NEWS ANALYSIS : L.A., N.Y. Mayoral Races Tell a Tale of Similar Cities : Politics: Democrats’ ethnic coalitions weaken. Middle-class alienation may open door to GOP takeover.

Those strongholds of modern liberalism, New York and Los Angeles, are playing out political dramas with remarkably similar scripts these days as both cities flirt with the idea of letting Republicans take the reins of municipal power.

As both cities struggle with recession and racial strife, a sense of gloom surrounds local politics, and two Democratic leaders at the center of hard-fought mayoral races are finding that traditional answers to urban problems are not such an easy sell.

In New York, Democratic Mayor David N. Dinkins has his back to the wall as he prepares for a likely showdown with Republican challenger Rudolph Giuliani in November. And in Los Angeles, businessman Richard Riordan has a good chance of becoming the first Republican mayor in more than 30 years.

Seven months after winning the presidency for the first time in 16 years, the Democratic Party has been placed back on the defensive by all this as it faces the prospect of widespread defections and even defeat in the nation’s two largest cities.

Both mayoral races are tossups, according to recent polls. And the political landscapes in New York and Los Angeles are full of similarities.

“It’s as if we are at the end of our romance with the city,” said Fred Siegel of the Manhattan Institute, a New York City think tank. “There is the sense that the middle class of all races is ready to pack up.”

Not only is there a shared sense of pessimism in local political institutions, but there is, after racial violence in the two cities, “the sense that the sovereignty of law has been breached and that we have entered a new era of tribal justice, where the outcome of a criminal case will depend on the racial makeup of the jury.”

Dinkins in New York and his Democratic counterpart in Los Angeles, City Councilman Michael Woo, are in races that pit voters in the cities’ inner cores against suburbanites. But what is most threatening to Dinkins and Woo is not so much a resurgence of suburban Republicanism--those voters remain a minority--as a mutiny by middle-class Democrats who feel alienated from their party’s leaders.

At stake is the Democrats’ traditional ability to form stable ethnic coalitions. In New York, Giuliani is trying to beat the Democrats at their own game with a new fusion ticket that harks back to the era of Fiorello La Guardia. He is making headway Jews and Latinos who supported Dinkins in 1989. And in Los Angeles, Riordan may be peeling off enough prominent minority endorsements to blunt criticism that he is the candidate of the white right.

The issues--crime, the economy and racial tension--preoccupy the voters of both cities. And the same groups of traditional Democratic voters--Jews and Latinos--could hold the key to the two elections.

Polls in New York show Latinos evenly divided between Dinkins and Giuliani--not a good sign for Dinkins, who had a majority of Latino voters in his corner the first time he ran for mayor four years ago.

The Jewish vote is tilting by a wider margin, 45% to 33%, to Giuliani.

Woo is in better shape with both groups, but he has nothing to crow about.

Sixty-one percent of Latinos are Democrats, but in response to a Times poll last week, only 51% said they planned to vote for Woo and 36% said they planned to vote for Riordan. Seventy-five percent of Jewish voters are Democrats, but 53% voiced support for Woo and 34% backed Riordan.

With the candidates in New York and Los Angeles scoring high negative ratings in the polls, voter turnout becomes a crucial factor in the two elections.

The question of turnout is especially worrisome for Democrats, whose majority status in the two cities will not count for much if the party cannot mobilize the faithful to vote.

But even if Woo and Dinkins prevail, the divisiveness of the races, along with the defections, pose a serious challenge to the party’s viability in places where it is supposed to be strongest.

Dinkins and Woo are running as unity candidates, contending that they are best able to bring together the feuding factions that make urban politics so volatile these days. But polls show that they are not bringing into the fold middle-class voters who live in the city’s more affluent neighborhoods.

Only 57% of Democrats living in the San Fernando Valley and on the Westside are supporting Woo, according to the Times poll. Meanwhile, in South-Central Los Angeles, generally less well-off areas of the city, 70% of Democrats say they will vote for Woo.

In the midst of a recession with the memories of last year’s rioting still fresh, many middle-class Democrats may be turned off by someone such as Woo, who has built his campaign on the support of black activists, gay rights leaders and public employee unions.

David Friedman, a lawyer and author who writes about politics and economics in Los Angeles, maintains that many middle-class Democrats now see traditional liberal policies as inimical to their interests when it comes to safety, jobs and the education of their children.

“Once you have the middle class directly threatened, you drive a wedge between Democratic voters,” Friedman said. “And that is what is happening.”

In Los Angeles, voters who were polled last week cited crime and the economy as the two worst problems facing the city. And more voters said Riordan would do a better job than Woo of solving those problems.

The race in Los Angeles will be decided Tuesday, but the New York election is months away. With strong opposition unlikely in the September primary, Dinkins and Giuliani are expected to face each other in the November general election.

The race in New York is a partisan contest. And although the mayor’s election in Los Angeles is officially nonpartisan, both sides have made much of their party identities to rally voters.

Bob Mulholland, political director for the California Democratic Party, argues that voters in Los Angeles and New York are expressing frustration with government in general, not simply with Democrats.

“It’s what we saw last November when a Republican President was voted out of office,” Mulholland said. “The American people want government to do a better job, and being an incumbent like Dinkins, or a perceived incumbent, like Woo, makes you a target of voter frustration.”

But William Schneider, a writer and political analyst with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said urban Democrats may be out of step with their constituents.

“It’s always a temptation for a Democrat in a large city to run as a movement candidate--to represent the minorities, the left and the have-nots,” Schneider said. “But the movement depends on a black base, and in New York and Los Angeles that’s small compared to many other cities.”

Despite shared concerns over discrimination and economic opportunity, it is not at all certain that the immigrants who are reshaping the nation’s two biggest cities are ready to join the rainbow coalitions that have been dominated by black and white liberals.

In New York, increasing numbers of Asian-Americans are registering Republican, while Latino voters display conservative and liberal tendencies.

Luis Miranda, president of New York City’s Hispanic Federation, cited the results of a recent poll.

“Two-thirds of the Latinos polled agreed that condoms should be distributed in schools,” Miranda said, “but an equal number said that schools should not teach that gays and lesbians practice an acceptable lifestyle.

“Because of the influence of Catholicism and the more militant Protestant sects, we are going to be more conservative on some social issues. But on things like government spending and job training, we will tend to act more like African-Americans.”

Dinkins and Woo have been portrayed by their opponents as the enemies of middle-class values. But even some of their critics argue that the bad rap is not entirely deserved in either case.

Under Dinkins, more police have been hired and crime has gone down.

Nevertheless, recent polling indicates that most voters continue to regard Dinkins as soft on crime.

“It’s because the public perception doesn’t match the statistical reality,” said Democratic City Councilman Walter McCaffrey. “And why would it? There is a new ghoulish crime in the news every day. And if you are a victim of a crime, as many people are, it’s little consolation that you are in a shrinking category of crime.”

Henry Stern, president of the Citizens Union, a government watchdog organization, contends that Dinkins is out of touch with mainstream New York.

“He is anti-death penalty, ardently pro gay rights. He passes new anti-discrimination laws every week. At the same time, he is heavy on government regulations and taxes. His rhetoric is ardently pro-black. And all the while he is reducing services because of budget limitations.”

That sounds a lot like the criticism leveled at Woo. And like Dinkins, Woo has helped flesh out the lines of his own political caricature. His highly publicized efforts to legalize immigrant street vendors, to provide amnesty for refugees or to win domestic partnership rights for gay city employees have tended to overshadow proposals for more police in Hollywood or for regulatory relief for small entertainment firms.

New York City author and journalist Jim Sleeper says he believes that whether the Democrats win or lose in New York and Los Angeles, both cities may be coming to the end of one era of racial politics and the beginning of another.

Sleeper predicts the emergence of a new multiethnic electorate in which immigrants join forces with white ethnic city dwellers.

Douglas Muzzio, a political science professor and a research director for Dinkins during his 1989 campaign, sees the same scenario: “There is the possibility of white ethnics, Asians and Latinos coming to coalition. And if they do, it could be a winning coalition for a long time.”

* REFOCUSING ON CRIME: The L.A. mayor’s race returned to issues of crime and safety. B1