Alarcon, Katz Set Aside the Race Cards

The question had come up at an earlier candidates’ forum. It was raised by a Richard Katz supporter, a white woman, who was troubled by Richard Alarcon’s use of the word “community.”

The woman, to the professed dismay of Alarcon and his supporters, had heard the word as code for “Latino.”

Ethnicity is a touchy subject in the 20th Senate District campaign, one that is usually avoided or addressed obliquely. And so at a later forum at a North Hills church, The Times’ Hugo Martin asked the Latino city councilman and the white former assemblyman to address the topic directly.

“Race is not an issue. There is a race going on, but this is not an issue of race,” Alarcon declared, prompting enthusiastic applause. “It’s not about who represents one ethnic group, but who represents the hard-working working-class people of the 20th Senate District. That’s what this community is. . . . “

Then came Katz’s turn: “Race has no part in this election. Code words, buzz words, hidden messages have no part in this election. . . . Richard and I have a special obligation. . . . Our obligation is to see this campaign run on a high plane. . . . “

Alarcon and Katz, pros that they are, said all the right things, expressing the we’re-all-created-equal ideal of American democracy. And a fine ideal it is.

But consider: Alarcon recently sent out a mailer addressing the frequent confusion of him for Councilman Richard Alatorre. If Alarcon sat next to a member named, say, Richard Allison, how much confusion would there be?

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The reality, of course, is that race and ethnicity are seldom not factors in Los Angeles politics. And while Katz and Alarcon say for public consumption that it’s a nonissue, their rivalry fits neatly in a changing picture of L.A. politics.

That race and ethnicity often drive debate in L.A. is just a fact of life, and not always a bad thing in a huge, growing megalopolis that is home to one of the most diverse populations on the planet. L.A. helped teach America that the melting pot is an imperfect metaphor for race relations. The preferred image became the colorful, multicultural mosaic, a notion celebrated during the harmony of the ’84 Olympics.

Those were the days, now long defunct, when the Watts riot seemed a distant memory and people the world over joked about how mellow L.A. was, how its people were so laid-back. Some of us seemed to believe it ourselves, even though racial and ethnic strife often erupted above the surface, as in the controversies involving the LAPD’s treatment of minorities and the school desegregation battle of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

If Los Angeles was a mosaic, the dominant colors seemed to be white and black. If the brown in our mosaic represented Latinos, well, there was always plenty of brown, but it was more in the background. The eye was drawn to the stark contrast of black and white.

But that was then. If the politics of Los Angeles once seemed to turn on relations between whites and African Americans, now it has shifted with the long-awaited and long overdue emergence of Latinos as a powerful political force.

This was, of course, no surprise. And yet, to take a long view, it seemed to happen suddenly. The big L.A. narrative was populated by black and white, from Rodney King and the four cops who beat him to O.J. Simpson and Mark Fuhrman. After L.A. appointed a black police chief to replace a white one, the voters elected a white mayor to succeed a black one.

Anybody aware of the demographic patterns was wondering how soon L.A. would elect a Latino mayor, its first since the 1870s, yet no serious candidate emerged. But Latino clout had been showing up in other ways. Gloria Molina had been elected to the county Board of Supervisors. Alarcon became the San Fernando Valley’s first Latino council representative. The school system replaced an African American superintendent with a Latino.

But, with piquant irony, Proposition 187, the 1994 anti-illegal immigration initiative, did more than anything else to energize the Latino electorate and in the process prompt thousands of immigrants to become naturalized U.S. citizens. Now the big public policy quarrels increasingly seem to pit whites against Latinos, from the Valley versus Eastside feud over Metro Rail to the hot air over leaf blowers. The most controversial initiative of the ’98 ballot concerns bilingual education--another issue that, rightly or wrongly, is often judged on terms of us versus them.

So into this picture come Katz and Alarcon, both saying goodness no, race and ethnicity aren’t issues when in fact these two pols and most everyone else understand they are big parts of the electoral calculus.

The 20th is, as the consultants put it, “safely Democratic,” meaning that, barring a dramatic scandal, a Republican doesn’t stand much of a chance. Katz and Alarcon are both commonly described as pragmatic, moderate Democrats. They are not ideologues and they see eye-to-eye on most major issues. In public forums, they brag about their respective endorsements and records while criticizing the other’s. But sometimes, when asked questions about their stands in public forums, one will give his answer and the other will simply say: “Ditto.”

It seems reasonable to suspect that, in the ultimate analysis, white and Latino voters alike will not tell these two Richards apart by remembering that Katz is the one with the beard, Alarcon the one with the mustache.

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Alarcon made a passing allusion to ethnic politics in the North Hills forum while insisting it’s a nonissue.

“Ethnically, that equation doesn’t even work” for his own candidacy, Alarcon said. (In the last election, only 29% of voters were Latino and some 68% white.)

“I know,” he added, “that the voters of the San Fernando Valley are bigger than that issue.”

So that appeal to our better selves, our belief in the American ideal, is something else voters can weigh.

Back in the real world, a political aide who works for neither Katz nor Alarcon recently expressed surprise that Alarcon had agreed to join Katz in a debate at the Jewish Home for the Aging.

She told Hugo Martin that it seemed like Alarcon was wasting his time--that everybody knows Katz has the Jewish vote locked up.

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Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St. , Chatsworth, CA 91311, or via e-mail at scott.harris@latimes.com Please include a phone number.