Texas Group Seeks to Register 35,000 Latino Voters in Valley

A Texas-based nonprofit group has launched an unprecedented drive to register 35,000 Latino voters in the San Fernando Valley, an effort that could reshape the area’s political landscape.

To achieve its goal, the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project is relying on some unusual tactics, such as appealing to potential voters in high schools, on community college campuses and in churches with large Spanish-speaking congregations.

“We are just trying to pile up the numbers,” said Antonio Gonzalez, executive director of the nonpartisan organization. “The Latino electorate in the San Fernando Valley is really going to surprise people.”

Southwest is not going at it alone. It has teamed up with some of the Valley’s most influential groups among minorities, such as Valley Organized in Community Efforts (VOICE) and the Mexican American Political Assn.

“They have just about every Latino organization on board to help them register,” said Xavier Flores, head of the Valley chapter of the Mexican American Political Assn.

If successful, the effort would add to the momentum Latino voters have gained in the polls over the last few years.

Latinos have represented a larger portion of the statewide electorate each year over the last three years. And for the first time last year, Latinos in the city of Los Angeles had a higher representation in the polls than blacks.

The Valley has already seen the impact of a stronger Latino presence in the polls over the last few years. In 1993, Valley voters elected their first Latino city councilman, Richard Alarcon. Last year, Valley voters elected their first Latino state legislator, Assemblyman Tony Cardenas.

Southwest officials estimate that about 30,000 Latinos are registered to vote in the Valley, but more than 70,000 eligible Latinos have yet to register.

Latino activists and political observers say the registration drive--if successful--has the potential to redefine the political character of the Valley, where voters have traditionally been more conservative than the rest of the city and county as a whole.

The Valley’s conservative nature was clearly seen last year when Valley voters--particularly white, conservative voters--strongly supported Republican mayoral candidate Richard Riordan over his Democratic challenger, state Sen. Tom Hayden. In the Valley, Riordan won 74% of the vote. In contrast, he received 60% of the vote citywide.

Also last year, Proposition 209, the controversial anti-affirmative-action measure, got only 38.6% of the vote citywide but won the support of 53% of voters in the City Council districts that are situated wholly in the Valley.

While it is difficult--if not impossible--to predict how Latinos will vote on any particular race or ballot measure, Latino voting patterns show that the Southwest registration drive will probably benefit the Democratic Party.

According to a 1996 Times exit poll, 71% of Latino voters identified themselves as Democrats, with only 17% calling themselves Republicans.

The Republican Party is well aware of this lopsided trend and has launched an outreach program to register Latino voters in the Valley and in Ventura and Riverside counties. Part of that effort focuses on registering Latinos as they leave Catholic churches.

The California Republican Party is also putting a strong emphasis on reaching middle-class Latinos in the suburbs, who tend to be conservative on such issues as abortion, taxes and crime.

“The true test is who can win the heart and soul of the Latino middle class, which is exploding,” said Mike Madrid, deputy political director for the California Republican Party.

As part of its effort, Southwest has recently opened a new office in Reseda, in addition to its operations at Mission College in Sylmar--a recognition that the area’s Latino community is not confined to the lower-income neighborhoods of the northeast Valley but is growing in the middle-class neighborhoods of the west.

No one is suggesting that the registration drive will make Latinos a dominant voting force in the Valley. Instead, scholars and pundits say Latinos can make the biggest impact in close races in which they can swing the election one way or another.

Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Political Institute at Claremont College, compared the Latino vote to the kicking unit of a football team.

“In a close game, the special teams could make the difference,” he said. “That will be the role of the Latino vote.”

Because of the potential to swing close races, the beefed-up Latino electorate in the Valley is expected to get much more attention from politicians running for Valley and citywide seats.

“Obviously, 35,000 votes is not a drop in the bucket,” said Flores of the Mexican American Political Assn. “They are going to have to deal with us more seriously.”

One of the first tests of the impact of the registration drive will be the June primary race for the state Senate seat currently held by Herschel Rosenthal (D-Van Nuys), who will be forced out of office next year if term limits are upheld.

The two key hopefuls for the seat are former Assemblyman Richard Katz and Alarcon, who is vying to be the first Latino state senator from the Valley.

Both camps say they believe Latino voters will make their decision based on the track record of the candidate and not on his ethnicity.

“People will vote for who will do the best job,” said Katz, who had previously represented a district that was 62% Latino.

Alarcon agreed. “Latinos, like everyone else, want someone who will represent them across the board,” he said.

But ethnicity appeared to play a role when Alarcon won a close City Council race in 1993 over his opponent, Lyle Hall, a white fire captain. While Alarcon ran neck-and-neck with Hall in ethnically diverse neighborhoods, Alarcon led nearly 3 to 1 in precincts that were predominantly Latino. He beat Hall by 234 votes.

In a break from its previous registration efforts, the Southwest project is making a concerted push to register young Latinos, particularly those between the ages of 18 and 24, who have one of the worst voting records of any age group. Southwest is registering many 17-year-old students who will be eligible to vote before the June primaries.

Isai Perez, a Valley coordinator for the Southwest project and former aide to Cardenas, is on the front lines of this new effort.

On a recent morning, he and Natalie Jaramillo, a project volunteer, appeared before the 30 or so students of Barbara Stawski’s U.S. government class at Birmingham High School. It was one of many high school visits that Southwest workers are launching this year--all with the blessing of Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Ruben Zacarias.

But rather than spend most of the morning preaching to the students, they played a slick, MTV-produced video with a hard-driving soundtrack that included oldies and rap music. The video flashed the images of actors Jimmy Smits, Esai Morales and Jennifer Lopez, all of whom urged the students--in Spanish and English--to register to vote.

When it was over, Perez eyed the class of mostly Latino students. “You need to have a voice, so you need to vote,” he said.

“Do you guys care?” Jaramillo asked.

“We care,” several students announced in unison.

Indeed, it appeared that the students did care. Nearly every student filled out voter registration cards provided by Perez and Jaramillo.

“It was good,” Della Zambrano, 17, said of the presentation. “Most people don’t pay attention and don’t think about voting.”

Jaramillo also made a plea for students to volunteer to help Southwest register voters. In return, she said Southwest would provide volunteers a letter of recommendation for college.

In past registration drives, the Southwest project has relied primarily on staffing tables outside of supermarkets or walking door-to-door in heavily Latino neighborhoods. But Perez said the classroom presentations are much more fruitful because they can appeal to a captive audience.

So far, the effort has yielded about 2,000 registered voters.

Southwest workers say they are careful to make sure that Latinos who register are U.S. citizens, have no felony convictions and will be 18 years old by the primary elections on June 2.

Perez said he and the rest of the workers at Southwest know that any mistakes in the registration drive can generate the kind of problems plaguing Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, the Santa Ana civil rights group accused of illegally registering noncitizens to vote in the 46th Congressional District race.

Southwest won a major coup in its efforts when the church-based VOICE group agreed to allow Southwest to solicit voters in front of Valley churches. In the past, VOICE had an exclusive agreement with many Latino Catholic churches in the Valley to be the only group allowed to register voters in front of those churches.

At a recent Sunday outside of Our Lady of the Valley Church in Canoga Park, Perez and two other workers from Southwest were swarmed by Latino parishioners wanting to register.

They registered 23 people after one Spanish-language Mass and expected to register 100 by the end of the day.

The effort was aided by the Rev. Samuel Rendon, who stood at the pulpit and told his mostly Latino congregation that it was their duty to vote.

“We must unite like other groups,” he told the crowd in Spanish. “They vote to improve their situation. We must unite.”

One of the parishioners who heeded Rendon’s advice was Santos Gomez, a Mexican immigrant who now lives in Canoga Park. He filled out the registration card while his two young sons looked on.

“I think it’s important to register because they are trying to take away our rights,” he said, referring to Proposition 187, the controversial ballot measure that eliminates state benefits for illegal immigrants.

“I hope everyone will register.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Valley Voters

According to the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, there are an estimated number 30,000 Latino voters in the San Fernando Valley, and an estimated 70,000 Valley Latinos who are eligible but not registered to vote. Here is a breakdown of voting by ethnicity in the Valley:

*--*

April April 1993 1997 White 85% 83% Latino 7% 9% Black 3% 3% Asian 3% 3% Other 2% 2%

*--*

Source: Times exit polls

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

California Latino Voter Registration

According to the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, the number of Latinos registered to vote in California more than doubled between 1984 and 1995.

1984: 953,000

1988: 1,049,000

1992: 1,384,000

1995: 2,040,000