Mayor’s Race Avoids Ethnic Schisms, but Tests Loom

For Los Angeles residents yearning for a day when race, ethnicity and religion no longer play a central role in the city’s electoral politics, the first round of the Los Angeles mayor’s race offered reason for both hope and concern.

A diverse field of six major candidates focused almost entirely on their records and city issues, even as they elbowed their way through one of the most competitive elections in recent times. And voters spread their support across racial and ethnic divides--launching former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa and City Atty. James K. Hahn into a June 5 runoff.

But the final days before Tuesday’s election also produced the first hints that 21st century, multiethnic Los Angeles is not beyond divisive politicking. Within a week, two surprise advertisements alternately appealed to and inflamed one group, Jewish voters. Meanwhile, on talk radio and elsewhere, hints of racial bias crept into the campaign.

Now, some fear that the coming seven weeks could take on an ethnic-racial tinge, in part because each of the finalists has been adopted as standard-bearer for groups already caught in simmering competition--Villaraigosa for Latinos and Hahn for African Americans.

The candidates and their campaigns--and the special interest groups playing an increasing role in the election--face the challenge of harnessing those loyalties without exploiting them, campaign veterans said. Hahn, they said, must guard against using code words that could be interpreted as playing into fears about rising Latino power. Villaraigosa has to strike a delicate balance between acknowledging the tremendous upwelling of Latino pride in his candidacy and avoiding the appearance that ethnic imperatives control him.

Relationships between blacks and Latinos seem particularly vulnerable. Those two groups increasingly are thrust together in neighborhoods, where they sometimes clash over jobs, schools, parks and other issues. Some of the tensions are macro, African American fears of ebbing influence at City Hall, for instance. Others are intimate, conflicts between basketball and soccer at community parks, laments over the shift in language in many neighborhoods from English to Spanish. Now those issues move to the center stage of Los Angeles politics.

“The results of this week’s election, if nothing else, proved this city’s voters are big enough to open their hearts and minds to candidates who look different than they do,” said County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. But Yaroslavsky is also among those worried that more divisive attacks, particularly by third parties, are on the way.

“I am concerned that this does not degenerate into an attempt to marginalize either candidate,” said Yaroslavsky, who has won election in Los Angeles eight times over 26 years. “And I think that good people in this city from both camps, and who are not aligned with either camp, need to say they won’t tolerate it.”

Scare Tactics Used in Bradley-Yorty Race

Politics and racial schisms have gone hand in hand since the birth of the nation, with Los Angeles experiencing a particularly wrenching episode the last time the city was on the verge of breaking a color line.

The year was 1969, and a onetime police lieutenant and city councilman named Tom Bradley was running for mayor. The moderate and straight-arrow Bradley finished first in the April election, but was blindsided in the runoff by incumbent Mayor Sam Yorty.

Yorty ran ads in the real estate section of San Fernando Valley newspapers with Bradley’s picture and the caption, “Will Your City Be Safe With This Man?” The incumbent tried to tie Bradley to the Black Panthers and other radical groups. He suggested a second Watts riot could ensue.

The scare tactics helped Yorty reverse a serious deficit and defeat Bradley--leaving civic wounds that lingered for years.

In 1973, Bradley took on Yorty again. The white mayor tried similar tactics, but voters were much more familiar with Bradley by then. And the mild-mannered councilman’s campaign team beat back the images of a radical takeover--repeatedly publishing campaign literature that pictured Bradley in his police uniform.

In an outcome that was viewed as a rejection of Yorty’s divisiveness, Bradley easily prevailed. And a city with an overwhelmingly white voting population helped keep the black mayor in office for two decades.

Since then, Los Angeles has elected dozens of African American, Latino and Asian American politicians to local and state office--with voters frequently choosing leaders of another ethnicity.

In this election, Villaraigosa and Hahn have shown an ability to work with people of many colors and creeds. Neither has raised the specter of ethnicity in their campaigns.

But many commentators believe that there remains a more difficult threshold for any member of an emerging group who tries to make the leap as the “first” in a top executive office--mayor, governor or president.

John F. Kennedy felt that extra level of scrutiny about his Catholicism much more intensely when he ran for president than he did before joining the U.S. Senate. In Los Angeles, Bradley slid comfortably into a City Council seat representing many black constituents, before being placed under the mayoral microscope.

And so--despite Angelenos’ apparent comfort in electing representatives of various ethnicities--this election is more likely to expose the city’s racial fissures, campaign veterans said.

“Let’s not kid ourselves,” said Paul Maslin, a pollster for Gov. Gray Davis who has worked on campaigns to help elect the first African American mayors in cities such as Chicago and Philadelphia. “I think that is going to be the driving story of this election: race and ethnicity and what the city is ready for and how the candidates handle it.”

Villaraigosa is clearly cognizant of the balance he must strike. He would be the first Latino mayor since Los Angeles was a dusty outpost of about 5,000 people. But he never mentions the potential breakthrough on the campaign trail.

“I’ve said from the beginning that I’m not running as the Latino mayor,” Villaraigosa told a Spanish-language television reporter Wednesday. “I want to be a mayor for everyone, a model for the future of L.A. that says that the leaders . . . are leaders who will represent everyone.”

Again and again before Tuesday’s election, he sought to forge a bond with audiences of all descriptions, telling them that they had all come from immigrants at some time. More importantly, Villaraigosa said, they all shared the hope of making a better life in Los Angeles.

“I’m a third-generation Angeleno,” Villaraigosa says, “and a poster child for the American dream.” At a debate before a mostly white service club downtown early this year, Villaraigosa stood ramrod straight for the playing of “America the Beautiful,” and then told the audience how the song gives him goose bumps.

The ebullient former legislator “is probably working as hard as any politician I’ve seen” to set an inclusive tone, said Bongwhan Kim, executive director of the nonprofit Multicultural Collaborative.

His tone is partly informed by the experience of Mexican American political activists during the 1994 fight over Proposition 187, which sought to limit services to illegal immigrants. Many of the protesters against the measure hoisted red, white and green Mexican flags at their massive marches. That act infuriated some people, possibly even contributing to the measure’s passage.

Villaraigosa’s campaign, in contrast, has been wrapped in red, white and blue. At a rally last weekend, outside a union hall in the Mid-City area, a multiethnic crowd of more than 1,000 gathered to cheer Villaraigosa, waving tiny American flags. At his victory party at Union Station, Villaraigosa spoke in front of an out-sized version of the Stars and Stripes.

Miguel Contreras, the powerful head of the county Federation of Labor and organizer of the rally, ordered up the flags, as he has for some of labor’s training sessions for new immigrants. The message: “People should not be threatened,” Contreras said. “We all live in this one country and we are all under this one American flag. Everyone should assimilate under the American dream.”

It’s not just political powerhouses who worry about keeping the Villaraigosa campaign in the mainstream.

At the same union rally over the weekend, the crowd’s enthusiasm overflowed. Even before Villaraigosa arrived on the scene, a Latina jumped to her feet in the middle of the folding chairs and began shouting--in the old mantra of the United Farm Workers of America--”Si, se puede! Si, se puede!” The chant soon resounded under the giant tent where the activists gathered.

But, underneath the din, a younger Latina tried fervently to shift the chant to English. “Yes, we can! Yes, we can!” she shouted, to no avail. She turned to a reporter and asked: “Do you think all this Spanish is going to be a problem?”

How Much Will Ethnicity Matter?

Both candidates entered this round of the campaign publicly eschewing any notion that race will play a significant role.

“The people of this city are going to vote for the best candidate, period,” Villaraigosa said Wednesday. “They’re not as worried as some of the pundits are about where you come from and whether you speak with an accent. They want to know, ‘What do you bring to the table?”

At his news conference the same day, Hahn agreed: “I think that at the end of the day that Los Angeles, being the most diverse city on the planet, is going to be looking [for] our qualifications.”

In some ways, however, the challenge--especially for Hahn--is not just to take the high ground but also to avoid giving inadvertent offense.

Hahn is white, but his most loyal constituents are black. And some of those same constituents are those most prone to feeling threatened by the rising tide of immigration and Latino influence, particularly on the Eastside and in South Los Angeles.

Pressed to give his campaign purpose and drive, Hahn already is moving to establish himself as a more moderate, “safe” alternative to Villaraigosa. The peril in that strategy lies in the characterization of his opponent. If voters see Hahn’s message as a genuine quest to illustrate ideological differences, that’s unlikely to offend. But if the city attorney is seen as attempting to stir unease about the prospect of a Mexican American mayor, that could create a backlash.

Meanwhile, some campaign veterans fear that the gritty imperatives of winning will bring racially tinged tactics into the election, even if from third parties.

“There is definitely the potential for some ugliness here,” Democratic consultant Roy Behr said. “Partly because the current target audience is primarily moderate Anglo voters, there will be perceptions, accurate or not, that one can deliver an effective message that taps into ethnic stereotypes.”

Many political veterans are bracing for an influx of campaign missives, paid for by outside groups, that play off race, ethnicity or religion. The first taste of such appeals came in the days just before last Tuesday’s vote.

First, the Morongo Indians launched $200,000 worth of radio ads attacking Villaraigosa for voting to deregulate the state power industry and for a letter he wrote to the White House on behalf of a convicted cocaine trafficker.

To many who heard them, the ads were meant particularly to appeal to Jewish voters--who had been shown in polls to be favoring Villaraigosa. The radio spot depicted a phone call between a son and father, who spoke in a stereotypical Jewish idiom. (“So, what’s so important you can’t come for dinner?” he asks.)

By the end of the call, the son has convinced his father that Villaraigosa is not fit to be mayor. A spokesman for the Morongo Band of Mission Indians--who are based in the Southern California desert--said that the tribe placed the ads because the former legislator was a poor leader in Sacramento.

Many political observers believe the tribe was retaliating for Villaraigosa’s opposition to expanded Indian gambling. And Villaraigosa’s camp noted that the tribe is closely allied with Assemblyman Tony Cardenas (D-Sylmar), who supports Hahn. Cardenas, however, insists he had no knowledge of the radio spots.

Another loaded voter appeal also entered the race at the 11th hour. A few days after the radio ads began, an anonymous recorded phone message hit thousands of homes, suggesting that businessman Steve Soboroff, who is Jewish, had “become entirely dependent on Jewish money.” The calls went to many Jews as they celebrated Passover--prompting outrage from religious leaders and Mayor Richard Riordan.

As an appeal to anti-Semitism, the ad could have hurt Soboroff, who finished third and out of contention. But the ads also may have galvanized Jewish voters.

It’s impossible to measure what impact, if any, the two ads had on the mayor’s race, but the spots did dominate discussions in the last week of the campaign. By election day, Villaraigosa still had solid support among Jewish voters, with 26% of that group. But he had dropped 9% among Jews and into a statistical dead heat with Soboroff, whose support among those voters increased 13%, according to a Los Angeles Times exit poll.

But even if such loaded messages are delivered in the runoff campaign, many observers believe that voters will not be receptive or perhaps even turn their wrath on the messenger.

“There are going to be some white voters who say, ‘I do think this is a diverse city and I do think the city is ready for a Latino mayor,’ and they will be very vigilant about any campaign that crosses the line,” Maslin said.

Not all Los Angeles leaders are bracing for the worst. Some political analysts and community leaders say that the city has grown up substantially since Yorty’s noxious tactics.

Los Angeles residents seemed sanguine in the first round about the presence on their ballots of candidates who could have become the first woman, Jew, Latino or openly gay mayor. And the two men who will face off June 5 owe that distinction to the strength of alliances: Villaraigosa started with a base of Latino voters, but by Tuesday’s election, had just as many whites in his corner. Hahn prevailed among African Americans, but matched their support vote-for-vote with white Angelenos.

“This is a city where it has been, in the past, acceptable to bring in the bogeyman of race,” said H. Eric Schockman, a USC political scientist who studies ethnic politics. “But I’m of the persuasion that thinks we’ve graduated from that stage of infancy dealing with our racial divide. I think it backfires now. We have a much more sophisticated electorate.”