A Heavy Turnout for Apathy

The Wilshire district and the neighboring Hollywood, Koreatown and Fairfax communities are a microcosm of Los Angeles. Urban, densely populated, economically and culturally diverse. And rife with voter apathy.

Talk to a potential voter in this part of the city about the upcoming mayoral election and chances are good you’ll hear lack of interest or cynicism. More than a few people are surprised to learn there is an upcoming election. Others know only enough to refer to that “Villa guy.”

Many are like Robert Patterson, a 30-year-old rock guitarist. “I don’t really care too much,” he said, lounging outside a Melrose Avenue juice bar. “All I know is that there is a lot of bashing going on. One guy was like the D.A. or something like that and the other guy worked for him . . . I don’t know.”

He won’t be voting on June 5, and neither will most Los Angeles residents. Only 33.5% of 1.5 million registered voters participated in the April 10 general election, although more are expected to vote in the runoff between City Atty. James K. Hahn and former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa.

Many residents of this Eastern European, Asian and Latino diaspora aren’t eligible to vote. Others say they are turned off by the candidates’ debating style or advertisements.

During interviews with more than 30 people over three days, few here seemed passionate about mayoral politics. As they are anywhere else in Los Angeles, voters and nonvoters are concerned about their city, but are hard-pressed to connect those concerns with actual planks in the two candidates’ mayoral platforms.

Traffic is bad, residents around here say, but few know about Hahn’s proposal to increase the number of left-turn lanes or Villaraigosa’s plan to add hundreds of new buses. Public schools are in crisis, but few people were aware of the limited influence the mayor has over the system. Rents are insane, they complain, but no one interviewed for this article knew what either candidate had proposed to do about urban housing.

Dorie Chamberlain, a Park La Brea homemaker, considers the schools to be the city’s top priority. “I want my kids to go to public school--it’s more representative of the world to me--but three-fourths of my friends” are sending their children to private schools. “We can’t afford to live in L.A. and pay for private school.”

She considers herself “mildly informed” about the upcoming election, and says she will vote for Villaraigosa, mainly because he is her husband’s candidate.

If Los Angeles has a center--a perennial question in this city--the Wilshire district and the surrounding communities would be a good candidate. Every ethnicity and culture found in the wider city can be found here amid upscale boutiques and botanicas, mansions and tenements, barrios and subdivisions.

“The whole area is in the middle of everything--and not,” said Raphael J. Sonenshein, a Cal State Fullerton political science professor. “If you had to make a ‘cognitive map,’ there would be the African American and Latino south side, the Latino East Valley, the largely white Westside and West Valley and San Pedro, and you sort of know what each is.”

But ethnic politics are complicated and fragmented in this part of the city.

There is Koreatown, but it has yet to emerge as a force in local elections. Hancock Park, with its great granite mansions and stucco palaces, is one of the wealthiest communities in the area and a rich resource for fund-raising, but its deep pockets belie a tiny voter base. Trendy areas along Melrose Avenue and Venice Boulevard are populated by young residents trying to break into show business, but local politics rarely enters their coffee shop conversations.

Jaime Regalado, executive director of Cal State L.A.’s Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs, said part of the voters’ ennui in the mid-city area could be attributed to the large number of immigrants and poor people who live there.

“Basically, you have populations that are living paycheck to paycheck and concerned about legal status,” he said. “So along comes some 2-year-old mayoral election and it’s kind of ho-hum. It doesn’t resonate with their immediate needs or affect their lives.”

What did seem to resonate with residents in this area was Hahn’s experience and well-known father, the late county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, and Villaraigosa’s ethnic background.

Judith Davidovics, 46, one of the few interviewed who voted in the general election, supports Hahn.

“I think they are both good, but Hahn has more potential,” said Davidovics, a Romanian immigrant who has lived in the Fairfax district since she was in high school. “The other guy is too young.”

Wilshire district resident Francisco Carvalho, 40, who owns a deli at the Farmers Market, said he worked late during the general election and missed his opportunity to cast a ballot. He wants to see the new mayor improve the city overall and increase tourism, on which his business relies. In the runoff, said Carvalho, his choice will be Villaraigosa--but for reasons other than tourism. “I was inclined to vote for him based on his heritage.”

Latinos aren’t the only ones interested in having a Mexican American mayor.

Chamberlain, the homemaker from Park Labrea, said, “Having a Hispanic man as mayor might be nice.”

Koreatown businessman Choong-Ja Kim said he will not vote because “frankly, who is mayor doesn’t give much meaning to the Korean community.” But he thinks many Korean Americans will vote for Villaraigosa because of the “racial pact” many Asian business owners have with their Latino employees.

“Culturally, economically, the Latino and Korean communities are a coexisting relationship with interrelated economic life,” Kim said. “Many Latino people are working at Korean businesses, restaurants, garment factories. . . . In California, Latino power will be a more powerful and important factor.”

Hahn’s long political career in Los Angeles, his family legacy and his support in the black community have led some to say that he is the political heir of former Mayor Tom Bradley. But some political observers say Villaraigosa has taken up the mantle of the ethnic underdog.

Prosper “Madman” Mintz, owner of an Army surplus shop in Hollywood, called himself “politically unconscious” and said he won’t be voting. “But if I did, I’d vote for the minority, the Latin person,” Villaraigosa.

Why? “He’s minority, and every minority should have a chance.”

Comments such as these are reminiscent of the sentiment that lifted Bradley into office, said Cal State Fullerton’s Sonenshein.

“You had some people in Los Angeles voting for or against Tom Bradley because he was black and he represented transition and change. Right now the big change in Los Angeles is Latino immigration.”

But Sonenshein added that ethnicity is only one factor among many that voters will weigh. Overshadowing all of the big issues of the election--law enforcement, education, city planning, transportation, bureaucratic reform--are the complexity of Los Angeles politics, lack of interest and voter confusion.

“The environment of Los Angeles doesn’t make it easy to connect concerns to the level of government,” Sonenshein said.

“People aren’t sure about who does what. You get social services out of the county. You have a separately elected school board,” he said. “A lot of people don’t know that the city only does police and fire, sewage and water and electric power, and not a lot else.”

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Times staff writer Doug Smith contributed to this story.