A LOOK AHEAD / Since 53% of the voters in L.A. are women, their issues may affect Tuesday’s election as a . . . : Gender Shift Alters Ballot Box Power

There’s a little secret in Los Angeles politics these days, and while knowing it might not guarantee election on Tuesday, it just might help: Women now make up the bulk of the city’s registered voters.

Armed with that fact, local campaign strategists are behaving more like their peers elsewhere in the state and nation by gearing candidates toward issues they know will resonate with women and directing mail to female voters.

“The women’s vote has great power in California politics,” said Democratic consultant Bob Shrum. “Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer in the Senate are a tribute to the power of women voters in the state. . . . Consultants should be targeting womens’ constituencies just as they would African American constituencies or Hispanic constituencies.”

Bill Carrick, a local political consultant, added: “I think any campaign that’s serious is going to be sensitive to women voters . . . whether it’s mail aimed toward women, phone banking or organizing women voters--even seeking the endorsements of other women. Any city election has to focus in some way or another on women.”

Statewide, women make up the majority of voters, with estimates ranging from 52% to nearly 60%. Los Angeles, where about 53.5% of registered voters are women, mirrors the state. In some of the city’s most heavily minority City Council districts--like the 14th, the 10th and the 7th--that number is higher.

In the upcoming Los Angeles City Council elections, particularly in the wide-open races on the Eastside and in the northeast San Fernando Valley, consultants say women voters may play a pivotal role. As a result, candidates in those two areas are focusing particularly on issues that directly affect womens’ lives: child care, transportation, safety and after-school programs, among others. It is an agenda the candidates and their handlers hope will reach women voters and potentially make the difference in districts where registration numbers are slight and turnout, traditionally, even lighter.

The Eastside and Valley races have also created a political pluralism in which Latina groups have taken their place alongside more generally recognized interest blocs, such as organized labor and small business.

Three male Eastside candidates were quick to recognize the importance of those womens’ groups. Early in the campaign they showed up at a reception hosted by HOPE, or Hispanas Organized for Political Equality, when they couldn’t even expect to garner money from its political action committee. HOPE doesn’t give money to men running for office, but it can endorse them.

“Obviously the womens’ vote is not only important . . . the women leaders in that community are crucial,” said Victor Griego, a community and political organizer who is running for the Eastside seat and who attended the HOPE event along with contenders Luis Cetina and Nick Pacheco. “In the Latino community, women play a huge role.”

Added Cetina: “They’re a dynamic group. There’s potential there for a new kind of leadership that will bring [forward] issues that come from the home, from the heart.”

Aside from HOPE, which some call the EMILY’s List for Latinas, Comision Femenil de Los Angeles also is highly active in the Eastside and Valley races.

Maria Contreras-Sweet, the founding president of HOPE and Gov. Gray Davis’ newly appointed business, transportation and housing secretary, was the honoree at the recent reception. Surrounded by well-wishers, she said the time has come for the group to take strong stands in city elections.

“This is about political education and becoming much more active,” she said “Largely, we’re an immigrant population. Our leadership and involvement weren’t encouraged at all in our countries. People here think we’re apathetic, but it’s a lack of practice. We have to let people--women--know we can be active and make a difference.”

To that end, HOPE held its first City Council candidates’ forum and endorsed candidates in the Eastside and Valley races.

Comision Femenil, which as a nonprofit organization does not make political endorsements or contributions, is nonetheless a powerful, behind-the-scenes, grass-roots force for Latina candidates. Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina, a founder, called its members the backbone of her political campaigns, saying they are the “lickers and stickers,” who work tirelessly and mostly anonymously on many races.

Of the 14 Eastside candidates--one write-in and 13 on the ballot--seeking election April 13, three are Latinas. Of the six northeast Valley hopefuls, two are women; one of them is a Latina, the other an African American.

Political observers and consultants say the female candidates in the East Los Angeles race--write-in hopeful Yolanda Gonzales, Cathy Molina and Sylvia Robledo, have an uphill battle, competing for money and endorsements against well-organized, and better funded, men.

Neck-and-Neck Race in the Valley

In the Valley, political consultants say Corinne Sanchez is better known in her district and that she already is neck-and-neck with her male counterparts; Barbara Perkins also is a competitor in that race, along with Raul Godinez, Tony Lopez, Ollie McCaulley and Alex Padilla.

According to most estimates, women make up at least 53% of the registered voters in both council districts, with many counts higher. The Eastside district has about 72,000 registered voters, the Valley district about 62,000.

Molina, among others, says she believes the figure could be closer to 60%, based on the numbers she has seen recently in the 14th District, which includes Boyle Heights, El Sereno, Eagle Rock and Highland Park.

“What is East L.A.? What is the 14th District?” said Sandy Serrano-Sewell, executive director of Centro de Ninos child care center and a founder of Comision Femenil. “It is kids and women. Kids and women.”

Women like Maria Dolores Jaramillo.

Sitting in her small Boyle Heights apartment recently, Jaramillo complained in Spanish about lengthy bus delays and inadequate police patrols in her neighborhood. She praised the Hollenbeck Youth Center, where her daughter, Mayra Moreno, an upbeat, energetic 12-year-old seventh-grader plays basketball and participates in other after-school activities. She bemoans the poor quality of the streets and sidewalks.

She knows many residents’ frustrations firsthand: She typically takes a bus to her dry cleaning job in Monterey Park at 4:45 a.m. and rushes home by 3. She lives on $176 in food stamps, $20 from welfare and her pay of $1,200 to $1,300 a month from the cleaners; she receives no support from her children’s father.

Her niece, Bertha Montallano, 21, agrees with her aunt’s assessments. She registered to vote last year and promises to go to the ballot box again this spring because she says local politicians need to do more for her and other women like her: single working mothers who are struggling to find affordable child care, female bus riders who want to feel safe on street corners, and parents who don’t want to have to worry about their children playing outside.

And neither would mind a female council member, either. (Councilman Richard Alatorre is not seeking reelection this year, and the Valley’s Richard Alarcon recently won a seat in the state Senate.)

Strong Campaign Needed to Win

But even with women a majority of registered voters, candidates, consultants and elected officials say that being a woman obviously is not enough to win an election.

They say council contenders must wage a strong campaign, built on relevant issues and delivered with a powerful pitch.

“I don’t think you can stand up and say, ‘I’m a woman, you’re a woman, now vote for me,’ ” said Molina. “You’ve got to do the work. A lot will depend on how credible the campaigns are. Can these women develop a strategy and a message that will resonate with voters?”

Already, Molina has endorsed Sanchez in the Valley and Griego in the Eastside race. But she said the Eastside endorsement was particularly tough because she is a strong advocate of Robledo as well.

Her fondness for Sanchez, she says, grew out of their labors together at the Comision Femenil, where they worked on training and empowerment programs for Latinas.

That group is expected to be a source of pavement-pounding volunteers, women who will host fund-raisers and those who can secure endorsements. Their influence will be felt largely by the female candidates who were part of the organization: Robledo in the Eastside race and Sanchez in the Valley.

“We don’t live in a perfect world,” said Robledo, a past president of Comision Femenil. “It’s still a good old boy’s world. The doors are still closed to access to information, networks, to being taken seriously, to money. This organization is supportive, it’s nurturing, it provides financial support. You have a network of women who are willing to write a check.”

Sanchez, from the Valley, said she is not running on “womens’ issues, per se, but community issues that affect women.”

“The core issues people face here: unemployment, health care access, safety, business,” she said. “I’m not out there burning my bra anymore, but I am still working really hard on these problems that affect women.”

Even without that network, other candidates say they will be just as aggressive about getting out their message to women.

Key Decisions Made by Women

Cathy Molina, for example, says: “Am I targeting women? Oh yes. In every way. From the younger girls coming up for their first time voting to the older women.”

Others say women in many Latino households make many of the most important decisions and that candidates who target women could have a leg up in the crowded Eastside race.

“We have influence, we spend money, we write checks,” said Susan Sifuentes Trigueros, HOPE’s current president. “It’s time for us to step up.”

Gonzales, the Eastside write-in candidate, says that she too will target women but that her focus is more on jobs, street and sidewalk maintenance and neighborhood improvements.

Several of the male candidates, like Cetina, Griego, Pacheco and Juan Jose Guttierrez, say their campaign messages will be similar.

“There are so many strong candidates in that district,” said Harry Pachon, of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute. “You’re going to hear an awful lot of the same messages.”

But some believe that similarity need not hamper women in the race.

“This district needs a fresh start,” said Leo Briones, a political consultant who is managing Robledo’s campaign as well as Marsha Brown’s race against Councilman Nate Holden in another council district. “Do all the good old boys in this election give this district a fresh start? The women’s vote is very powerful and it is definitely a part of our strategy.”