The ‘Pavement’ Approach in Electing a Mayor

Now that Gloria Molina has done the right thing by deciding not to run for mayor of Los Angeles, Latino community activists and political operatives must decide where to throw their support in the wide-open race to succeed Tom Bradley. Put another way, who would be the best candidate to address Latino concerns and aspirations in the wake of the riots?

Is it Michael Woo? Is it Richard Riordan? How about Richard Katz? Or, is it a Latino like former L.A. school board member Julian Nava or Fire Commissioner James Blancarte?

Regardless of the candidate they get behind, they should keep “El Wee-Lay” in mind.

Willie Velasquez was a straightforward political activist in Texas with a piercing stare. When he put that look on you, using his clipped way of talking for emphasis, you knew that El Wee-Lay meant what he said. As the longtime head of the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, Velasquez ran more than 1,000 registration drives in cities across the country. Hundreds of thousands of Latinos signed up to vote.

From 1974 to 1987, Southwest Voter Registration helped increase the number of Latino elected officials in the United States from 1,566 to 3,038--a gain of 94%.

A man who later turned in his anti-gringo rhetoric of the 1960s to study the works of British prime ministers, Velasquez was the source of many pithy quotes. One of his most memorable appeared in a 1987 interview in Newsweek. He said Latino political power could be attained by the “pavement” approach.

“When we got Mexican-American candidates saying, ‘Vote for me and I’ll pave the streets,’ ” he told the magazine, “that’s when the revolution started.”

The prize Velasquez always sought--in this case, electing a Latino mayor in Los Angeles--will not happen next year. Molina was considered a front-runner and her decision to stay on as an L.A. County supervisor effectively means no Latino will be mayor in 1993.

Nava has declared his candidacy and Blancarte, an able and likable attorney, may do so. Both are good public servants but they lack Molina’s popularity and resources to mount a viable campaign.

Some think Molina’s nemesis, L.A. City Councilman Richard Alatorre, should run. But he has the same problem that Molina does. He still has too much to do. The sought-after youth center in El Sereno is a priority of his and the kind of unfinished business that will keep him out of the race.

All the more reason that Latinos, keeping in mind Velasquez’s pavement approach, should ask the front-running candidates these questions:

Will Latinos become full partners at City Hall? In the waning years of Bradley’s Administration, Latinos groused that they were consulted only on certain issues or were locked into a prescribed number of seats on coveted city boards. The makeup of the Rebuild L.A. board came under criticism because the diverse Latino community was not properly represented.

Will the new mayor use the moral authority of the office on non-city issues? Bradley’s low-key style worked for a politician who was the city’s first black mayor. But in increasingly Latino L.A., the new mayor can effect positive change by adding his voice. The dispute between the Los Angeles school district and its 36,000 teachers is something Bradley would not have tackled publicly. A new mayor, mindful that Latinos make up 65% of the district’s enrollment of 650,000 and 40% of the city’s 3.2-million population, can be an active player in bringing the warring sides together.

Will the new mayor be a fair referee in the wake of the riots? Everyone’s in agreement that Bradley’s successor will have to aggressively work to heal the hurt and anger that spawned the unrest. But just as important, Latinos will want a mayor who can negotiate between them and African-Americans, who want to hang on to what they gained in the Bradley years. Many see a brewing battle because African-Americans for the most part have shown little interest in ceding power to Latinos in city affairs.

Willie Velasquez died of lung cancer in 1988 at the age of 44. One of my lasting memories of him was at a conference of Latino journalists in Dallas just a few months before he passed away.

He looked awful but the fire was still there. During an informal discussion, Willie mustered up enough strength to curtly cut off one scribe who made a wrongheaded judgment about Latino political power.

“Lookit,” El Wee-Lay said with that familiar stare. “If Latinos have something to vote for, they will vote.”

The pavement approach, of course.