LOCAL ELECTIONS / COUNTY SUPERVISOR : Burke, Watson Find Showcase in Riots, Aftermath

The Crenshaw Boulevard campaign offices of Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and Diane Watson look out on the charred remains of riot-stricken buildings--symbols of the difficult task ahead for the winner of the bruising 2nd District supervisor’s race.

As front-runners Burke and Watson vie with 11 others for the seat, each has struggled to shape an image that will set her apart. The riots and their aftermath--now the campaign’s dominant issue--have at last provided a showcase for their different styles.

Watson, 58, a state senator, is a contentious, street-level politician who calls the riots a “response to the injustice our community has suffered ever since we’ve been in America.”

Burke, 59, an ex-congresswoman and former appointed member of the county board, is a cautious Tom Bradley-style politician who appeared in a TV commercial for U.S. Senate candidate Mel Levine, saying: “We can’t let the whole population be terrorized by the lawless few.”

“Yvonne represents the politics of accommodation, while Diane represents the politics of confrontation,” said political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe.

The question is whose message will play better in the economically and ethnically diverse district.

Stretching from the gated, well-manicured lawns of Fremont Place to the crowded, graffiti-covered low-income housing projects of Watts, the district includes Koreatown, the Crenshaw district, USC, Baldwin Hills, Ladera Heights, View Park and Westchester and the cities of Carson, Compton, Culver City, Gardena, Hawthorne, Inglewood, Lawndale and Lynwood.

The district is 40% Latino, 35% African-American, 15% Anglo and 9% Asian-American. But Latinos account for only 8% of voters who regularly turn out for elections. Blacks account for 58% of the most likely voters, say political consultants. Whites account for 31% of those most likely to vote.

Watson draws her strongest support from the heavily black poor and working class in the core of the district. Burke is courting the middle- and upper-middle-class blacks and whites from Baldwin Hills, Ladera Heights and other, more upscale neighborhoods.

“The lines have been clearly drawn,” said Jeffe. “They are not so much lines drawn on the basis of race as much as they are drawn on the basis of class.”

Watson, who was more visible on TV than Burke during the riots, has aired a radio commercial saying: “When the crisis broke out, Diane Watson rolled up her sleeves and got to work. Diane Watson wasn’t lounging around her swimming pool more concerned about the water in her pool than about water for people to drink.”

The remark was clearly aimed at Burke, whose move into the district from upscale Brentwood has been a recurrent theme of Watson’s campaign.

Burke contends that Watson got more TV coverage during the riots because she is a sitting officeholder and “was much more inflammatory” in her remarks after the not guilty verdicts in the Rodney G. King beating case.

In her campaign literature, Burke says: “Grandstanding and inflammatory rhetoric serve only to divide the community. . . . I am committed to bringing this diverse community together to resolve our problems.”

Responding to Watson’s charge that she is a a carpetbagger, Burke said: “She has said that 5,000 times already. I’m not the first person who moves a year before running for office.”

The June 2 balloting is expected to culminate in the election of the county’s first African-American supervisor. Burke and Watson, both pioneering black women in Democratic Party politics, are considered the likeliest candidates to win the seat that has been held by Kenneth Hahn since Los Angeles was a one-freeway town. Hahn, first elected in 1952, is retiring.

Burke and Watson have made the post-riot rebuilding effort a centerpiece of their respective campaigns.

Watson has called for establishment of neighborhood development corporations which would sell shares in businesses at $1 apiece to give people a stake in the community.

Watson also has advocated that the county establish a massive program to hire the unemployed, a program patterned after President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration of the 1930s.

Burke said her first priority for rebuilding South Los Angeles is “to ensure people are safe in their homes, businesses and on the streets.” She has called for requiring competitive bidding on all county contracts for more than $50,000 and for giving preference to Los Angeles County-based companies seeking county business--actions that she said would increase business opportunities for minority-owned firms.

Watson, backed by the county Democratic Party and County Federation of Labor, has sought to portray herself as the candidate who will join Supervisor Gloria Molina in shaking up the county bureaucracy. She said her first act, if elected, will be to seek to fire Chief Administrative Officer Richard B. Dixon.

Burke, who has the backing of Hahn and many others in the county Establishment, has been more conciliatory in her statements about Dixon. “If he’s carrying out the authority they (the supervisors) gave him, you can’t tell someone to do something and then fire him for doing it,” she said. She said that, if elected, she would push for supervisors to take back power they have delegated to Dixon.

However, Burke and Watson have common views on many issues: Both have pledged to bring the county Sheriff’s Department under greater scrutiny. Both support proposed LAPD reforms on the city ballot. Both back a November ballot measure to enlarge the county board. Both have pledged to steer more county business to minority- and women-owned firms.

The winner is expected to become one of the most visible black politicians in the country. The five supervisors who govern the nation’s most populous county run a wide range of government functions, from the jails, courts, public hospitals and Sheriff’s Department to the beaches, museums and restaurant inspections.

To win in June, a candidate must get more than 50% of the vote. Otherwise, the top two vote-getters will meet in a November runoff.

Burke and Watson are counting on finishing on top in part because of their long presence on the Los Angeles political scene.

Burke, the daughter of a real estate broker and a janitor, was born Pearl Yvonne Watson (no relation to Diane) near downtown Los Angeles. She dropped her first name because she disliked it.

After graduating from UCLA and USC Law School, Burke became an attorney for the McCone Commission, which investigated the underlying causes behind the Watts riots.

At age 33, she became the first black woman elected to the Assembly in 1966.

In June, 1972, Burke became the first black woman from California elected to Congress. A month later, she married William Burke, who oversees the Los Angeles Marathon.

In Congress, she sponsored legislation that resulted in $315 million in contracts to women and minorities in the construction of the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline. She also became the first member of Congress to be granted maternity leave. She has two grown daughters.

In 1978, Burke gave up her congressional seat to run unsuccessfully for state attorney general.

In 1979, she was appointed by Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. to fill a vacancy on the Board of Supervisors. She served nearly 18 months but, after running in a conservative-voting coastal district, lost the 1980 election to Deane Dana.

Watson, also born in Los Angeles, was raised by a mother who worked nights in the post office to support her four children after divorcing Watson’s father, a police officer.

She received a bachelor’s degree in education from UCLA, a master’s in school psychology from Cal State Los Angeles and Ph.D. in educational administration from the Claremont Graduate School. Watson worked as an elementary school teacher, acting principal, school psychologist and college professor.

In 1975, Watson was elected to the Los Angeles Board of Education, where she served during a period of high racial tension involving the controversy over mandatory school busing. In 1979, she became the first black woman to be elected to the state Senate.

Watson was the first prominent black to step forward and threaten to challenge the popular Hahn.

Among her legislative efforts, Watson sponsored a bill that would have made it a misdemeanor for police to fail to report illegal assaults committed by other officers.

The measure, stemming from the videotaped beating of King by Los Angeles police officers, was vetoed by Gov. Pete Wilson, who called it unnecessary and duplicative of existing law.

“Currently, I am carrying a bill to require that anyone convicted of voluntary manslaughter with a gun, as in the Latasha Harlins case, serve a mandatory prison term.”

The bill is awaiting Senate action.