Political Switch in Anaheim

Tuesday night’s decision by the Anaheim City Council to grant a liquor permit that clears the way for Gigante USA’s Mexican-themed supermarket resulted from a perfect storm of political forces that is unlikely to be seen again for some time.

Not all that long ago, strong majorities of Orange County voters supported state ballot initiatives to make English the official language of California, end affirmative action and deny the children of illegal immigrants access to school and health care. Orange County was the home of Save Our State, the anti-immigrant group that erected a sign at the California border warning illegal immigrants to stay out.

Opposition to people of color has taken other forms: declining support for public schools that have seen a marked increase in Latino children (the voucher campaign), opposition to bilingual signs at John Wayne Airport and opposition to discount retail stores that catered to the “wrong types of people.”

And, of course, it was the 1988 Curt Pringle/Tom Umberg state Assembly race in which local Republican leaders, in an attempt to galvanize their core voters, posted uniformed guards at heavily Latino polling places in Santa Ana, along with signs warning illegal immigrants not to vote. Conservative forces also worked hard to deny the county’s first Latino congresswoman, Loretta Sanchez, her seat in the House of Representatives.

Support, albeit diminished, for such sentiments remains, but it didn’t prevail in the Gigante case, in one of the county’s more conservative cities, for two reasons.

First is the growing political power of Latinos. In 1980, census figures show, 86% of the county was non-Latino white. Today, the county has joined the state by becoming “majority-minority.” One result of this change is that Latinos are in the position to fight back when attacked. Those, for example, who’ve tried to use Latinos as political scapegoats for the state’s economic and other problems--notably former Gov. Pete Wilson and local Republican leaders--have paid a heavy political price. Of greater significance is the realization that this price will continue to grow.

At the same time, Loretta Sanchez remains in Congress; Gaddi Vasquez is head of the Peace Corps and everyone else who aspires to political office--taking their cue from President Bush--is trying to court the Latino vote. That includes Pringle, who is running for mayor of Anaheim.

Thus, the recent decision by Anaheim officials to deny Gigante a liquor permit in a city that is 47% Latino created an unprecedented protest blowback from the community.

Second, the controversy split the pro-business libertarian and socially conservative wings of the Republican Party. Libertarians champion free enterprise and property rights and rail against Big Government, so they were outraged by this brazen action of Anaheim officials.

The socially conservative Republican right--whether it admits it publicly--is afraid of losing power and its culture as a result of the increase in the number of Latinos in the community. No doubt there are a number of socially conservative Democrats who agree.

What I found interesting about the Gigante controversy is how the liberal desire for diversity, racial tolerance and good relations with Mexico--often achieved through government action--is, in this case, best achieved by supporting the free market. If Gigante doesn’t cater to Anaheim’s shoppers, then it will go out of business. Now we’ll find out who knows more about marketing tamales, a redevelopment officer or the owners of a widely successful supermarket chain.

What really worried some Anaheim officials wasn’t that Gigante would fail, but that it would succeed.

It was this unique combination of long-term trends and nature of the issue that caused some rarely seen political alliances to form.

We saw conservative Republican and former Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle saddling up alongside Nativo Lopez, co-director of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, an organization that assists Spanish-speaking immigrants, to speak before the Anaheim City Council in support of Gigante. Liberal Democratic state Sen. Joe Dunn and conservative Republican state Sen. Dick Ackerman co-wrote an article that did the same. I even found myself, a proud liberal, exchanging e-mails in agreement with libertarian Chapman University professor and newspaper columnist Tibor Machan. We rarely speak, much less agree.

With the opposition unified and the Republican Party split, the City Council was forced to reverse the decision of the Planning Commission. Whether such a unique amalgamation for political forces will come together again remains to be seen.