ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS 46TH DISTRICT : Diversity Highlights ‘the Ellis Island of California’

If Los Angeles is the nation’s new racial and ethnic melting pot, the state’s 46th Assembly District is the caldron.

Bounded on three sides by affluence, the 46th is a human laboratory of racial, ethnic and cultural diversity that stretches from the downtown skyscrapers to the teeming apartments of Mid-Wilshire; from the drug and gang turf of Pico and Vermont on the south to million-dollar hillside homes abutting Griffith Park on the north.

This is not the sort of area that would seem to offer the allure of a comfortable or fulfilling legislative career. The state has little money for the sorts of programs needed in the 46th, and the district could be redrawn virtually beyond recognition in legislative reapportionment this year--possibly even eliminated.

Even so, an unusually talented and competitive field of 15 candidates that reflects the community’s remarkable diversity is vying in a June 4 special election to represent the district.

There is a Japanese-American candidate, a Filipino-American, a Korean-American, a Latina, a Jewish woman, two men of Italian ancestry and a gay candidate. There are three Anglo males with backgrounds in criminal prosecution, a Libertarian, a Peace and Freedom Party candidate and a lone Republican in a district where the battle among 12 Democrats is almost certain to determine the winner.

Most of the contenders entered the brief campaign with built-in constituencies and sources of campaign money. Several are bolstered by well-heeled political organizations or alliances from outside the district. All of this for a Democrat-dominated district in which fewer than one-fifth of the 373,336 residents are registered to vote and which has one of the poorest voter-turnout records in California.

Together, the candidates might spend more than $1 million on an election in which the winner conceivably could poll no more than 2,000 votes. In this election, there are more front-runners than also-rans.

If no one wins more than 50% of the vote--and it is almost certain no one will--the leading candidate in each party will go into a July 30 runoff for the seat of former Assembly Speaker Pro Tem Mike Roos. After representing the 46th District for 14 years, Roos resigned this spring to run a nonprofit education reform organization.

In his new downtown office, Roos was asked to describe the 46th District as he would to someone who had never visited it.

“It’s the Ellis Island of California, perhaps of the country,” he said. “It’s the urban Los Angeles.”

“In so many ways, it is a mirror of what is going to be the best of Los Angeles if we take care of it, or the worst if we don’t,” Roos added.

The best and the worst are not hard to find. On a clear day--or even a moderately smoggy one--you can see virtually every block of the 46th from the paneled-and-carpeted boardrooms of the new downtown office towers. The district runs roughly two or three miles east to west and eight miles north and south, generally to the west of Glendale Boulevard and the Golden State Freeway.

The best can be seen in the thriving western sliver of the new downtown, the Music Center and the elegant homes of upper Los Feliz, Silver Lake and Wilshire-Ebell.

Closer in and to the south, the view is not so benign. Along Pico Boulevard is the “drug supermarket of Los Angeles,” identified as such by Father Dennis O’Neil, pastor of St. Thomas the Apostle Roman Catholic Church at Pico and Mariposa.

Into the district’s melting pot come daily arrivals from El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, the Philippines, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Soviet Armenia and elsewhere.

Ask about the problems and O’Neil talks of “mayhem . . . violence . . . gangs . . . population density out of control . . . not enough services . . . “

At St. Thomas, introducing new immigrants to the American Dream is about as basic as it can be, more fundamental than finding a job or learning English.

“The first thing we have to do is teach the children how to use the toilets,” O’Neil said.

For far too many, the pursuit of the dream ends in the parish cemetery, he added.

“We bury about 60 people a year here,” O’Neil said. “Thirty or so of those are stabbed or had gunshot wounds. That’s unacceptable.”

Said Roos: “This area has always been marked by a transition of people. This is the staging area where immigrants feel comfortable coming into California and then move out.” They move out as soon as they can afford to buy or rent in suburban communities such as Eagle Rock or West Covina.

When they do, their places in the lowest-rent areas are taken by further waves of immigrants. In the past decade, the population of the district has shifted heavily to Latinos and Asian-Americans. A majority not long ago, the Anglo population has fallen to 38%. Latinos account for 40.6%, Asian-Americans 16.1% and blacks and others 5.3%.

For all the restlessness, there remains a small group of “very stable, very committed long-term residents,” Roos said.

These are the people most likely to be registered and most likely to vote. They are the targets of the candidates’ barrage of brochures, precinct-walking and campaign rhetoric, which invariably promises to “take back our neighborhoods” from the gangs, the drug dealers, the slumlords and even--in the pledge of one--the insurance companies and polluters.

Between the extremes of Pico Boulevard and Los Feliz, the 46th District is a polyglot jigsaw puzzle, with pieces scattered among old Los Angeles landmarks: elderly Anglos in convalescent homes around MacArthur Park, Armenians in east Hollywood, gays and lesbians in Hollywood and Silver Lake and the expanding commerce of Koreatown centered on Olympic Boulevard. Students in the 46th’s high schools speak 48 languages.

More than one grocery market in the vicinity of Sunset and Kingsley advertises “Middle Eastern-Armenian-Mexican Food.” Just down the street is a Thai restaurant, Paru’s Indian Vegetarian Restaurant and Arnoush Armenian-Russian Restaurant.

The Hollywood Freeway splits the 46th diagonally, from southeast to northwest as commuters drive home from their downtown jobs to the San Fernando Valley. They hit the district at Echo Park and leave it a few minutes later near the Hollywood Cemetery and Paramount Studios. To the east on Vermont is Los Angeles City College, the original site of the school that is now UCLA. Above Fountain Avenue are ABC-TV’s West Coast studios.

Aside from crime and health care, the major political issues are local, focusing in recent years on other landmarks: the Silver Lake Reservoir and the old Ambassador Hotel, the now-empty gathering point for Hollywood in the 1920s and ‘30s.

Roos challenged plans of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to cover Ivanhoe Reservoir, an adjunct to Silver Lake, and to build a filtration plant on Silver Lake. “The reservoir bill was a huge bill for this area,” he said. Area residents protested that the project would spoil its scenic setting.

A diverse group of community leaders united to oppose the plans of Donald Trump to use the 23.5-acre Ambassador Hotel site for a massive business development. They rallied behind the Los Angeles Unified School District board in buying the land for construction of a new high school.

O’Neil of St. Thomas said a high school is important to his area as a focal point for activities that bring young people and their parents together.

Lacking such a center, he helped form a soccer league that includes about 1,000 youths, most of them from families of Central American immigrants. O’Neil said his work in the league has as much to do with parents as it does with keeping the kids off the streets and out of gangs.

“It helps with the parents,” he said. “It gets them involved as volunteers, as coaches and referees. It’s a very acculturating thing. It’s getting them into the mainstream of American life.”

The Race for the 46th Assembly District

On June 4, a special election will be held to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Democrat Mike Roos. Here is a look at the 46th Assembly District:

The Race: If no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote cast, the top vote-getters in each party will go to a runoff on July 30. The winner will fill out the rest of Roos’ term, which ends Dec. 7, 1992.

The District: The 46th is an approximately 25-square-mile area west of downtown Los Angeles.

The Population: 373,336, about the same as the city of Fresno.

The Ethnic Mix: 40.6% Latino, 38% Anglo, 16.1% Asian-American and 5.3% black and others.

The Candidates: Twelve Democrats: Bob Burke, Michael Cacciotti, T.S. Chung, John Emerson, Barbara Friedman, Sal Genovese, Jill Halverson, John Ladner, Adam Schiff, Kathleen Torres, Keith Umemoto and Joselyn Geaga Yap; one Republican: Geoffrey Church; one Libertarian: Michael Benedict Everling; one Peace and Freedom: Elizabeth Nakano.

The Voters: 62,340 registered voters, including 36,111 Democrats or 58%, 17,250 Republicans or 28%. Also, 603 American Independent Party, 591 Peace and Freedom and 428 Libertarian.