L.A.'S HISTORY AT STAKE
The Los Angeles mayor's race is about getting a grip on the city's ethnic and racial fault lines, and the result will affect urban centers throughout the country
By Tom Hayden
So far, the Los Angeles mayor's race resembles the John Sayles film, City of Hope, in which competing ethnic groups seek a slice of power while a homeless man screams, "Help! We need help down here, help!" over and over. Racial and ethnic power struggles over who manages the status quo are the undiscussed dynamic of city politics. Though almost taboo in public discourse, here in L.A. that dynamic is never far from the surface.
The plight of Mayor James Hahn illustrates the ethnic and geographic fault lines that underlie the process. Hahn won the race against Antonio Villaraigosa last time by consolidating white and Republican votes, and relying on his county supervisor father's past service to the black community. At root, this was a vote to delay, if not derail, the transition of Los Angeles to becoming a Latino city.
This time, Hahn is losing chunks of his white Republican Valley base to former state Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg and the African-American base to city Councilman Bernard Parks. His endorsement by the county AFL-CIO and his success in keeping the Democratic Party neutral may be crucial to slowing Villaraigosa, but may also turn out to be token in terms of the actual vote from those constituencies. Assuming he reaches the runoffs, Hahn, a liberal himself, will be forced back to the unsavory task of again assembling a coalition of those whites and blacks who see little future under a Mayor Villaraigosa. Last time, Hahn scandalously depicted Villaraigosa as a sleazy friend of even sleazier Mexican drug dealers. This time, faced with corruption scandals himself, a negative campaign may be harder for Hahn.
Villaraigosa's core constituents are, indeed, the Latinos who were largely shut out of citywide political power during the civil rights revolution of the '60s and '70s. They may complain that Antonio should have kept his promise to remain on the council, but they will vote for him in the general election. Villaraigosa has evolved from his early roots in Chicano nationalism to become a progressive coalition-builder in the model of former Mayor Tom Bradley. Villaraigosa has been successful with Bradley's former white base, liberal Westside Jews, and increasingly embraced by the city's black community whose relative power loss since the Bradley era has been wrenching. With strong support from the city's working class and urban professionals, Villaraigosa has come closer to building Rev. Jesse Jackson's "rainbow coalition" than perhaps any current big-city politician in America.
State Senator Richard Alarcón, a former Bradley aide, has tried to fashion a similar coalition, more populist in tone, out of the Valley's Latino population and alienated whites. But his base, smaller initially than Villaraigosa's, has been difficult to expand without vast sums of money. Most of Alarcón's vote will go to Villaraigosa in the runoff.
Then there is the wild man and wild card in the race, Bob Hertzberg, whose television commercials depict a giant bearing big ideas for our future. Hertzberg is a hyper policy wonk who for many years has compiled massive books on his philosophy of governance and latest readings on urban politics. He is an innate politician, too, like Villaraigosa, who hugs, slaps, spins, wheels, and deals at a frenetic speed. His is a strange combination of intellect and opportunism. The ideas are in flux, never adding up to a coherent whole, like his ever-changing definitions of a school break-up – which he opposed in Sacramento. But the interests underlying the Hertzberg campaign are consistent: Valley secessionists, Valley Jews, Valley businesses, Valley Republicans. If he makes the runoff, the racial and ethnic fault lines will be even brighter than in a Hahn-Villaraigosa matchup.
So what is at stake in this race? It is about the unfulfilled shaping of a new political majority, and a new governing coalition for Los Angeles, which has not achieved a stable replacement for the old Bradley coalition of blacks, white liberals, developers, building trades, and the owners of the Los Angeles Times. That coalition failed to cement its goal of racial peace, as the fires of 1992 revealed. It failed to "rebuild L.A." afterward, promising 50,000 new jobs in the inner city (50,000 were lost instead). But it "developed" downtown with billions in public subsidies at the expense of developing more viable neighborhoods for people. While an ad hoc billionaire boys' club built museums and concert halls as urban status symbols, the ethnic and racial lines of Los Angeles continued to fragment in the '90s.
It may not be possible for Villaraigosa to pull together a more socially-responsible governing coalition, one in which the rich stay rich but economic benefits are shared more widely and neighborhoods receive their fair share of public investment. Villaraigosa has moved to the center, and sometimes may be more consumed with power than principle, but being mayor of Los Angeles is about more than liberal advocacy. Progressives will have to take responsibility for building social movements that will pressure Villaraigosa to follow his best instincts rather than become a servant of the same circles of downtown lobbyists that have feasted off Hahn and previous mayors. Fortunately, urban experts at Occidental College already have published a blueprint called The Next Los Angeles, which is a starting point for public policy in the next administration.
Los Angeles is a Latino city, albeit with a mosaic of ethnic constituencies and cultures. Over 80 percent of its public schoolchildren are Latino, many of them immigrants. Over half its workforce is Latino. If Villaraigosa is elected mayor, his vision could dominate Latino politics not only in Los Angeles and California, but the entire United States as the national population becomes half-Latino in 50 years. History, therefore, is at stake.
The L.A. Times, as the de facto editorial vehicle of the downtown elites, reflects the uncertainty of those elites about their real interests in a changing Los Angeles. Sensing that Hahn is waning, the Times has so far endorsed both Villaraigosa and Hertzberg for the runoff. Villaraigosa is their new Tom Bradley, and Hertzberg might keep the Valley secessionists in line if elected mayor. They sense in Villaraigosa, like Bradley, a bridge-builder and a safety valve for the discontent of the inner city. They intuit that Hertzberg might stabilize the city (and their interests) by preventing secession and building a Latino-Jewish alliance in another, more conservative, way.
Quite possibly we will experience a repeat of four years ago, with Hahn or Hertzberg coalescing a bare electoral majority (as opposed to a demographic majority) that holds back the coming of the Latino political majority.
Former State Senator Tom Hayden is the author, most recently, of Street Wars: Gangs and the Future of Violence. |
Tom Hayden is national co-director of No More Sweatshops!, a coalition of labor, clergy, community and campus advocates of "sweat-free" guidelines on public procurement and enforceable labor standards for corporate behavior.
