Time at Last to Slay a Giant Cliche

Los Angeles’ mayoral election this month confirmed something first noted in last year’s presidential vote: The so-called “sleeping giant” is finally awake. (And this giant is a good deal more pragmatic and less partisan than people had assumed.)

For the better part of a generation, the “sleeping giant” cliche has been used by journalists and academics alike to describe the large but often politically impotent Latino population in California and a handful of other key states.

Like most cliches, it came into such wide use because it seemed to be based on fact: Latinos simply did not turn out to vote in large numbers. As a result, their political clout did not match their numbers in cities like Los Angeles and San Jose, or states like Colorado and Arizona.

That clearly began to change last November when Latinos turned out in record numbers. One postelection survey put Latino turnout in California at 70% of eligible voters, for instance, compared with a 65.5% statewide turnout. And roughly 70% of those cast their ballots for Democrats, helping President Clinton win reelection and 20 Latinos win seats in the state Legislature.

But while the April 8 balloting in Los Angeles also featured a big Latino turnout, the results offer the Republican Party more hope than did the 1996 election. For here, according to a Times exit poll, an estimated 60% of Latino voters chose (albeit in a nominally nonpartisan contest) Mayor Richard Riordan, a Republican.

That means the newly awakened giant is not necessarily angry at the Republican Party--although it is obvious, in retrospect, that it was the GOP that stirred him from a long slumber.

The process began in 1994, when Gov. Pete Wilson decided to use immigration as a “wedge” issue to help him win support among older, mostly Anglo state voters who were concerned about social problems posed by California’s changing demographics.

As often happens in the heat of a political campaign, a legitimate but complex issue wound up being distorted into its most simplistic, and scariest, terms. Thus Wilson’s immigration wedge was symbolized by Proposition 187, the initiative to bar illegal immigrants from public schools and social services.

And while 187 did get Wilson the support of thousands of worried Anglos, it also frightened thousands of older Latinos who had postponed becoming citizens for many years into finally doing so. And it angered their children into becoming politically active with an eye toward getting back at Wilson and other anti-immigrant candidates in future elections.

That payback process began in the 1996 election, when GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole unwisely took Wilson’s advice and also tried to play the anti-immigrant card, this time with a notable lack of success.

But Riordan’s victory suggests that the simmering anger that new Latino voters have against the GOP can be overcome.

Riordan did it by being a centrist mayor who worked not just with Latino business people, his natural constituency. He also reached out to the many poor and working-class Latinos who, while more inclined to support Democrats, are far less interested in a candidate’s party or ideology than whether he or she has practical solutions to their problems.

Riordan’s pragmatism was symbolized during the Los Angeles campaign by his vocal and enthusiastic support for Proposition BB, the $2.4-billion school bond initiative on the ballot. The overwhelming majority of students in the city’s schools are now Latinos, so BB was a gut-level issue to their newly enfranchised parents.

That’s why 80% of Latinos voted for BB, according to The Times’ exit poll, providing the votes that helped the bond measure exceed the difficult constitutional requirement that any tax increase must be approved by a two-thirds margin.

Riordan has shown his fellow Republicans that they can get along quite well with the giant they have awakened. But first, GOP leaders must rethink strategies that can anger or alienate Latinos--immi- grant-bashing or issues that can be perceived as immigrant-bashing, like trying to make English the official language or cutting government benefits to legal immigrants.

Having had to write about the “sleeping giant” more times than I care to remember during a long career in journalism, it’s nice to finally put that cliche to rest. But while doing so, I would advise the Republican Party to look past another time-worn cliche, this from the realm of children’s fairy tales:

Giants aren’t always threatening.