Times Have Changed in Westside Balloting

For seven straight elections spanning more than a quarter of a century, voters on the Westside of Los Angeles got the candidate they wanted in the mayor’s office.

In 1973, a time tinged with civil rights consciousness, the Westside helped thrust Tom Bradley to victory. Its strong coalition with Southside blacks kept Bradley in office for what seemed like a life tenure, through the 1970s and 1980s. But by 1993 Bradley had announced his retirement and even liberal Westsiders had seen enough of riot and recession. Many turned their votes to a Republican businessman, Richard Riordan.

These wandering Democrats and liberals became a phenomenon in many big city elections in the 1990s. Facing uneasy times, they abandoned their party and often their native ideology in favor of candidates they viewed as tougher and more pragmatic.

The trend helped make Frank Jordan mayor of San Francisco once and pushed Rudolph Giuliani to the mayoralty of New York twice--the latter a particularly striking feat in a metropolis where politics can be virulently partisan.

“The sotto voce voters are what I call them,” said Fred Siegel, a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., who has written extensively about urban politics.

“These are Democratic voters who very softly, when they think no one is listening, admit to people [that] they voted for the Republican. And recently it’s been the voters on the Westside of Manhattan and the Westside of L.A. voting for a Republican mayor.”

Los Angeles is rushing toward another mayoral election Tuesday. Yet because the city has been restored to a more stable, if uncertain, footing, the electoral barometer on the ocean side of Fairfax Avenue remains remarkably hard to read.

Each of the three front-runners can construct a plausible political coalition that includes the bellwether Westside. Businessman Steve Soboroff could link voters on his home turf--he lives in Pacific Palisades--with moderates and conservatives in the San Fernando Valley, in a Riordan-style union.

City Atty. James K. Hahn could take a page from Bradley’s old book, joining the region with African American voters in South Los Angeles. Or former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa could create a new paradigm, joining Westside liberals with Latino voters on the Eastside.

At this late date, voters from the Fairfax district to the Palisades and Venice remain an enigmatic lot. A Times poll published Tuesday showed Soboroff leading there with 26% of the vote, Villaraigosa next with 24%--a statistical tie--and Hahn standing third with 16%. Three other well-known candidates trail significantly on the Westside and throughout the city.

Regardless of whether they return to the Democratic fold or try another Republican newcomer, Soboroff, it’s clear that many Westside voters have been on a significant political journey.

Barbara Rosenstein of Cheviot Hills is one of them. The retired public relations consultant, a self-described “bleeding heart,” was in the vanguard for Bradley. She voted for the then-city councilman even in his 1969 loss to Sam Yorty. She repeated her selection five times after that, all Bradley victories.

“I believe then, and now, in integration, and he was just such a wonderful example and a great role model,” she said of Bradley, for whom she worked briefly. “Tom Bradley was always just so well informed and in control.”

Rosenstein, a lifelong Democrat, had voted for only one Republican since she helped put Dwight D. Eisenhower in the White House. But by the time Riordan came around, something had changed in her and in her city.

“Maybe as I get older I am getting a little more centrist,” Rosenstein said. In 1993, “it just seemed the city needed something at that time, something different.” Uninspired by the long list of Democrats who opposed him, Rosenstein voted for Riordan.

“Riordan seemed fairly moderate,” Rosenstein explained. “And I thought he would be a hands-on person who would not be as partisan and would be a problem-solver.”

First Support for a Republican

Now, with circumstances markedly different, Rosenstein plans to support Hahn.

“I feel the ship is staying its course now,” Rosenstein said. “I would just feel more comfortable with James Hahn. He is not very political, but there is something very fair about him.”

Cathy Unger, a public affairs consultant and Democratic fund-raiser, concedes that she was one of the sotto voce when she backed Riordan in 1997.

“I had never supported a Republican before,” she said. “It was that and the fact he was a very wealthy person putting a lot of his own money on the line. People were a little quiet about” their support.

Unger plans to vote for Villaraigosa this time.

“I see him as the person to lead our city,” Unger said. “I see him as absolutely a person who works with all communities. He is the face of L.A.’s future.”

As Riordan showed, the Westside can be fertile soil for Republicans--and Soboroff has staked a strong claim on the area. The commercial real estate broker is active in the Jewish community and has the sort of public service record--including mentoring for the Big Brothers program--that allows him to gain votes even outside his conservative base.

A 50-year-old management consultant who lives in the Fairfax area--but did not want to be identified because his company does business with the city--said he will vote for Soboroff because “I want to see the power of the usual folks in City Hall reduced.”

“My sense is that Riordan has done a lot to try to make City Hall less bureaucratic and more responsive,” added the consultant. “I think Soboroff would continue in that same direction.”

Because of his religion, Soboroff has perhaps more influence with the Westside than his ideology might suggest. The Westside includes about 18% of the city’s electorate, and Jewish voters are among the most dependable voters there.

Jewish voters such as Rosenstein and Unger represent an important swing group. Jews went heavily for Bradley but gave nearly half their votes to Riordan in 1993, helping to swing the Westside and the city in the Republican’s favor.

Lack of a Central Worry

This year, it appears that Westsiders and Jewish voters are “all over the place,” Unger said. That is partly because of the lack of a central worry for voters, as there has been in past elections.

The last time the mayor’s office changed hands, public safety had clearly emerged as the top issue. Onetime candidate Stanley Sanders, a lawyer and former Rhodes Scholar, recalls a 1993 meeting with a group of liberal activists in a Century City high-rise.

Even among this group, “all they could talk about was police and how many more could we get on the street,” recalls Sanders, who was defeated in the April election and went on to endorse Riordan.

Where once the civil rights implications of Bradley’s races had resonated, Riordan’s “tough enough to turn L.A. Around” message struck a chord with those fearful about crime and the city’s deteriorating condition. His promise--never fulfilled--to put 3,000 more police on the street captured the mood of the day.

Though Riordan maintains some popularity with voters, it is unclear whether his administration will be recalled as anything other than a brief interregnum in the long Democratic orthodoxy. The visceral public safety concerns of 1993 remain, but in a far more muted form. And voters in most areas of the city say Riordan’s endorsement of Soboroff means little to them.

But the outgoing mayor has had a clear impact on the current race, given the continuing preoccupation of the candidates with the public schools. Public opinion polls had already led the contenders to emphasize improving the Los Angeles Unified School District.

But Riordan’s continual involvement with the schools--looking for school sites, criticizing policy, and trying to reconfigure the school board--has changed the culture so that mayoral candidates are now expected to have a specific school policy.

All of the contenders spend much of their time talking about after-school programs, preschool start-ups, building more schools, and other education issues--despite the fact that the mayor still possesses no direct authority over the school.

But none of the issues being discussed this year--schools, traffic, police conduct, the energy crisis--serves as a strong predictor of which candidate may emerge as the Westside’s favorite.

The candidates face an electorate that may have become willing to vote in more pragmatic and less ideological ways, says Rosalind Wyman, a Westwood resident, former city councilwoman and doyenne of the Democratic Party.

She says Riordan has opened the door to alternative thinking by voters in her neighborhood and around Los Angeles.

“I think the Westside is all over the acreage,” Wyman said. “I just can’t tell where it is going.”