Coming Together, Not Falling Apart : Avoiding meltdown as mayoral race heats up

Southern Californians searching for hope amid the gloom can take some comfort from two tea leaves in the recent news. The first involves a striking finding in the latest Los Angeles Times poll about the nascent Los Angeles mayor’s race. The second arises out of a breakfast meeting held Friday for an L.A. mayoral candidate in Orange County.

The most recent Times poll, which surveyed more than 1,600 L.A. adults (of whom nearly 1,150 were registered voters), found the public in a distinctly non-parochial mood. Only 12% thought it important that the new mayor come from their own ethnic group; less than a quarter thought it of consequence that the new mayor come from their own part of town. And by a margin of 55% to 31%, residents said that coalition-building, rather than ethnic isolation, was the best way for minorities to get ahead.

The second tea leaf that might be read in a positive light also speaks to the issue of fighting centrifugal tendencies. Everyone knows that Orange County sometimes seeks to distance itself from the problems of Los Angeles. But something quite different and promising was evident at Friday’s large breakfast gathering. Many of the county’s business and opinion leaders were on hand for the expressed purpose of focusing specifically on the upcoming L.A. mayor’s race.

The guest speaker was Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Panorama City), whom some of the leaders are backing. But the point could have been made by the presence of any of a number of L.A. mayoral candidates. The implicit message of such a gathering was that what happens across county lines matters very much to everyone in Southern California.

In his introductory remarks, Irvine Co. Executive Vice President Gary H. Hunt observed, quite correctly, that the fate of Los Angeles really is crucial to the economic and psychological well-being of the entire region. The willingness of Orange County leaders to renounce separatism in favor of regional thinking was a hopeful recognition of the realities of the times.

A few tea leaves do not make a gigantic tea party, of course. Ethnic tensions do plague our polity: The L.A. mayor’s race has just begun and already the heat has been turned up on issues like immigration--an issue on which the mayor has little clout. More than 50 candidates have declared--of whom perhaps 10 or a dozen can’t be counted out and could make the June runoff. That runoff could become divisive--pitting a minority candidate against a white.

Even so, recent signs suggests that Southern California, by and large, still wants to work together, not come apart at the seams. Thus the picture of a future Balkans West here may be grossly inaccurate. It is certainly grossly premature, we’re happy to say.