Voters Place Accent on Change

On paper, Fred Williams seemed like a natural to support James K. Hahn. He’s a retired African American union official who loved Hahn’s father, the late county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, and who lives in the San Fernando Valley, where the incumbent mayor campaigned heavily.

But on Tuesday, Williams voted for Antonio Villaraigosa for mayor, saying that four years watching Hahn had shown him that “Jimmy ain’t Kenny.”

Williams, who was visiting his old South Los Angeles neighborhood, said he felt that Hahn had short-changed the city’s black voters -- both as mayor, when he fired Bernard C. Parks as police chief, and in his campaign for re-election.

“He went to a few churches and walked across the stage struttin’ like a turkey. But you can’t be born on third base and run around acting like you’ve hit a triple,” Williams said.

Yet a man on third was enough for plenty of voters in Los Angeles, which has not turned out an incumbent in 32 years. In Koreatown, Norma Madrid, 52, who immigrated to Los Angeles from Honduras 22 years ago, said she voted for “the one I know” -- Hahn.

Los Angeles residents electing the mayor of the nation’s second most populous city used felt-tip pens to fill out their ballots Tuesday. They could do so in all sorts of places, from private homes to a barbershop, a mattress store, a Baskin-Robbins ice cream parlor. At Robertson Honda in North Hollywood, where voting booths had been placed near the showroom floor, the dealership’s receptionist asked each arrival, “Are you here to vote today or are you looking for a Honda?”

Inside a Baskin-Robbins on Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks, George Frey, 87, a World War II veteran, said, “Hahn is a more mature guy, somebody I feel comfortable with,” and added that the city was “working well the way it is. Why change it?”

But many voters spoke fervently about a desire for a more energetic and vocal mayor who would win some attention for the city, starting with the newsworthy storyline of being the city’s first Latino mayor since 1872.

“He is a Latin person, and I am a Latin person,” said Jesus Figueroa, 60, who manages an apartment building and emigrated from Michoacan, Mexico, 34 years ago. He cast his vote for Villaraigosa at Immanuel Baptist Church in Koreatown.

After a bitterly negative campaign, many voters said they were choosing based more on one candidate’s weakness than the other’s strengths.

“Hahn’s been, well, sort of nothing,” said William Kunz, 73, a retired entertainment executive who voted for Villaraigosa, as he did four years ago. “I like him. I think he’ll be a more activist mayor,” said Kunz, who cast his vote at the lavender-colored Seventh Day Adventist Church, which juts over the Hollywood Freeway on Hollywood Boulevard.

Voting was steady at the church early Tuesday, as residents of the Hollywood Hills and Los Feliz stopped in on their way to work. The parking lot was heavy on hybrid Toyota Priuses, including one whose license plate frame read: “My other car is a Hummer.”

Like a lot of voters interviewed at the polls Tuesday, Kunz said he wasn’t expecting much from a new mayor -- just prosaic improvements such as the installation of more left-turn signals and staggered traffic lights to help ease traffic.

Posters for Hahn lined a chain-link fence across the street from the Hollywood church, but few voters at the church expressed enthusiasm for the incumbent mayor.

“Sometimes political royalty has something they can deliver. But sometimes it’s just a name,” said Hall Davidson, 55, director of educational services for a public television station, who voted for Villaraigosa.

Davidson said he thought Los Angeles’ mayor should make his presence felt, “focusing on the city and the city’s place on the Pacific Rim, the city’s place as a media icon. We have an identity, but we need to fuel that.”

Fear of change and its unforeseen consequences seemed to motivate some Hahn supporters, many of whom focused less on the mayor than on his choice of police chief, William J. Bratton.

At a Borders bookstore in Westwood, stay-at-home mom Patti Ditullio, 53, said she used to live in New Jersey, where she had seen up close what Bratton had done to reduce crime in New York. That’s why she voted for Hahn, but with a pragmatic caveat: One man probably can’t do much to change a city like Los Angeles.

“I think they both really want the same things in terms of schools and transportation,” Ditullio said of Hahn and Villaraigosa.

“I think Hahn has done a good job. It’s a hard city to run and I don’t think Villaraigosa would really do anything much differently or better, campaign promises aside.”

Times staff writers Tonya Alanez, Patricia Ward Biederman, Anna Gorman and Nicholas Shields contributed to this report.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

What voters liked about their candidates

Asked of Villaraigosa voters:

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Q. Did you vote for your candidate because:

You like him and his policies: 67%

He is the lesser of two evils: 33%

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Q. What do you like most about your mayoral candidate? (top 3 mentions)

Understands multicultural L.A.: 26%

Can bring people together: 26%

Cares about my area of the city: 20%

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Q. Which issues were most important to you in deciding how you would vote? (top 3 mentions)

Education: 50%

Jobs/the economy: 29%

Crime/gangs: 24%

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Asked of Hahn voters:

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Q. Did you vote for your candidate because:

You like him and his policies: 42%

He is the lesser of two evils: 58%

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Q. What do you like most about your mayoral candidate? (top 3 mentions)

None: 29%

Cares about my area of the city: 23%

Understands multicultural L.A.: 13%

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Q. Which issues were most important to you in deciding how you would vote? (top 3 mentions)

Crime/gangs: 39%

Jobs/the economy: 25%

Education: 24%

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Asked of all voters:

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Q. What is your impression of Antonio Villaraigosa?

Favorable: 66%

Unfavorable: 34%

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Q. What is your impression of James Hahn?

Favorable: 46%

Unfavorable: 54%

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Q. Do you approve or disapprove of the way James Hahn is handling his job as mayor?

Approve: 43%

Disapprove: 57%

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Q. Which candidate would do a better job of:

... holding down crime?

Hahn: 48%

Villaraigosa: 52%

... improving traffic and transportation?

Hahn: 37%

Villaraigosa: 63%

... improving the city’s public schools?

Hahn: 31%

Villaraigosa: 69%

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Q. Do you think Los Angeles is better off because of James Hahn’s policies and should continue in the direction he has set, or Los Angeles is not better off and needs to move in a new direction?

Continue Hahn’s policies: 27%

L.A. needs a new direction: 73%

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Q. Do you think if Antonio Villaraigosa is elected as mayor he will pay more attention to the Latino community, or will he give equal attention to all groups?

More attention to Latinos: 42%

Equal attention to all groups: 58%

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Notes: Numbers are based on preliminary results. Numbers may not total 100% where all responses are not shown.

How the poll was conducted: The Los Angeles Times Poll interviewed 3,191 voters as they left 59 polling places throughout 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. 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, demographic estimates by the interviewers and actual returns, including absentee votes, were used to adjust the sample slightly. Questionnaires were available to voters in English and Spanish. Interviews at the precinct level were conducted by Davis Research of Calabasas. Raphael J. Sonenshein, a political scientist at Cal State Fullerton, was a political consultant to the Times Poll.

Source: Los Angeles Times Exit Poll