Hahn Coasts to Victory

James K. Hahn, the mild-mannered city attorney and scion of one of the city’s most enduring political families, defeated Antonio Villaraigosa on Tuesday in the hard-fought contest to become the next mayor of Los Angeles.

The 20-year City Hall veteran won by solidly securing his base in the African American community and drawing strong majorities of moderate and conservative voters--a coalition that continued to prevail despite an unusually large turnout by liberals and Latinos for Villaraigosa.

Hahn overcame his opponent’s support from much of the political establishment--including Gov. Gray Davis; Mayor Richard Riordan; the county Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO; and the California Democratic Party. Villaraigosa, a former Assembly speaker, was striving to become the city’s first Latino mayor since 1872.

The election signaled a return of the city to its more native liberal politics and the end of the eight-year interlude in which Richard Riordan, a Republican anti-politician, governed at City Hall.

Shortly after 1 o’clock this morning, Hahn addressed a few remaining supporters at his victory celebration at the Westin Bonaventure. Casting one last glance at the tote board, he declared, “All right, we’ll declare victory.”

His sister Janice, newly elected to the City Council, joined him on a television platform, and the two raised their hands together. “I love L.A.!” the mayor-elect shouted.

Earlier, basketball hero and Hahn supporter Magic Johnson had introduced the city attorney at the downtown hotel. The often-reserved candidate welcomed the crowd’s roar by thrusting both arms into the air and throwing his head back, his face etched by a broad grin.

“Thank you to every great part of this great city, from San Pedro to Sylmar, from Westchester to Boyle Heights, from Watts to Canoga Park, thank you,” Hahn said.

He also lauded his rival. “I want to honor my opponent, Antonio Villaraigosa, who brought such excitement and energy to this race,” Hahn said.

Johnson, a stalwart Hahn supporter, had earlier claimed victory for the candidate, a son of South Los Angeles whose family was so steeped in the city’s growth that young Jim served as a batboy when the Dodgers first moved west from Brooklyn.

“The Lakers start their run tomorrow,” Johnson shouted to the crowd, ‘but tonight belongs to Jim Hahn.”

Villaraigosa, his voice hoarse and cracking from overuse, had earlier conceded to supporters gathered near downtown Los Angeles.

“Let me begin by congratulating Jim Hahn,” Villaraigosa said. “ . . . I look forward to working with you. I love this city, Jim, and I know you do as well, and I wish you the best of luck.”

A supporter shouted out from the crowd, “You are the future,” and a beaming Villaraigosa responded, “Actually, we are the future. Every one of us.”

In brief remarks made when the outcome was in doubt, Villaraigosa praised his own effort. “We ran a campaign that Los Angeles can be proud of,” he said, an oblique reference to his partisans’ complaints about Hahn’s tactics.

Villaraigosa’s wife, Corina, had a sharper critique of Hahn, saying the city attorney had “decided to distort my husband’s record.”

Davis offered supportive words for Villaraigosa, alluding to the enthusiasm that his campaign engendered among Latino voters.

“Antonio Villaraigosa has lit a spark that will not be extinguished,” said the governor, who endorsed the former speaker before the first round of balloting April 10. “Antonio Villaraigosa is the future of Los Angeles.”

For Riordan, who must vacate his office at the end of this month, the night was bittersweet. His selection for mayor, Villaraigosa, went down to defeat, but his choice for city attorney, Rocky Delgadillo, beat Councilman Mike Feuer.

The returns also gave the first indications of who would become part of the largest changing of the guard on the City Council in modern history. Janice Hahn, the mayoral candidate’s sister, defeated former Villaraigosa aide Hector Cepeda in the contest to represent the 15th Council District, which extends from Watts to San Pedro. In South-Central’s 9th Council District, Jan Perry succeeded in her effort to take the place of her onetime boss, Rita Walters, who is leaving office because of term limits.

James Hahn’s narrow advantage over Villaraigosa flashed on television screens across Los Angeles shortly after the polls closed at 8 p.m., when the striking margin among absentee voters was clear. Despite gaining through the rest of the evening, Villaraigosa failed to catch up.

According to a Times exit poll, Hahn was solidly ahead among African American voters, who constitute his political base. He was led strongly among their ideological opposites, conservatives, who apparently warmed to his get-tough message on law enforcement, the exit poll found.

Boosting Villaraigosa’s chances were an army of at least 2,500 union volunteers--although union members were split between the candidates overall--and those entranced by the former legislator’s optimistic promise to build a new, multi-ethnic leadership in Los Angeles.

Overall, turnout in the city was running higher than in 1993, the last time there was a mayoral race without an incumbent.

In Hahn, 50, the city chose a politician whose family has held elective office in the city for half a century. To some observers, he represented the “old” Los Angeles, one politically dominated by white candidates elected by the overwhelmingly white electorate.

In Villaraigosa, 48, voters could have chosen a onetime high school dropout and union organizer who rose to become one of the state government’s top politicians. Some analysts said he exemplified the emergence of the “new” Los Angeles--charged by progressives and union power, and flavored by the increasing influx of Latino voters.

The contest to become the first mayor elected in the 21st century had grown increasingly bitter in its final days, with a Hahn television ad charging that a 1996 letter by Villaraigosa to the White House on behalf of a cocaine trafficker proved that he could not be trusted. Villaraigosa hit back by saying that Hahn was attempting to create a “climate of fear” by depicting him with images of drugs and a smoking crack pipe.

With Villaraigosa reaching for history, the issue of ethnicity crept onto talk radio and some Web sites and into numerous conversations on election day. The two candidates, however, only addressed the issue obliquely.

A Times exit poll found that the candidates did well, predictably, among their bases. Hahn maintained a more than 3-1 advantage over Villaraigosa among African American voters, who made up about 16% of the electorate Tuesday and were rewarding the city attorney for the decades of service to their community by his late father, county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn. The candidate built on that base by winning a solid majority of moderates and securing about seven in 10 conservatives and Republicans.

Tellingly, Hahn won a majority of the voters who had chosen three of the other serious contenders in the April 10 election--businessman Steve Soboroff, Councilman Joel Wachs and state Controller Kathleen Connell. Villaraigosa only bested his rival among those who voted for another Latino, Rep. Xavier Becerra, in the first round of the mayor’s race.

Villaraigosa, in contrast, benefited from the continuing growth of the Latino voting base, which composed about one-fifth of the electorate, or roughly three times its heft in 1993. Those voters went 4 to 1 for the candidate who grew up in City Terrace.

The emotional push to elect the first Latino in more than a century also drew support from liberals of other ethnic backgrounds, with nearly one-third of voters overall saying it was important to them that the next mayor be Latino, the Times exit poll found.

Villaraigosa was able to keep the outcome in doubt election night because of the shifting face of the electorate. The share of voters identifying themselves as liberal increased to a majority, 51%, compared to the 47% in the April vote. Many conservatives, meanwhile, appeared to shun the choice between the two liberal Democrats--and their percentage of the vote dropped to 21% from the 26% they represented in the first round of the mayor’s race, the Times poll found.

Liberals voted nearly 2 to 1 for the former American Civil Liberties Union leader and union organizer, Villaraigosa.

Helping Hahn out, however, was his substantial lead in the absentee balloting. He won nearly twice as many absentee votes as his opponent--dropping Villaraigosa nearly 30,000 votes behind as the first vote-by-mail results began to flash across television screens.

Cal State Fullerton professor Raphael Sonenshein said Villaraigosa’s massive get-out-the-vote effort on election day may have been trumped by Hahn’s edge in voting by mail. Villaraigosa’s “election day strategy worked, but his election strategy didn’t,” said Sonenshein, who worked as a consultant to the Times exit poll.

But Villaraigosa’s frenetic campaigning in the final 48 hours before election day signaled his campaign’s belief that it could make a late comeback--a stark contrast to Hahn’s self-assured and laid-back stance in the race’s final hours.

Hahn knocked off campaigning before sundown Monday after less than half a dozen stops around the city, while the ebullient Villaraigosa raced from the Valley to the harbor area and back to the central city--even stepping behind the grill at “world famous” Pink’s hot dogs late Monday.

After a prayer session with supporters at his Mount Washington home after midnight, Villaraigosa slept for just two hours and was back on the streets pumping hands just after sunrise. He greeted dozens of voters, his raspy voice giving out almost entirely.

“If our community votes, I will win. We will win,” Villaraigosa told a Spanish-language television station in late afternoon, still attempting to drive up the Latino vote. “If they don’t vote, the other guy will win.”

Just before the polls closed, Hahn’s campaign managers said they were not troubled by the seemingly large Latino vote.

“The big Latino turnout was anticipated but not [necessarily] expected, so we didn’t need to put [the campaign] into fifth gear,” said a spokesman for the Hahn campaign. “We were already there.”

Indeed, after voting at his son’s elementary school in San Pedro, Hahn seemed confident through most of the day. He hobnobbed with neighbors at an impromptu party across from the school, comparing notes about Little League and softball. He even fielded questions about whether he would move with his wife and two young children to Getty House, the mayor’s official residence in Hancock Park. (‘We haven’t made a final decision,” he said.)

Hahn said his opponents may have mistaken his soft-spoken demeanor for passivity. “I rise to the occasion. If need be, I can be as tough as necessary,” he said, speaking with more resolve than he often did during a two-year run for the city’s top post. “I’ve been a prosecutor; I know what it takes to win.”

With the two candidates agreeing on many issues, their race was increasingly thrust into the volatile arena of experience, personality and trustworthiness. The Times exit poll indicated that Hahn’s attacks on Villaraigosa’s credibility paid off with many voters. Hahn voters most often cited their concern about Villaraigosa’s honesty--a factor cited by one-third of those who voted against the former legislator. About one in five of those against Hahn questioned his integrity.

The much-chronicled burgeoning power of labor unions and progressives in Los Angeles politics helped drive Villaraigosa into his showdown with Hahn. But Villaraigosa struggled to appeal to the thousands of suburban homeowners who still hold considerable sway in the city--even with the endorsement of the moderate Democratic governor and the moderate Republican mayor.

Even Jewish voters, who Villaraigosa hoped to win heavily, were splitting their support a week before the election, the Times poll found

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What Voters Liked

Based on interviews with voters as they left the polls Tuesday, The Times Poll found that education and the economy were the most important issues in the mayoral race.

Which issues were most important in deciding how to vote?(1)

*--*

Hahn Voters Villaraigosa Voters Education 42% 55% Jobs/Economy 32% 31% Crime/Gangs 30% 19%

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What did you like most about your candidate?(1)

Hahn Voters

Has experience to be mayor (50%)

Cares about people like me (20%)

Honesty and integrity (19%)

*

Villaraigosa Voters

Understands the new, multicultural L.A. (32%)

Can bring people together (27%)

Cares about people like me (22%)

*

What did you like least about his opponent?(1)

Hahn Voters

Lacks honesty and integrity (33%)

Too liberal (21%)

Not interested in serving all areas of the city (14%)

*

Villaraigosa Voters

Lacks honesty and integrity (22%)

Not interested in serving all areas of the city (15%)

Doesn’t represent people like me (15%)

(1) Top three mentions in multiple-response questions

*

When did you make up your mind about how to vote for mayor?

*--*

Hahn voters Villaraigosa voters Monday or Tuesday 15% 16% Over the weekend 9% 6% Before then 76% 78%

*--*

Voting by racial/ethnic groups:

*--*

Hahn voters Villaraigosa voters Whites 57% 48% Latinos 7% 37% Asians 8% 5% Blacks 25% 7%

*--*

City regions:

*--*

Hahn voters Villaraigosa voters Westside 16% 20% San Fernando Vly 44% 40% Central City 17% 27% South 23% 13%

*--*

Do you think Los Angeles’ economy these days is doing:

Fairly well: 69%

Very well: 9%

Fairly badly: 17%

Very badly: 5%

*

*--*

Hahn Villaraigosa Union households: voters voters Union household 30% 33% Not a union household 70% 67%

*--*

Party registration:

*--*

Hahn voters Villaraigosa voters Democrats 63% 79%

Republicans 28% 9%

Independents 7% 9%

*--*

In the April primary, voted for:

*--*

Hahn voters Villaraigosa voters Xavier Becerra 2% 6% Kathleen Connell 5% 3% James K. Hahn 51% 4% Steve Soboroff 26% 7% Antonio Villaraigosa 4% 71% Joel Wachs 11% 8%

*--*

What is your impression of . . .

James K. Hahn

Favorable: 68%; Unfavorable: 32%

Antonio Villaraigosa

Favorable: 66%; Unfavorable: 34%

*

Based on preliminary exit poll results. Numbers may not total 100% where more than one response was accepted or some answer categories are not shown.

*

How the Poll Was Conducted: The Los Angeles Times Poll interviewed 3,422 voters as they left 62 polling places across Los Angeles during voting hours. Precincts were chosen based on the pattern of turnout in past citywide elections. The survey was a self-administered, confidential questionnaire in English and Spanish versions. The margin of sampling error for percentages based on the entire sample is plus or minus 2 percentage points; for some subgroups the error margin may be somewhat higher. Because the survey does not include absentee voters or those who declined to participate when approached, actual returns and demographic estimates by the interviewers were used to adjust the sample slightly. Interviews at the precinct level were conducted by Davis Research of Calabasas. Raphael J. Sonenshein, political scientist at Cal State Fullerton, was a consultant to the Times Poll.

Times Poll results are also available at https://www.latimes.com/timespoll

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Contributors

Times staff writers Edward J. Boyer, Ofelia Casillas, Michael Finnegan, Carla Hall, Peter Y. Hong, Evelyn Larrubia, Greg Krikorian, Hugo Martin, Patrick McDonnell, Terence Monmaney, Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, Jeffrey L. Rabin, Nicholas Riccardi, Noaki Schwartz, Douglas P. Shuit, Erin Texeira and Richard Winton contributed to election coverage.