The Impending Collision of Eastside and Westside.

‘Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to live to see this,” said a veteran Latino political aide when asked about the emergence of political power on Los Angeles’ Eastside. The new Latino prominence raises the question of whether Latinos will use their rising political power to form new coalitions to govern the city or, confident in the hope of soon becoming an outright majority, go their own way, possibly alienating other groups.

These are heady times for Eastside lawmakers. Just when many had begun to wonder what difference it would make to have a critical mass of Latino representatives in Los Angeles, the combination of more Latino officials, neophytes and veterans, and their growing political maturity has created a powerful legislative base that is shaking up the region’s political landscape. For example, Assembly Majority Leader Antonio Villaraigosa persuaded other Latino legislators and Cruz Bustamante, speaker of the Assembly, to turn an otherwise marginal ethnic issue--aid for legal immigrants--into a mainstream Democratic goal in the continuing state budget battle.

Although L.A.’s Eastside Latino leadership is most often characterized by the well-publicized feuds between Supervisor Gloria Molina and City Councilman Richard Alatorre, and between Molina and state Sen. Richard Polanco, there is ample precedence for cooperation among Latino officials on policy issues that affect Eastside constituents. But what is new among Latino politicians is their more assertive style, even a willingness to line up behind what are ethnic issues, as in the case of aid for legal immigrants. After all, in 1994, Latino officials, acting on the advice of a consultant hired by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, took a low public profile in their campaign to defeat Proposition 187 lest they frighten away white voters--and 187 overwhelmingly passed.

It is this new Latino assertiveness that worries some non-Latino Democratic politicians and power brokers. They fear that L.A.’s emerging Latino leadership, which, since last November, has adopted the slogan “Latino issues are California issues,” is becoming either ethnically “nationalist” or so self-confident that they will forget that interethnic coalitions have been the key to recent Democratic success in the city.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslovsky’s charges of blackmail against two sets of Latino politicians earlier this year is one measure of how some on the Westside and in the Valley view the Eastside’s growing political boldness. The first incident involved Eastside Reps. Esteban Torres, Lucille Roybal-Allard and Xavier Becerra, who threatened to withhold their support for federal funding of the Metropolitian Transit Agency unless an extension of the proposed Eastside subway line took priority over the cross-Valley line. In the second incident, a group of Latino state legislators lined up behind Molina in her battle to get a larger hospital built to replace the earthquake-damaged County-USC hospital in Lincoln Heights.

It is this tension, actual and potential, between political elites on the East and Westside--which, in Los Angeles city politics, are code words for Latinos and Jews--that concerns some Jewish civic leaders. In addition to the MTA and County-USC examples, they cite the stated desire of several Latino officials that L.A. School Board member David Tokofsky’s Eastside seat be held by a Latino. They also cite “pressure” that one Latino official reportedly put on the AFL-CIO County Federation of Labor to withdraw its support for Tokofsky’s ill-fated run for the Eastside seat on the Los Angeles City Charter Commission. There has also been complaints that Rep. Xavier Becerra has been lukewarm in his support of Jewish causes. For example, he opposed the proposal to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Some political observers fear that fund-raising and endorsements for the upcoming race for Herschel Rosenthal’s state Senate seat in the San Fernando Valley between former Assemblyman Richard Katz and Councilman Richard Alarcon may divide along ethnic lines. But neither candidate would benefit from the electorate dividing since neither has enough of an ethnic base to carry the entire district. The absolute worst-case scenario, according to David Abel, publisher of Metro Investment Report, would be if the new style of Latino leadership induced elements of the Jewish electorate to abandon the Democratic Party in primary elections, now that voters can cross party lines.

Assemblyman Bob Hertzberg, who has close ties to both Jewish and Latino political circles, says that such tensions are to be expected. “As power shifts, people become less secure,” he says. “It’s the natural progression of things.”

When Latinos’ share of the city’s electorate surpassed that of African Americans in last April’s mayoral election, it made national news. But there was no mention of the fact that, for the first time, the Latinos’ share equaled the Jews’. Largely excluded from city politics for the first half of the century, Jewish political power on the Westside, which has the highest concentration of Jews in the western United States, rose steadily from the late 1960s until the mid-1980s. According to Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, the number of Jews occupying the 100-most-significant political positions in L.A. County rose from 1 to 26 between 1960 and 1986. One reason for their success was the Jews’ political alliance with African Americans, which culminated in the election and 20-year reign of Mayor Tom Bradley. During the same period, the number of blacks in the 100 most significant political positions in the county went from 0 to 15. The predominately Latino Eastside was, at most, a second-tier partner in this Southside-Westside political axis.

The emergence of a Latino political base is occurring at a time when Jewish political representation in L.A. County is declining. Although six of the 15 current council members are Jewish, there has been a 30% decline in Jewish representation in the county’s 100-most-significant political offices between 1986 and 1997. Furthermore, the Bradley-era coalition is neither in City Hall nor holding together. Mayor Richard Riordan’s two electoral victories were a byproduct of coincidental constituencies, not of coalition building.

Still, at 15% of the city’s electorate today, Latinos alone will be unable to elect a Latino mayor in the foreseeable future. To do so, they must ally themselves with the city’s other two main, identifiable voting blocs--Jews and blacks. But it’s becoming clear that the Eastside leadership will not be content with anything short of a lead role in whatever coalition emerges.

Meantime, the Jewish American Committee, the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials and the Anti-Defamation League are hosting Jewish-Latino round tables and conferences that bring together civic elites from both groups. There has been more talk among Jewish civic leaders of the obvious need to form bonds with the region’s emergent majority. For their part, Latino officials know the importance of maintaining Jewish involvement in L.A.’s civic affairs.

For the next several years, the Eastside’s Latino political establishment will face the same kinds of challenges that earlier generations of ethnic politicians faced. They will be learning how to best straddle the hyphen between their ethnicity and their Americanness, and how to create an ethnically distinct power base while contributing to the strength of their party. But after so many years of having their districts and constituents shortchanged, the Latinos’ bolder political style may be precisely what it takes to make up for lost ground.