Latino Pols Face a Double Standard

When James K. Hahn’s mayoral campaign aired a racially loaded TV ad featuring the image of a crack cocaine pipe, attacking rival Antonio Villaraigosa, there was no public uproar over the sorry state of “white politics.” When Gray Davis and Bill Simon were mired in an issueless negative campaign for governor, nobody expected fellow “white leaders” to call a summit meeting and denounce their uninspired tactics. Yet, when Ricardo Torres II, on behalf of his friend, Councilman Nick Pacheco, distributed two sleazy fliers attacking Villaraigosa, Pacheco’s chief rival in Los Angeles’ 14th Council District, Latino officials rushed to denounce the tactics. Many even felt compelled to forswear the use of negative campaigning in future political races. The patronizing moral outrage of the media and many non-Latinos amounted to a collective gasp at the newest antics of “those darn Latinos.”

The media have long tended to treat nonwhites as if they live in a different country from white Americans. Journalists routinely write about monolithic ethnic and racial “communities” with their own leaders, agendas and codes of ethics. But this vision of America as a confederation of mutually exclusive “communities” is not only wrongheaded, it obscures the fact that we all share a common civic and political culture. Mexican American politicians neither invented nor perfected the art of political sleaze.

The criticism heaped on Hahn for his crack-pipe ad did not generalize to whites because they are portrayed as thinking and acting as individuals. The media never describe them as living and working in the “white community.” We don’t expect whites to shoulder the burden of having to reprimand or keep “their people” in line. When a white politician disgraces himself in office, it reflects on him, not on his race.

The sin of a nonwhite political leader, in contrast, is treated as an extension of some minority mind-set. His disgrace becomes ethnic disgrace, and “responsible” leaders must discipline the perpetrator to defend ethnic honor.

This antiquated understanding of minority “leaders” stems in part from the civil rights era, when the African American elite was morally bound to speak for blacks who were denied the vote. But it’s long past time that we acknowledge that contemporary black and Latino officials represent the districts that elected them, not their racial and ethnic groups.

Many Latino and black officials, to be sure, like to talk as if they do represent their minority groups. By doing so, they hope to broaden their influence and increase their moral authority. But it can’t be much fun to be propped up by the media as an ethnic leader or icon. By some accounts, Villaraigosa, who generally ran an exemplary pan-ethnic campaign for mayor, was unduly burdened by the media’s apparent need to place the adjective “Latino” before his candidacy. The heavy ethnic symbolism imposed upon him may have undercut his pan-ethnic appeal.

Ironically, it is Villaraigosa’s iconic value that drew Torres’ below-the-belt fire in the first place. Reports to the contrary, the hit pieces were not focused on white people or pochos, the term Mexicans sometimes use to demean Mexican Americans. The mailing accusing the former Assembly speaker of listening to his “white advisors,” “speaking pocho Spanish” and selling out “our community” was crudely calculated to call into question Villaraigosa’s ethnic credibility among newly naturalized immigrant voters in the district. The second, more disturbing flier, attacking Villaraigosa’s personal life, aimed to tarnish his moral authority.

Neither the tactics nor the fliers’ messages are new -- or, for that matter, noteworthy in U.S. politics. It is their crude and amateurish nature that makes them so shocking. “We’re used to them being more insidious and subtle,” says a City Hall insider. “If anything, these fliers offend our sense of professionalism. They’re just not sportsmanlike.”

In politics -- brown, black, white and striped -- ethnicity or race is often deployed, subtly or overtly, as a weapon to divide and conquer. “This is a very old story,” says Jack Pitney Jr., a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. “The personal attacks and the injection of race and ethnicity into the campaign ... are, unfortunately, classic parts of American politics.”

Surrogates for Villaraigosa’s mayoral campaign played the ethnic card when they publicly questioned the ethnic loyalties of Pacheco and Council President Alex Padilla after the two Latinos endorsed Hahn for mayor. The first Torres mailing similarly attempted to leverage ethnic distrust to undermine Villaraigosa. But this is not a “Latino thing.”

In 1994, then-Republican Gov. Pete Wilson leveraged fear of and disdain for immigrants to further his political ambitions. Ever since, the state Democratic Party has used the specter of Wilson -- the ultimate big, bad white guy -- to push Latinos to the polls. A few years ago, one Democratic group sent out “voter identification cards” to registered Latino voters in case they were prohibited from voting, presumably by a racist white poll worker.

Unlike the identification cards, Torres’ 6,000 pieces of mail aimed to depress voter turnout. Readers of the fliers cannot help but feel turned off by the nasty tone the campaign has already taken. In a slash-and-burn campaign, when voter turnout is low, the incumbent usually wins by default. If that’s the case, the 14th District will be the real loser.

Yet, it’s important to understand why the 14th District and others like it are natural spawning grounds for sleazy politics. Despite their portrayals in movies and television, barrios tend to be transitional, unstable neighborhoods, where people are not fully invested in their communities. In 1990, about three-quarters of adults in Boyle Heights, which is the heart of the 14th District, were foreign-born, and roughly half of them had arrived in the country during the previous decade. Over the last 30 years, the neighborhood has become denser, poorer and more heavily immigrant. While newcomers have injected energy and renewed commercial activity into the area, they are often just passing through on their way to more desirable living conditions. Relatively low civic participation and the absence of strong local institutions converge to allow district politicians to function with little accountability.

The huge rush to naturalization in the 1990s, as well as the excitement generated by campaigns like Villaraigosa’s bid for mayor, was good for immigrant neighborhoods and the city’s democracy. The greatest tragedy of the Torres mailings is that these newly energized citizens might become fully turned off by the nastiness of U.S. politics several generations ahead of schedule. The negativity of the recent gubernatorial campaign produced the lowest voter turnout in California in almost a century. If Californians are ever going to turn this around, they can’t afford to pretend that any one group bears more responsibility than others for the sorry state of politics.