New Diversity of Voters Sparks Battle in Suburbs

Listen to Democrat Richard Melendez stump for the San Gabriel Valley’s 29th state Senate seat and you get a quick sense of how the new diversity of suburban Los Angeles is wiping away traditional partisan politics there.

A so-called conservative Democrat, Melendez will often mention that he is a Los Angeles DARE police officer, then suggest that his Republican opponent, Assemblyman Bob Margett, is soft on crime.

Margett (R-Arcadia) will counter that he wrote California’s version of Megan’s Law, to monitor child molesters, before he advocated more opportunities for underprivileged students.

Meanwhile, in southeast Los Angeles County’s 56th Assembly District, Democratic incumbent Sally Havice casts herself as a foil to her party’s liberal left wing, while her Republican opponent, Grace Hu, says she would consider greater leniency for nonviolent drug offenders.

Miles apart, the candidates are all shooting for a newly important element in their areas: the recently suburbanized swing voters, including large numbers of Latinos and Asian Americans, who are liberal on social programs and tough on crime.

A likely deciding factor next week in many state and congressional elections, those voters are why these two contests are among the most competitive in California--and the most bitter.

Because of the migration of mostly Mexican American and Chinese American families into places such as West Covina and Cerritos, “you’ve got some real slugfests going on out there,” said Alan Hoffenblum, who monitors local elections as editor of the Target Book.

The increasing diversity in the suburbs during the last decade has transformed once staunchly Republican districts into areas that can go either way in an election, he said.

In response, Republicans and Democrats are pouring resources into those neighborhoods, while the candidates clamber over one another on the issues to win the newly vital moderate vote.

That is especially so in the 29th Senate District, which stretches from the foothills of the Angeles Forest to Claremont’s luxury tract homes and down to the strip malls of La Mirada.

The still predominantly white area that voted overwhelmingly for Ronald Reagan during the 1980s is now evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, with each making up about 41% of the 375,000 voters there. About a fifth are Latino, while 8% are Asian American and 6% are African American.

With outgoing conservative Sen. Richard Mountjoy (R-Arcadia) disqualified by term limits, Democrats have poured massive funds in support of Melendez--a West Covina councilman who used to be a Republican. They hope to counter the drawing power of incumbent Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas) over Democrat challenger Janice Nelson.

Combined, party leaders have contributed the majority of the roughly $900,000 raised so far by Melendez, nearly all of it received in October, documents show. Margett has raised more than $1.2 million, almost half of which came from the Republican Party.

Melendez, 46, has mounted an aggressive challenge to Margett, who was an early favorite before Melendez campaign polls recently showed the two in a dead heat. Libertarian Leland Michael Faegre is also in the race.

Hoping to take advantage of his police background, Melendez has attacked Margett on crime relentlessly during locally televised candidate forums not attended by the Republican. Margett, 71, has focused his campaign on speaking engagements and precinct walking in swing areas, touting his role in local water pollution cleanup initiatives.

In response, Margett has appeared in ads that show him lecturing two uniformed police officers on gun violence near school campuses. The only problem: The two police officers in the ads are actually Republican aides posing as cops, a revelation that has allowed Melendez to publicly question Margett’s honesty.

“It’s a matter of trust,” Melendez said.

While Margett claimed ignorance about the actors, his spokeswoman, Karen Hanretty, said that using them in political ads is routine for both parties, given a state statute that prohibits police officers from participating in political activities while in uniform. However, Melendez consultants said they have not used actors in any of their ads.

Melendez--whose platform includes creating a statewide after-school program--is trying to paint the Republican as too conservative for the changing district.

He derides Margett’s vote against a 1995 law that added so-called cop killer bullets to a list of guns and ammunition banned from ads.

Although Margett has said his opposition was largely the result of ambiguous language in the law, noting that the body armor-piercing bullets have been illegal since the mid-1980s, Melendez has portrayed the stand as being against protecting police officers’ lives.

Similar heat is coming from both sides in southeast Los Angeles’ 56th Assembly District race, an area that stretches from Downey’s quiet cul-de-sacs, past the Cerritos Performing Arts Center to the bowling alleys and subdivisions of Lakewood and north Long Beach. Now slightly Democratic, the area has roughly 183,000 voters--about one-fifth Latino, 8% Asian American and 7% African American.

There, incumbent Havice (D-Cerritos) faces Hu, 55, a Republican Cerritos council member who made millions with her real estate and mortgage companies. Both have raised roughly $600,000, with Hu loaning herself nearly half of that and Havice receiving substantial support from Democrat leaders.

Differing only slightly in their fiscally conservative approaches to government spending, tax reform, crime reduction and education, the two candidates have depicted each other as political extremists out of tune with the area.

Havice, 63, has outspent Hu by roughly $300,000 in direct and in-kind expenditures during the last month of her campaign.

Yet, she calls Hu a lavish spender who cannot relate to the middle class.

One Havice ad has a picture of a Rolls Royce with a “HU” vanity plate, along with the question “Ever wonder what the little people are driving, Grace?”

Hu, whose platform includes funneling state tax dollars to local governments, says that’s unfair. She hasn’t driven her 1989 Rolls-Royce in 10 years, choosing instead a 2000 Dodge minivan.

Havice runs on a record that includes preserving local concrete flood control levees along the Los Angeles River in the face of efforts to landscape the river banks, which is seen as a danger by nearby homeowners. She also helped create the San Gabriel and Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy.

But Havice has spent much of her campaign combating what she said are distortions made by her opponent.

The perpetual spin and counter-spin has undecided voters like Ann Nguyen, 21, feeling dizzy.

After a recent candidate’s forum that featured Melendez and the Libertarian Faegre--but not Margett--she complained that both major party candidates were not helping her make an informed choice.

“I thought Faegre brought up some good points,” Nguyen said.