved Glendale is not ready for another Armenian on the council,” Poghossian said. “The closest we can come right now is electing someone who understands the community and is willing to work with Armenians and talk about our issues.”

There are between 30,000 and 35,000 people of Armenian descent in Glendale, one of the largest concentrations nationwide, Gevorkian said.

Only about 3,300 are registered voters, mainly because many Armenians are new immigrants. But in a contest such as Glendale’s recent election, in which eight candidates shared about 26,700 votes, a voting bloc of more than 3,000 can be powerful, he said.

That’s partly why the ANC this year launched its most ambitious voter registration drive yet, Gevorkian said.

Educational booklets and buttons encouraging voting were distributed, 10,000 flyers were handed out and 3,000 absentee ballot applications were mailed to registered voters with Armenian names.

About 150 ANC volunteers manned phone banks and walked precincts to encourage residents to vote. The ANC also sponsored a candidate forum at which seven of the eight candidates spoke to about 300 mostly Armenian residents, Gevorkian said.

The drive is believed to have been extremely successful. Although official figures are not yet in, candidates and community leaders estimate that about 1,800 Armenian-Americans voted April 2--about 55% of those eligible.

In 1989, about 35% of registered Armenian voters turned out, ANC leaders said.

Overall, about 20.4% of the city’s eligible voters went to the polls this year.

But in addition to a push at the polls, many community leaders, including ANC officials, led a quiet but effective campaign to install Givens on the council.

The ANC did not make endorsements this year. But Gevorkian and about 20 other volunteers helped Givens’ campaign by manning phone banks and doing other work, Gevorkian said.

Attorney Ani Garikian, chairwoman of the ANC’s community relations committee, headed a group of Armenian leaders who mailed a bilingual letter of support for Givens to registered Armenian voters. The group also put an advertisement supporting Givens in Asbarez, the ANC’s newspaper.

And Garikian and Poghossian each held a reception and fund-raiser for Givens, Poghossian said.

There also was significant support for Zarian and candidates Bob Torres and Mary Ann Plumley throughout the Armenian community--but not as widely spread or well-organized as that for Givens, Gevorkian said.

“Givens really stood out more than anyone else,” Poghossian said. “A lot of the Armenians saw what I saw in her: an open-minded, sharp person very much in tune with change.”

But, Gevorkian said, Givens also earned much of the community’s support because she was the obvious front-runner in the race.

Givens based her campaign on a strategy of reaching out to Glendale’s Armenian, Hispanic and Filipino communities and establishing a broad base of support throughout the city, her campaign staff said.

She and her staff knew that the groups were not large voting blocs. But they realized the importance of establishing channels of communication with a variety of constituencies--particularly those that will be influential in the future, said Mary Hamilton, a former Chamber of Commerce president who served as Givens’ campaign co-chairwoman.

The Armenian community “was a very important piece as far as constituencies are concerned,” Hamilton said. “Make no mistake, in a few years and a couple more terms, it’s going to be a very important constituency. The sooner we realize that, the better for everyone.”

Initially, Givens was one of five candidates who approached the ANC, asking to talk with the group’s leaders. But she also met with Homenetmen, the Armenian equivalent of the Boy Scouts; the Armenian Relief Society, the Armenian Council on Aging and other groups, Karapetian said.

She also was the only candidate at the ANC’s public forum to put out a campaign flyer in the Armenian language.

“I think she did all the right things that a candidate needed to do to show sensitivity and understanding,” Karapetian said.

Givens said this week that she was not trying to position herself as an Armenian community representative or limit herself to one constituency.

“Frankly, I was a novice to the political arena, so I had no way to assess the political impact of that community’s voting strength,” she said. “I just wanted to establish myself as a viable, credible candidate who would be responsive to all parts of the community.

“I think they began to trust me and believe that I could represent them,” Givens said. “Now that I’ve been attuned and sensitized to their feelings, hopefully I’ll be able to retain that sensitivity and respond.”

Givens said she wants to form a task force to look into creating a city human relations commission, and Armenian leaders said they plan to consult regularly with Givens, Zarian and the rest of the council on other ideas.

The first test of the council’s attitude toward Armenian issues may come soon.

April 24 is considered by Armenians to be the anniversary of the start of a campaign by the Ottoman Turks in 1915 to massacre the Armenian minority in Turkey. Turkish officials reject the Armenian accusation that more than 1 million Armenians were slaughtered.

City Council members, including Givens and Zarian, said they expect that a proclamation recognizing April 24 as a day of remembrance will be introduced next week, either by the council or Mayor Ginger Bremberg.

The council in recent years has passed similar proclamations. But the Armenian community would like to see the recognition broadened, perhaps to include city flags flying at half-mast or a legal holiday for Armenian schoolchildren who regularly miss classes that day to attend Armenian events, Gevorkian said.

Those measures are unlikely to pass this year, Armenian leaders said, but that has not dimmed the pleasure of Armenian leaders over the results of this year’s election.

“We’re satisfied we have the right people elected,” said Harut Sassounian, editor and publisher of the California Courier, another Armenian newspaper. “When something is needed, we have access to the council and our voice will be heard.”