CALIFORNIA COMMENTARY : The Valley Joins Los Angeles : High voter turnout rewarded Riordan for taking the area’s problems seriously; the whole city will benefit.

In elections, as in courtship, it’s passion that counts. In Tuesday’s election, it was the San Fernando Valley that had the passion, providing 42% of the citywide vote and, finally, the victory. Unlike its dependably solid turnout in L.A. mayoral elections past, the Westside couldn’t have cared less; its 18% of the turnout equaled the rates in the South and Central areas.

While many Westsiders were arguing up to the last minute that neither candidate could make a difference, the Valley voters knew better. In voting 3-1 for Richard Riordan, they were paying tribute to the first mayoral candidate in Los Angeles history to give the Valley its due.

Geography made all the difference in how this election was perceived. Witness the split vote of the Jewish community. In the Westside, traditional Jewish liberalism remained intact, with a 63% vote for Michael Woo, 37% for Riordan. In the Valley, Jews went 59% for Riordan, 41% for Woo, joining their neighbors in the revolution north of Mulholland.

But while the electoral numbers are clear, the import may not be. Let’s spell it out. If there has been an atmosphere of hate in Los Angeles over the last year, the Valley has been part of it, on both the giving and receiving ends. And if there is healing to be done, the Valley will be part of that process, too. Racism, class warfare, the petty rivalries that marked not only the campaign rhetoric but characterized urban life in Los Angeles for too long have become intolerable. Even the Valley is coming around.

“We’re tired of hearing that we don’t count, that somehow we’re second-best, nouveau riche, uncultured, just because we live away from Century City,” a friend from Tarzana told me after the election. “We want some respect.”

Now they’re about to get it. The first accomplishment of the Riordan victory is to bring into the civic life of Los Angeles a sector that felt itself so misunderstood and unrepresented, it virtually opted out of the public discourse for more than a decade. No more. Valley developers and lawyers will be prominent in the Riordan Administration; the Valley’s agonized plea for relief from graffiti and carjackings will be taken seriously. And all in the nick of time.

Having watched in appalled silence as the movement for secession from the L.A. school district took hold, we can hardly doubt the seriousness of those agitating for full Valley secession from the city. The agency of a Riordan mayoralty has bought Los Angeles time to make sure that the glue of cityhood takes hold.

When we talk about “healing L.A.,” most of us think of the ethnic battles that have plagued Los Angeles for the past year. But it occurred to me during this mean-spirited election campaign, frequently fueled by hissing and booing from otherwise respectable citizens, that there are other, subtler kinds of civic frustrations that have caused wounds, and that it is not only the inner city that has been neglected.

The Proposition 13 tax rebellion two decades ago was probably the last time that the Valley and the rest of the city voted together. Anomie, fed in part by pervasive urban sprawl in the Valley, quickly led to hostility. Even while crying about the decline in public services, the Valley has voted down school-bond issues that would have helped end busing and has said no to ballot propositions that would have raised property taxes to pay for more police.

Poor Joy Picus. Battered from pillar to post, siding first with homeowners, then with developers over the future of Warner Ridge, she became a symbol of the loss of the Valley’s moral center. Now she has lost her City Council seat to Laura Chick, who promised that if the Valley sent her Downtown, she’d remember where she lives.

Perhaps in its isolation, the Valley has been its own worst enemy, but faced with a true crisis of lifestyle and economic base, change is at hand. Crime in the Valley is real; the Santa Monica Mountains are no barrier to urban ills.

Riordan took the Valley seriously, campaigning as a spokesman for Valley concerns and needs. The Riordan vote may be read as the suburbs’ link-up to the urban center, and as an acknowledgment that whatever freeway we take home, we must all get there together. When the Valley rejoins the city, a new kind of healing can begin.