Which Path Will Black Leadership Take in L.A.?

Throughout his long political career, Nate Holden has traded eagerly on the image of himself as a political pugilist, someone who may look the worse for wear but always comes out in the 15th round swinging, scoring an improbable knockout. This electoral season, it was Holden against the world.

A flurry of news stories had reamed the City Council member for everything from soliciting campaign contributions from Korean developers to supporting his son Chris, a Pasadena council member reeling from his wife’s sex scandal. Then, in an unprecedented move, several sitting council members, led by Mark Ridley-Thomas, openly opposed Holden’s reelection. Tenth District voters got mail from him and cohorts Jackie Goldberg, Rita Walters and Mike Feuer: an open letter declared that extraordinary threats to civic life like Holden required the extraordinary step of joining forces to get rid of him; the text of a glossy flyer, with challenger Madison T. Shockley flanked by Walters and Ridley-Thomas, emphasized Shockley’s church connections and family roots, a direct appeal to black solidarity and good sense. For all its growing diversity, the 10th’s electorate is still nearly 70% African American.

Which brings us to local black leadership and what it’s fast becoming versus where it came from. It used to be that black politicians worked their way up into office from a solid base of community support and recognition; it was assumed that this support would shape the newly elected politician’s agenda and give depth and clarity to his or her political voice. Among those who began this way are Holden, Walters, county Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, as well as younger guns like Ridley-Thomas.

But what has happened over the last several years, with the legal death of affirmative action and the resurgent popularity of coalition-building, is that the notion of black leadership has dropped rapidly out of political favor. People like Ridley-Thomas, who have an eye on their political futures, have consequently broadened their agendas: They become less concerned with the needs of their black constituents--too provincial--and more consumed with the big picture as a way of making their mark. Bringing professional football back to the Coliseum reverberates much more than getting the Santa Barbara Plaza rehabbed in the Crenshaw District’s long-suffering commercial strip. Political inclusion to the highest degree possible is in; ethnically specific issues, when it comes to black folks, are passe.

Holden clearly does not fit into this new rubric. Ridley-Thomas does, and Ridley-Thomas doubtless sees Holden as an anachronism, a contentious one at that, who isn’t wise enough to see that his days are done. As it turns out, they aren’t, but the heated effort by his own colleagues to dispense with Holden, once and for all, speaks to the unusually charged nature of Tuesday’s elections.

Together, the Holden contest and the school-board race between Genethia Hayes and Barbara M. Boudreaux were nothing less than a referendum on black leadership, a sudden watershed moment in an otherwise somnolent political decade. What was at stake was not primarily the future or the effectiveness of the candidates themselves, but the languishing soul of black politics and how best to protect or re-energize it. Boudreaux touted herself as a proven keeper of that flame; Hayes sent out flyers with a glowing endorsement from Maya Angelou. Boudreaux painted Hayes as ethnically suspect because of the hefty financial support she got from Mayor Richard Riordan; Hayes, in turn, blasted Boudreaux as an inept official who had violated a generations-old promise by consistently failing black children. In the end, the atrocious state of L.A.’s public schools and the overwhelming need to reform them pushed black-leadership issues into the background; Hayes won, but narrowly, and it is worth noting that few members of the black political machine endorsed her.

Still, voters will keep their fingers crossed that Hayes has the fire to hold her own as she builds bridges. In contrast, no one is similarly worried about Holden. He is nothing if not fiery, easy to imagine articulating and hewing to unpopular causes, which these days have chiefly become anything labeled black. Shockley, like Hayes, was viewed as far more conciliatory, perhaps dangerously so. Throughout the 10th District runoff, he argued for coming to the table with other groups--not a notion in dispute, really--yet many black voters couldn’t get a handle on what exactly he was coming to the table with. As much as folks decry identity politics, and urge blacks, almost exclusively, to give up the ghost, identity remains a crucial and controlling component of not just black but all political bodies. Holden is hardly the standard-bearer of black identity, but he is viewed by many black voters as much more receptive to it than was his opponent.

Which, ironically, is why Holden has been contemptuously described by some in the local press as a blind ethnocentrist, which speaks less to his nationalist leanings (he doesn’t have many, actually) than to people’s general discomfort with any black elected official clearly articulating anything resembling black interests. Holden is hardly a radical, but, these days, he qualifies as one merely by paying attention to black constituents and delivering on general services: filling their potholes, erecting street signs, cleaning up graffiti and addressing other “broken windows” problems that have too long been the bane of black neighborhoods in Central L.A.

This is not visionary black leadership, certainly. It may not even constitute leadership in the strict sense of the word, yet it recalls an age of closer community ties and grass-roots political activism--and ultimately plays better with the old-line black electorate than rafts of speeches about coalition-building. It may prove to play better among younger, mildly militant blacks who look around and see far too much caution and far too few politicians with any mettle left.

Holden is not beholden to his own ambition of becoming mayor or congressman, nor does he care about what the white political establishment thinks of him. That, in particular, scores points among black voters who have grown vaguely uneasy with the idea that whites and other power elites are shaping next millennium’s agenda and choosing their leaders for them: Riordan’s staunch support of Hayes comes to mind.

In putting Holden at the helm again, 10th District residents are eschewing the politically unknown in favor of the politically assured; with Holden, their potholes will get filled, if nothing else. Even though Holden is returning to a council that is half against him, the other half is not: Ridley-Thomas’ impudent charge was answered with Holden endorsements from Council President John Ferraro, Rudy Svorinich, Hal Bernson and City Atty. James Hahn, for good measure. That is pretty much all the coalition-building evidence voters in the 10th need to see; whatever happens in council chambers, they know their streets will be swept, and if Holden makes any visionary moves, well, so much the better.

Holden emerges as a strikingly independent voice that resonates all the more because he represents a historically black council district whose demographics are shifting under his very feet, but he is keeping his balance. In an age of black subsumption, Holden is the plain voice of dissent; the messenger may be dubious, but his general message, loudly delivered, is above reproach. Scrapes and missteps notwithstanding, he embodies a blue-collar resistance to the new white-collar political status quo, in which black politicians are not supposed to get their hands dirty with ethnic-specific issues or trifles like constituent concerns.

Holden is a known quantity in an age in which black political aspirants tend to be spiritual carpetbaggers who claim familiarity and intimate knowledge of community--multicultural-speak for inner-city neighborhoods--but who have no meaningful track record in said community, nor do they consider it a requirement. Holden is not a man of big ideas or panoptic vision, but in consciously catering to average Joes, many of whom happen to be black, he often winds up by default being the guy with the biggest idea.