NEWS ANALYSIS : Debate Highlights Volatility of Ethnic Politics : Issues: Mayoral candidates Tom Houston and Julian Nava strike a nerve in discussion of immigrant rights. But for most, avoiding controversy seems to be the preferred strategy.

A middle-aged corporate lawyer and a 65-year-old college professor make an unlikely pair of demagogues. Yet their blunt comments about immigrants have made Tom Houston and Julian Nava the first in a large field of mayoral candidates to hit a political hot button.

Houston, a 47-year-old attorney and former deputy mayor, was branded a racist--while others hailed him for telling it like it is--when he warned that doing nothing about the crush of illegal immigrants in Los Angeles is like overloading the lifeboats of a sinking ship.

During the same public appearance, Nava, who once served as U.S. ambassador to Mexico, was booed when he defended immigrant street vendors and proposed that non-citizens who are here legally be given the right to vote in municipal elections. Others gave him high marks for sticking up for his beliefs.

The stir created by Houston and Nava underscores the volatility of ethnic politics in Los Angeles. Beyond that, the reaction they got suggests that candidates who are willing to speak their minds on controversial issues may strike a sympathetic chord in a city where caution has long been the byword of electoral politics.

“I’m glad to see a candidate speak openly about an issue that many people are talking about in private,” said Challis Macpherson, a member of the Venice Town Council. “At the very least, it shows that the candidate is not afraid to handle a hot potato.”

“It was a bold step for candidates to take coming out of the chute,” said Fred Taylor, a Panorama City homeowner and owner of a Pacoima-based snack food company. “It’s very refreshing when candidates are willing to take a stand on something most officials are afraid to talk about.”

Houston and Nava made their remarks at a Dec. 5 debate sponsored by PLAN LA, a citywide federation of homeowner associations and neighborhood watch groups. In all, eight of the 19 candidates running for mayor took part in the debate, the first such forum of the campaign leading up to next year’s mayoral election.

Until Houston and Nava cut loose, the campaign had been about as riveting as a civics class with much high-toned rhetoric about unifying the city, rekindling the economy and making Los Angeles great again.

Even Richard Riordan, the presumed candidate of business, law and order and low taxes, has been bending over backward to sound like a coalition candidate, as he stresses his ties with inner-city activists.

What may have been forgotten, at least temporarily, was the lesson of San Francisco last year, where another provocative single issue--homelessness--became a convenient symbol of all that was wrong with the city. By doing the best job of focusing on homelessness, the most conservative candidate in the field, former Police Chief Frank Jordan, got himself elected mayor of a city famous for its liberal politics.

In Los Angeles, avoiding controversy still seems to be the preferred strategy. Despite the public appetite for wide-open debate, the experts say you do not win by rocking the boat.

The rule of thumb in the mayoral race is to build the necessary support--around 20% of the voters when there is a crowded field of candidates such as this--to make it past the April primary. But that must be done without antagonizing other voters whose support will be needed in the June runoff.

Yet the formula for winning without sticking one’s neck out may be less effective with a group of candidates as unproven as this mayoral field and at a time when many people believe that bold action of some sort is necessary to save the city.

A nagging question for this campaign is which candidate is big enough to fill the shoes of some of the better-known politicians who are not running--from Gloria Molina to Maxine Waters to Howard Berman to Kathleen Brown.

“The emphasis in this race is on being a consensus builder,” said one campaign aide who asked not to be named. “The problem is you have to be seen as a leader first. And to do that you have to be willing to take unpopular stands.”

Still, many candidates who kept their heads down during the immigration spat last week between Houston and Nava are congratulating themselves for keeping a low profile.

Although acknowledging that the question of illegal immigrants “comes up everywhere we go,” an aide to candidate Richard Katz argued that Katz would have risked alienating too many voters by getting into the fray with Houston and Nava.

Katz is a veteran state assemblyman from the San Fernando Valley who plans to formally announce his candidacy for mayor next month.

According to the Katz aide, Houston and Nava were willing “to pander to people’s emotions” because, unlike Katz, they need to establish a political identity. But the aide argued that such tactics backfire more often than not because “they mark you as a candidate of the reactionary fringe.”

Clearly, candor can be a double-edged sword in a political campaign. Even when people agree with the message, they may be inclined to condemn the messenger.

Geoff Saldivar, the grandson of a Mexican immigrant, is opposed to giving non-citizens the vote and sees unregulated street vending as a nuisance and health hazard. Nevertheless, he found Houston’s comments at the forum offensive.

“His remarks took on a racial tone and had a polarizing effect,” Saldivar said.

Houston’s main point was that the federal government, which sets immigration policy, ought to give Los Angeles at least $300 million annually to help defray the costs of providing benefits to illegal immigrants living in this city. But what the audience reacted to was Houston’s premise: that illegal immigrants pose serious problems for the city.

Nava did not go to bat for illegal immigrants in his suggestion that non-citizens be allowed to vote in local elections. But in his defense of street vendors--many of whom are illegal--Nava was saying that the laws against vendors stack the deck against fledging immigrant entrepreneurs.

These were issues worth debating as far as many in the audience were concerned.

“A lot of people share concerns about illegals,” said Sebie Brown, a homeowner activist from South-Central Los Angeles. “It’s going to be a very prominent issue in this campaign.”

Don Schultz, a real estate appraiser who lives in Van Nuys, said that politicians cannot afford to sidestep immigration issues because they are bound up with people’s fears “about crime and about why business is leaving the city.”

Schultz liked what Houston had to say and blames the increase in crime in his neighborhood on illegal immigrants.

“It’s gotten so bad I won’t let my wife go shopping at night. I won’t even let her come for a walk with me after dark.”

Schultz, Brown and others who attended the candidates’ forum last week are members of a federation of homeowner and neighborhood watch groups that include more than 200 associations across the city. There was a time, not too long ago, when their slow-growth agenda dominated local elections. But that was during the boom times of the 1980s when the real estate market was soaring and no one worried about the job base.

Now, in the midst of a recession, politicians are wondering just how much clout the homeowner groups and neighborhood associations have left. The candidates ask themselves how important are the views of the Don Schultzes and the Sebie Browns of Los Angeles? But no one doubts their importance to a city.

“When you think of homeowners, you think of the middle class,” Riordan said recently. “When you alienate the middle class, you end up making the mistake that New York made. You drive out the tax base.”

The middle class was on display during the riots last spring when property owners and neighborhood watch members lined residential streets, standing behind makeshift barricades, armed with clubs and shotguns determined to protect what the police and politicians could not.

The riot taught many not to put too much stock in tough talkers such as former Police Chief Daryl F. Gates or in consensus builders such as retiring Mayor Tom Bradley.

“It’s going to take a lot of persuasion to restore people’s faith in their leaders,” said Macpherson of the Venice Town Council. “That’s why the candidates must talk about the important things.

“Even when one of them is willing to dig a hole in the ground and leap in, it’s OK if it serves a purpose, if it gets the debate started and the important subjects out on the table where they can’t be ignored.”