Villaraigosa and Hahn Heading Toward June Mayoral Showdown

Former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa and City Atty. James K. Hahn forged to the front of the pack for mayor of Los Angeles on Tuesday and headed for a June runoff election.

With three-quarters of the ballots counted, Villaraigosa maintained the narrow lead over Hahn that he had held all night. Both Democrats were ahead of the rest of the field, setting up a showdown between a candidate who could become the city’s first Latino mayor in nearly 130 years and a five-term City Hall incumbent who is the standard-bearer of one of the region’s best-known political families.

Hanging on in third place was businessman Steve Soboroff, the favorite of Mayor Richard Riordan. Soboroff, who left his campaign rally without conceding, appeared hampered by competition from City Councilman Joel Wachs for the white, mostly moderate to conservative voters who formed both candidates’ bases. State Controller Kathleen Connell and U.S. Rep. Xavier Becerra rounded out the field of leading candidates but trailed their rivals badly.

Other results delivered a mixed message for candidates backed by Riordan. Two of his three candidates for citywide office fell short--Soboroff and Laurette Healey, who lost by a wide margin in her bid for city controller--leaving only Deputy Mayor Rocky Delgadillo, who forced a runoff with Councilman Michael Feuer in the race for city attorney.

With Riordan’s eight-year tenure at City Hall ended by term limits, those returns only served to reinforce the waning of the mayor’s influence and the return of political orthodoxy in the overwhelmingly Democratic city.

At 12:30 a.m., Villaraigosa said, “While I still can’t say that we won this, we can say we are going to be in the runoff. And whoever we end up in the runoff with, I want to say the following: I want to continue to run a clean campaign. I think the people of this city deserve that.”

Moments later, he began dancing to the R&B; song, “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now.”

Villaraigosa--whose campaign hopes to draw support from the labor movement and Latinos across the nation--also told his supporters they would have to broaden their coalition to capture a majority of voters in the runoff. “When we’re finished with this coalition, this place isn’t going to be big enough,” he told the crowd packing Union Station.

Hahn also was upbeat as he entered his celebration at the Westin Bonaventure hotel downtown to the same disco tune that would greet Villaraigosa later, “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now.”

Late Tuesday, Hahn had yet to declare victory but had begun hinting at possible themes that could emerge in a runoff with Villaraigosa. “My city experience distinguishes me from a Sacramento politician,” said the 50-year-old city attorney.

He also hinted at a campaign strategy for the runoff that would focus on Villaraigosa’s character. “I think character is always an issue because people want to be able to trust the person in a leadership position,” said Hahn, who stepped up his criticisms of the former assemblyman in the closing two weeks of the campaign. Among other things, Hahn has criticized the former legislator for writing a letter to the White House on behalf of a convicted cocaine dealer.

Connell and Wachs both appeared to be conceding defeat. They left their parties early in the evening--Connell saying she was prepared to return to her job in Sacramento and Wachs tearfully thanking supporters. Becerra all but conceded, saying there was a “glimmer of hope,” while wishing the front-runners well.

As midnight approached, Soboroff told two dozen supporters remaining at the Radisson Valley Center Hotel in Sherman Oaks that he still had a chance, with returns from the San Fernando Valley and Westside among the last to come in. The candidate’s pollster, John Fairbank, said those parts of the city were his strength.

“Go home and get some rest,” Soboroff said, as he prepared to go upstairs to his room.

“We’re gonna bring this thing home,” he told his supporters earlier in the evening. “I’ve only got a victory speech.”

Beyond the returns themselves, the election highlighted the latest landmark in the steady march of Latinos toward political prominence. Latinos made up roughly one-fifth of the city electorate Tuesday, and they turned out in record numbers, bolstering the fortunes of Villaraigosa.

Tuesday’s election also was notable for the pains that voters took to be sure their ballots were punched cleanly, rather than have them suffer the fate of those in last year’s much-derided Florida presidential contest.

In San Pedro on Tuesday morning, Antonio Baca might have spoken for the whole city when he called out to his wife Esther to examine her ballot closely: “Remember to check the holes. . . . Remember Florida!”

Turnout stood at about 35% of registered voters, comparable to the voters’ showing at the polls the last time the mayor’s office was open, in 1993.

While Villaraigosa’s emergence from the pack was the most striking development on election night--pushing him ahead of longtime front-runner Hahn--it remained far from clear which of the two men would have the upper hand in the June 5 runoff.

Nearly half of the city’s voters chose neither Villaraigosa nor Hahn--leaving them free to pick another candidate in the runoff. Though Hahn appears to have the advantage of standing closer to the ideological center, Villaraigosa had more momentum in recent weeks and generally brought more fervor to his candidacy than the city attorney did to his.

The onetime street tough from the Eastside neighborhood of City Terrace had plenty to celebrate Tuesday. Villaraigosa surged past not only Hahn but also another early campaign favorite, Wachs, by building a powerful new coalition of Latinos, liberals, Jews and Westside residents--and a number of voters who were described as moderates--a Times exit poll found.

Villaraigosa closed the campaign as the official choice of the California Democratic Party, Gov. Gray Davis and a wide array of elected officials from various ethnic groups. He defied early predictions that another popular Latino politician, Becerra, would cut into the Latino vote and doom both of their mayoral campaigns. By election day, Becerra’s support had withered badly and Villaraigosa surged to control a large majority of the Latino vote.

Gathered at Union Station in downtown Los Angeles, an emotional crowd celebrated Villaraigosa’s showing and looked ahead to June, when his supporters hope to elect the first Latino to the mayor’s office since Cristobal Aguilar left the post in 1872. When Aguilar left to take the more prestigious job of zanjero, or head of the Los Angeles water system, he gained renown and got a pay raise in the drought- and flood-ridden city of 5,700 people.

In contrast to the potential emergence of Latinos, Hahn has pinned his prospects on older, more tested verities of Los Angeles politics. According to The Times’ exit poll, the city attorney’s support was strongest among African American voters and in South Los Angeles--both of which formed the political base of his father, long-serving county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn.

James Hahn was also contending with Villaraigosa for moderate voters citywide. The poll found that the city attorney also led among older voters and, with his five terms in city office, with voters who said they particularly valued experience in their next mayor.

Hahn and Villaraigosa were almost even among conservatives, the poll concluded. The city attorney’s supporters believed that his status as a law enforcement official would put him in a stronger position to appeal to that group of voters, as well as to voters who supported three other candidates. Soboroff, Wachs and Connell all stand to the right of the political spectrum from the two front-runners.

It was clear on election day that Villaraigosa’s union support was a powerful engine for his candidacy. In the city with the fastest-growing union membership in the country, Villaraigosa’s support from the county Federation of Labor meant he could count on hundreds of determined volunteers Tuesday.

County labor federation chief Miguel Contreras exhorted some of those troops at a union hall in San Fernando on Tuesday morning, one of six nerve centers for the labor push.

“There’s no manana here,” Contreras told an assembled group of food workers. “It’s all about today.”

The volunteers were urged not to take a “no” answer lightly from the 85,000 voters who had previously committed to vote for Villaraigosa, a former union organizer.

“We’ll have an army of people out there,” Contreras said in an interview, “before people start giving excuses about how they’re too tired or making dinner, or they have their slippers on.”

The fervent appeals to union members seemed to strike a chord in Los Angeles, home to an increasingly vital and politically potent labor movement made up largely of Latinos.

Tuesday, voters in heavily Latino precincts seemed to be particularly energized by the opportunity to vote for two Latino candidates in the mayor’s race. At the Hollenbeck Park Community Center in Boyle Heights, most voters lined up to cast their votes early in the morning. Many said they had voted for Villaraigosa.

Guillermo Reyes, a truck driver and, until he retired, a 28-year city employee, echoed the sentiments of several Latino voters, who said they supported the former Assembly speaker because they think he will understand their needs.

Reyes said he hopes Villaraigosa can help repair the cracked and potholed sidewalks and streets of Boyle Heights, where he grew up. “If he doesn’t do what we need,” Reyes said, “at least we can go in and see him personally.”

Villaraigosa has ridden the crest of Los Angeles’ resurgent union movement and that power was very much in evidence across the city on election day.

In South Los Angeles, meanwhile, the power of the Hahn family legacy was evident from the opening of the polls Tuesday. Elderly African American voters, in particular, said with near unanimity that they had punched their ballots for the city attorney and, in many cases, for the memory of his father, the longtime county supervisor.

“Who else is there to vote for?” asked one elderly voter walking out of Messiah Lutheran Church. “He’s a good man.”

Jerome Jackson, who also voted at the church, said he chose Hahn “because of the history of the family. All the people I know are voting for Hahn.”

Many voters in South Los Angeles also believed strongly that the city was ready for the end of the Riordan era.

As he voted Tuesday morning at his son’s elementary school in San Pedro, a few blocks from the family home, Hahn said he remained optimistic about his chances.

“It looks like it’s going to be a runoff,” he said. “I think I’m going to be in there; I don’t know who the other person is.”

Soboroff and his 18-year-old son, Jacob, who was voting for the first time, dropped off their absentee ballots at a Tarzana recreation center. Soboroff kissed his sealed envelope before handing it to a poll worker.

Asked what went through his mind when he cast his vote, Soboroff said, “It’s emotional, because this is something I want to do very badly.”

As he voted for his would-be successor, Mayor Riordan sounded alternately wistful and relieved to be out of the fray himself, on the verge of leaving office because of term limits.

Riordan told reporters that he wished for six more months to govern. “But my wife told me I’d say the same thing six months from now,” he quipped. When a maintenance man standing in front of a neighbor’s house called out, “Thanks Mr. Mayor! You did a good job!” Riordan answered “Thanks.” He then joked to his staff: “That’s like hearing your own requiem.”

In one sense, the ascendance of the three top candidates reflected a truism of electoral politics: Those with the most money prevail. Hahn, Soboroff and Villaraigosa spent more than $11.5 million in an effort to win a spot in the runoff, according to the last preelection campaign finance reports, filed late last week. Along with the money spent by the other candidates, the total expended through last Wednesday was more than $17.2 million, a city record.

Campaign consultants for the three men made strikingly different calculations about how to win enough votes to make the runoff.

Hahn adopted a virtual Rose Garden strategy, his advisors assuming that Los Angeles voters were looking for a capable administrator rather than an ideologue. Waves of television ads punched out the message that the one-term city controller and four-term city attorney had “L.A. Experience That Really Counts.”

For a time, Hahn’s safe and stable message seemed like it might allow him to coast into a runoff. Polls showed him with a comfortable lead, and the rest of the pack struggled to break away.

But as the election neared, polls showed Hahn’s support stagnant or even sinking. The normally staid candidate went on the attack, targeting Villaraigosa in particular.

Villaraigosa’s chief strategist saw the former legislator as being the most natural candidate for the “very, very liberal” Los Angeles electorate.

The former Assembly speaker invoked the coalition-building skills of the late Mayor Tom Bradley.

A sense of the growing enthusiasm for Villaraigosa could be felt at a rally for the candidate Saturday in the Mid-City area. Despite a steady rain, more than 1,000 raucous labor union members greeted the candidate.

The gathering began and ended with the old rallying cry of the United Farm Workers of America--as the crowd waved tiny American flags and chanted “Si, se puede!” or “Yes, it can be done!”

Soboroff, the race’s lone Republican, sought to expand his appeal from a base consisting mostly of white moderates and conservatives in the San Fernando Valley and on the Westside. With his “A Problem Solver, Not a Politician” slogan, he sought to conjure the same anti-politician sentiment that boosted Riordan into the mayor’s office eight years ago.

Soboroff, 52, slammed his competitors as part of the status quo and retreads from other political offices.

For updated returns, see

https://www.latimes.com/cityhall