Politics Pits Blue Suits vs. Blue Collars

Black politics in Los Angeles has been shaped by a rivalry between blue suits and blue collars.

The descriptions represent a state of mind, more than a style of dress. Many in the blue-collar crowd are quite comfortable wearing suits. A substantial number of blue-suiters are at home in working-class neighborhoods of South Los Angeles.

But, as can be seen in the current city election, there’s an unmistakable difference in the way the two camps attack the political process.

To the blue collars, politics is a working-class business. They play street politics, a big-city game lubricated by something called “street money,” stipends to volunteers in an area where people can’t afford to work for free. These workers go door-to-door persuading people to vote for the candidates backed by the people passing out the bucks. The climax comes on Election Day, when the paid workers cajole, drive and lead the apathetic to the polling booth.

When Mayor Tom Bradley’s reelection campaign was collapsing in 1989, L.A.’s master of street politics, Maxine Waters, rescued him with a blue-collar effort that cost the mayor $200,000 for precinct workers. Waters’ team visited housing projects, senior citizen centers, student groups, drug treatment centers--wherever they could find people--and offered them up to $10 an hour to work on Bradley’s campaign.

Bradley, while accepting such blue-collar help, is actually the leader of the blue suits. It’s not just that he looks great in them. He loves being around other men who wear such conservative attire. On a first-name basis with the town’s business bosses, he spends many hours with corporate executives, trying to persuade the predominantly white male Establishment to share some of its good fortune with the city’s poorer citizens.

You’d have to look hard to find a bigger contrast to Bradley than Waters, an assemblywoman when she helped the mayor and last year elected to Congress.

Where Bradley’s soft voice sometimes is inaudible, Waters can be heard over the worst telephone connection. Bradley is a poker face. Waters’ expression reveals her wide range of emotions, quickly shifting from anger to amusement, from scorn to affection. Bradley seeks compromise, Waters confrontation.

In the June 5 city election, Waters is backing candidates against Bradley’s choices in two South L.A. City Council districts. In the 9th District, extending from downtown through the Watts area, Waters is backing Bob Gay, an aide to the late Councilman Gilbert Lindsay. Gay is running against Bradley’s choice, school board member Rita Walters.

The race where Waters is really putting all her street smarts to work is in the adjoining 8th District, which runs west from the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum through parts of the Crenshaw district. There, her street politics expert, Rod Wright, is running against Mark Ridley-Thomas, executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s local branch.

They’re as much a contrast as Tom Bradley and Maxine Waters.

Ridley-Thomas looks as though he was born in a blue suit. Although I’ve heard him speak with as much lively emotion and warmth as the most talented minister, his bearing usually is dignified, his voice sonorous. He presides over the SCLC annual dinner, a gathering place for the Establishment, white and black. His articles occasionally appear in The Times’ editorial pages and he is quoted in many news stories.

Wright, on the other hand, went into the housing projects, drug clinics, senior citizen centers, churches and other places to recruit the paid precinct workers that saved Bradley’s Election Day in 1989. It’s a matter of pride with him that he knows just where to go.

What’s interesting at this early stage of the election is to speculate on how it will affect the candidates’ sponsors, Mayor Bradley and Rep. Waters.

A victory for the Bradley team would be a big help for the politically weakened mayor, perhaps enough to convince him that he should run for another term.

For Waters, a victory would mean even more.

She was a star in the State Assembly, one of Speaker Willie Brown’s closest advisers and one of the few Democratic lawmakers tough enough to face him down in an argument. Now, a freshman in Congress, she’s trying to be a star in Washington.

If her candidates win, Waters’ home base would be strengthened. With two of her people on the Los Angeles City Council, her rough-and-tumble approach would dominate. Waters would be a major voice in the L.A. political debate.

With blue collars replacing blue suits, the city’s Establishment would find City Hall a much more challenging place in which to operate. The corporate chiefs are used to checking things out with Tom. They may have to begin checking with Maxine.