Vote for Cityhood Shows Seniors’ Political Power

The outside world may largely look upon Leisure World as the sunny place where senior citizens go to live out their final years playing shuffleboard and bingo, but residents this week vividly demonstrated that they have something bigger in mind.

On Tuesday, by a 342-vote margin, residents created America’s first gated city made up of senior citizens. And on Wednesday, the community got down to the dull, unglamorous business of governance and delicately trying to heal the rift caused by the contentious cityhood campaign.

Outwardly, the place looked the same as ever--even though it will now go by a new name, Leisure World-Laguna Woods. People swam laps in the pool, teed off at the golf courses, pulled a few weeds and caught the bus to their destinations.

But there was a heady sense of occasion in the air--as the city with the hyphenated new name took its place in the national limelight.

“We can help seniors all around the country,” said Bob Ring, a leader in the cityhood campaign. “We know what the problems [of aging] are, what our life expectancy is and we know how to keep busy and independent. This gives us the right to take care of ourselves and govern ourselves.”

The five-member City Council-elect met and stumbled through a trial run. The council members--ages 63 to 82--talked of hiring a city attorney, fretted about liability insurance and began discussing the first budget before March 24, when cityhood takes effect.

They know their neighbors are watching--closely. Cityhood passed by a slim majority--51.6% for and 48.4% against--and the impressive 68.6% voter turnout spoke to the importance of the matter for both sides.

“There are many more people waiting to see the new show in town,” said Jim Thorpe, appointed interim mayor, a post termed “the chair.”

“There are people who want to see we’re going to do all of the bad things they feared,” Thorpe said. “And there are people who want to make sure that we do all the good things we promised.”

Outsiders are poking and prodding the incorporation, drawing conclusions about what it means about how senior citizens live and exercise their increasing political influence.

And of course they’re wondering how things will go when this actively involved population has its own city to run.

“They have a lot of expertise in terms of experience out in the world,” said county Supervisor Tom Wilson, noting that retirees come from all sorts of professional disciplines.

Not everyone thinks the grand experiment of a gated city populated only by senior citizens is a good idea.

Mike Hunt, professor in the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin, noted that only 5% to 7% of older Americans live in age-segregated communities and he worries about retirees cloistering themselves from the external world.

Leisure World, he said, “just made themselves a separate society. They don’t have to be involved with the surrounding communities or anything.”

Fernando Torres-Gil, director of UCLA’s Center for Policy Research on Aging, said that most senior citizens are not like residents of Leisure World and wouldn’t think about starting their own city.

“My hope . . . is that it will not distract us from realizing that as they get older, most people are not thinking we should all move to Glendale and take it over as an old-age city,” he said.

More common, he said, are their worries about crime, health care and Social Security.

Even though the cityhood effort is a novelty, senior citizens have long flexed their political muscle. And there are more of them than ever.

This nation’s senior citizen population has doubled since 1960 and will double again over the next 30 years because of the demographic explosion of children born in the years after World War II. And they have increasingly been the most sought-after sector of the electorate.

“The elderly are demon voters,” said Raymond Wolfinger, a professor of political science at UC Berkeley. “The government has created an interest group, namely the elderly, and it is making political activity worthwhile.”

Although 12% of the population is 65 or over, the group makes up 25% of the U.S. voters casting ballots in presidential elections, and the number grows to 30% while younger voters stay home during midterm elections, said Andrea L. Campbell, a doctoral candidate in political science at UC Berkeley who is writing her dissertation on senior citizens’ political power.

Leisure World has long been a stable, active community that was catapulted into a larger political role almost single-handedly by its militant opposition to converting the nearby surplus El Toro Marine Corps Air Station into a commercial airport.

“The airport issue coalesced and galvanized” much of Leisure World, which raised $500,000 to fight the airport plan, said Wilson, whose district includes the retirement community.

Cityhood supporters also feared possible future annexation to a neighboring city.

Leisure World shows what is possible in a rapidly graying nation where the demographics of age can make a difference.

“If there’s a lesson,” said Judith Treas, professor of sociology at UC Irvine, “it has to do with the fact there’s a lot of room in the political process for people who have what older people have, namely time and community contacts.”

Times staff writer David Haldane and correspondent Chris Ceballos contributed to this story.

* LOCAL ELECTIONS: Voters ousted some incumbents, including the mayors in El Monte and Baldwin Park. B1

* ELECTION RESULTS: B4