Turnout in L.A. Hits 16-Year Low

Tuesday’s turnout sank to a 16-year low for a Los Angeles mayoral election, with unofficial results showing about 26% of the city’s 1.5 million registered voters showed up.

That’s the worst turnout since 24% of registered voters cast a ballot in 1989 in a race that pitted incumbent four-term Mayor Tom Bradley against Nate Holden, then a state senator.

Experts attributed Tuesday’s apathy to voter fatigue after grueling, back-to-back election cycles -- including the 2003 recall of Gov. Gray Davis and last fall’s presidential race. They also blamed an overly long mayoral election season that caused voters to lose interest.

“People are tired,” said Jaime Regalado, executive director of the Edmund G. “Pat” Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State L.A.

“In a circumstance where you have so many elections in a short period of time, voters feel more than inundated; they feel overwhelmed.”

Los Angeles is not alone in its lack of interest in mayoral elections that don’t coincide with state or presidential campaigns.

In March 2002, about a third of San Jose’s voters participated in the mayoral election. In the November 2001 mayoral election in New York City, held in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, turnout was about 34%.

Some cities, such as San Francisco, have a history of political activism that is absent in balkanized Los Angeles, experts say, where the mayor has less power than those in other municipalities.

In the November 2003 election, 46% of San Francisco voters cast ballots. In a runoff for mayor and district attorney five weeks later, 54% -- more than double Tuesday’s turnout in Los Angeles -- voted.

In Los Angeles, turnout in mayoral elections has been declining steadily since 1973, when 57% of registered voters -- the 1965 Watts riots fresh in their minds -- tramped to the polls to cast ballots in the second matchup between Bradley and Mayor Sam Yorty, a conservative Democrat.

In the three decades that followed, a bit more than a third of registered voters took the initiative to head to their polling places in mayoral elections -- in 1981, 1985, 1993, 1997 and 2001 -- records show.

Several top mayoral contenders expressed dismay Wednesday at the lack of interest in who leads the nation’s second-largest city.

Talking to a social studies class at North Hollywood High School, Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa, who finished first in the election, bemoaned the low turnout, saying it was “not a healthy thing for our democracy.”

Mayor James K. Hahn, who captured the second spot in the May 17 runoff, dismissed a suggestion from reporters at a news conference that his negative campaign ads suppressed turnout; he attributed the drop to voter fatigue.

The mayor also noted that some polling places had been relocated, possibly causing confusion.

Bob Hertzberg, who narrowly missed making the runoff, said he thought negative advertising “turns people off,” but he declined to comment on Hahn’s ad. That ad attacked Hertzberg and Villaraigosa for their records as state assemblymen.

Tuesday’s low turnout prompted City Council members to introduce a motion Wednesday that asked City Clerk Frank Martinez to review the city’s efforts to encourage voter participation. Council members Alex Padilla and Wendy Greuel, who introduced the motion, characterized the turnout as “yet another dismal showing at the polls.”

Times staff writers Jessica Garrison, Noam N. Levey and Jeffrey L. Rabin and researcher Maloy Moore contributed to this report.