O.C. Precinct Typifies Latino Voter Apathy

Poor, undereducated and struggling with the everyday pathos that plagues immigrant communities such as theirs, residents of a mostly Latino neighborhood in central Santa Ana have had little reason to hope for the future.

They live in a world fraught with worry about making the next rent payment or about crime on the streets just outside their crowded houses. Their experience with government is at best nonexistent and at worst a nuisance.

So the notion that their lives might be made better by casting a ballot is as fanciful as winning the lottery. They don’t vote in this neighborhood, Precinct 68302, just south of the Civic Center. What’s the point?

In the weeks before the Nov. 8 election, Democrats and Latino political activists surmised that this year would be different, that if there was ever an election that gave Latino voters a reason to go to the polls, this was it.

One draw for Latino voters in Santa Ana, the political pundits guessed, would be the mayoral ballot, where five of the eight candidates had Spanish surnames, among them Councilman Miguel A. Pulido Jr., himself an immigrant. In addition, debate was raging over Proposition 187, the anti-illegal immigration measure that surely was resonating in neighborhoods such as this one.

But the political experts were wrong. Latinos in Precinct 68302, as in the rest of the state, generally decided to sit out this election, even after the Democrats pumped more than $85,000 and volunteers into Santa Ana and parts of Anaheim to register new voters and get out the vote on Election Day.

Once again, the sleeping giant remained in a deep slumber.

Long talked about in national politics as having the potential to influence public policy because of their increasing numbers, Latino voters, including those in Precinct 68302, seemed untouched by political campaigns and issues that were striking close to home.

Two years ago, when the nation elected a new President, only 45.4% of the registered voters in Precinct 68302 cast ballots, compared to a countywide total of 73%. It was the lowest turnout for any precinct in the heavily Latino 69th Assembly District, which itself has one of the lowest numbers of eligible voters in the state.

This year, the voter turnout in this neighborhood was lower--30.8% compared to 66% countywide. The voter apathy was even more pronounced in view of the fact that there were seven other precincts in the 69th Assembly District with even lower voter turnouts than Precinct 68302.

Overall, Latinos made up only 5% of the total Orange County vote on Election Day, no change from the June primary, according to a Los Angeles Times Exit Poll.

“What actually happened on Election Day is a mystery to me,” said Roderick Castro, a 22-year-old Westminster resident who worked on the campaign for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Brown. He was charged with organizing the 34 central Orange County precincts targeted by the Brown campaign.

“There was such a great movement of new people who were claiming they were going to get out to vote for the first time,” Castro recalled. “It’s going to take me a while to get over it. . . . The amount of indifference and ignorance was absolutely incredible.”

The indifference is rooted in residents like Maria, a 52-year-old grandmother who said she has been a citizen for 18 years but has never voted.

Standing outside the Camile Street home where she cares for two grandchildren, Maria, who asked that her last name not be used, folded her arms across her chest as she admitted her disinterest in voting. Her life does not intersect with the world of politics, and she was unaware that the election had already passed.

Is she worried about taxes? “Sure, one worries, but . . . “ she said, her voice trailing off as she shrugged. Did she pay attention to the debate over Proposition 187? “It’s only for those who don’t have papers, right?” she asked.

The voter cynicism was painfully obvious to Rocio Fregoso, a 17-year-old high school senior who was in charge of getting out the vote in Precinct 68302 for the Brown campaign.

“With all the talk (about Proposition 187) and school walkouts, we thought people were going to get the hint” and vote, Fregoso said.

But on Election Day, as she called on voters--not just one time, but two, three and even four times--she heard a common refrain: “Kathleen Brown is not going to win anyway, so why should I bother? Why should I waste my time?” she said.

Fregoso said she discovered that for all the hype, some neighbors were uninformed about the ballot measures, including Proposition 187.

“There was one man who lived two houses away from where the voting poll was and he said he did not know it was Election Day,” Fregoso said incredulously. “He said, ‘I’m kind of embarrassed to go. I don’t know what to do.’ So I told him I would take him and help him.”

That kind of neighborliness is an uncommon trait these days in Precinct 68302, which is bounded by Myrtle, Flower and Bristol streets and McFadden Avenue. It has gone from a predominantly white, owner-occupied neighborhood to a mostly Latino enclave of renters living in housing owned by absentee landlords.

Tidy homes with manicured lawns are interspersed among properties that show the wear and tear of a community in transition. Iron fences and bars on windows are found on many of the ranch-style homes and scattered apartment buildings. Residents eye strangers warily and say they don’t know their neighbors.

Asked about the state of her neighborhood, Virginia Knudtson, a 69-year-old Democrat, said flatly, “The Mexicans have taken over Santa Ana.”

The changing demographics of the neighborhood--which is now largely immigrant and transient--proved to be a big challenge for the Brown campaign workers who set out to find Democrats who had voted in the 1992 presidential election but not in the 1990 gubernatorial race.

“Probably the biggest problem we had that we could not overcome was that most of the voters were unidentifiable,” campaign worker Castro said. “It’s a transient precinct. We didn’t have voting history on a large number of voters. Most of the people that we had on our voters list who voted in 1992 had moved away.”

Fregoso said that many voters on her list did not have working telephone numbers.

The boundaries of Precinct 68302 had changed slightly from 1992, and some new voters had been added as a result of an intensive voter registration drive directed by state Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and the California Democratic Party. By Election Day, Latinos made up 72% of those registered to vote in the precinct.

Among the precinct’s new voters were Olga and Josie Fernandez, 19-year-old twin sisters who said they would have sat out the election had it not been for their anger at Proposition 187.

“I don’t think immigration was the major issue of Proposition 187,” Josie Fernandez said. “They’re always attacking the Mexicans.”

While the turnout was low, the results in Precinct 68302 showed definite tendencies among those who did vote.

* All of the Democrats solidly beat their Republican rivals. Among Democrats, Brown received the largest number of votes, followed by state Sen. Art Torres in his unsuccessful bid for state insurance commissioner.

* Among Republicans, Rep. Robert K. Dornan of Garden Grove was the top vote-getter for his party in aggregate votes, followed by state Assemblyman-elect Jim Morrissey, who heavily courted the Latino vote, and Gov. Pete Wilson.

* Proposition 187 was voted against by 63% of the precinct’s voters.

* A candidate with a Spanish surname was likely to pick up votes even if not from a major party. For example, in the race for lieutenant governor, Peace and Freedom candidate J. Luis Gomez finished only four votes behind Republican Cathie Wright. The Green Party’s candidate in the secretary of state race, Margaret Garcia, finished three votes behind Republican Bill Jones. In both those races, the Democrats beat the Republicans by about 2-to-1 ratios.

In the three Santa Ana City Council races, Ana Y. Vasquez beat Robert L. Richardson; Tony Espinoza got more votes than Alberta Christy; and Noemi C. Romero received more votes than her four Anglo-surnamed opponents.

And of the 12 Supreme Court and appellate court justices who were running unopposed, five received more “no” than “yes” votes. The seven who got positive ratings scored between 52% and 58% of the vote, except for one--Appellate Court Justice Manuel A. Ramirez, who garnered 81% of the vote.

* The proposed commercial airport at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, which was touted by proponents as a creator of jobs, was approved by 58% of the voters in this precinct.

John Palacio, the local leadership director for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, said the results from Precinct 68302 typify the Latino vote elsewhere in the state: Latinos tend to vote Democratic, but they will cross party lines if they believe a Spanish-surnamed candidate can represent them better.

“Latinos have a greater tendency to split party votes than any other ethnic group,” he said.

Palacio also noted the efforts of the Morrissey campaign, which broke Republican precedent by campaigning directly to Latino voters even though Morrissey strongly supported Proposition 187. Morrissey received 37% of the precinct’s vote--a good number for a Republican in that area--and went on to win the 69th Assembly District seat.

Morrissey’s campaign consultant, Mark Q. Thompson, said internal polls showed support for Proposition 187 throughout the district, even among Latino voters. So the campaign ran English- and Spanish-language telephone banks and searched for voters who had witnessed the demographic changes in the district.

“The long-term members in the community were the ones who were scared about crime, saw illegal immigration as a problem, not as a Latino problem but a problem as a whole, and who were worried about jobs and the economy,” Thompson said. “And those were the people who were going to get out to vote.”

However, while the politicians did not ignore the Latino vote, the turnout suggests that Latino voters continue to ignore the political process. Despite the promise of an emerging political power based on their large numbers, Latinos here remain nearly invisible from a political standpoint.

Latino activists say that results partly from the young age of the ethnic group and partly because many are still in the process of becoming citizens.

But Castro said there is also a feeling among Latinos that their votes do not count, that their interests are not going to be represented even if they vote.

“The less represented you are (by a politician), the less reason there is to believe that anything you do is going to trickle down to your doorstep,” Castro said.

Bob Stiens, a Democratic campaign consultant who has run campaigns in Santa Ana but did not work here in the November election, said Democrats face a tremendous challenge if they want to mobilize the Latino vote.

“We all have a lot of work to do,” Stiens said, “not only in registering Latinos, but giving them a reason to vote.”

Times staff writer Ken Ellingwood contributed to this report.

Portrait of a Precinct

Santa Ana’s Precinct 68302 is an example of poor Latino voter participation. U.S. Census tract 749.02, which substantially overlaps this precinct, estimated the Latino population at 7,278 as of January, 1994. Almost two-thirds of the population in the tract is estimated to be of voting age. A look at the precinct’s participation in 1994:

Voter Registration

Just 616 residents were registered voters, most of them Latino: Latino: 72% Non-Latino: 28% *

Voter Turnout

Less than a third of those registered to vote did so in November: Voted: 31% Did not vote: 69% *

Political Affiliation

The precinct is overwhelmingly Democrat, particularly among Latinos:

All Non- voters Latinos Latinos Democrat 73% 78% 61% Republican 19% 15% 20% Other 8% 8% 9%

Sources: Orange County administrative office, registrar of voters, Political Data Inc.