L.A. Blacks Leaning Toward Latino Mayoral Hopeful

LOS ANGELES (By Amy Argetsinger and Kimberly Edds, Washington Post) Sunday, May 15, 2005 - If Antonio Villaraigosa wins a runoff election Tuesday to become the first Latino mayor here in modern times, he will likely owe much of his victory to a surprising constituency: black voters.

Surprising because of the long history of unease and mistrust between this fractious city's two largest minority groups -- and a sense, articulated by some African Americans, that political and economic gains by the fast-growing Hispanic community came at the expense of their own.

When Villaraigosa, a Democrat and former state Assembly speaker, made his first run for the job four years ago, he received barely 20 percent of the black vote. Today, though, a wide array of the city's most prominent black leaders have thrown their support to Villaraigosa, and recent polls show African American voters favoring him over incumbent Mayor James K. Hahn, the white Democratic candidate who beat him in 2001.

Some observers are heralding this fledgling coalition as a watershed development in L.A. politics, with implications beyond Election Day.

"The comfort Antonio has going across black and brown lines is something he can transmit to the community," said the Rev. Clyde W. Oden Jr., senior pastor of Bryant Temple AME Church, a former Hahn supporter now encouraging his mostly black congregation to back Villaraigosa. "He can speak far more strongly about unifying issues."

Similar alliances between blacks and Latinos are being forged in Houston and New York, where a mayoral candidate of Puerto Rican descent, Democrat Fernando Ferrer, is campaigning hard in African American communities.

Still, others note that in Los Angeles, at least, the new coalition remains fragile. Although polls showed that Villaraigosa held a double-digit lead with black voters a month ago, Hahn has since closed much of the gap. Some say recent rumors of ethnic gang violence are setting off tensions between the two populations that could play out on Election Day.

"It's going to come down to a gut feeling on that day," said Kerman Maddox, a businessman and political consultant in South Central Los Angeles. "Are [blacks] comfortable having a Latino mayor in the city of Los Angeles, and do they think Latino gains will come at their expense?"

The nation's second-largest metropolis is sharply divided by geography and ethnicity, with no one dominant group. For decades, candidates have succeeded by cobbling together coalitions -- some of them seemingly unlikely. Five-term mayor Tom Bradley did it first by bringing together Jewish and black voters. Villaraigosa came out on top of crowded primary races this spring and in 2001, thanks to his appeal to both working-class Latinos and wealthy liberals.

But Hahn, a former city prosecutor, ultimately beat Villaraigosa in a runoff four years ago, owing to his strengths with conservative white suburbanites and blacks, many of them loyal to his father, a longtime county supervisor and civil rights icon. In addition, focus group discussions conducted with black voters at the time revealed a serious reluctance to support a Latino candidate, said Democratic consultant Darry Sragow.

"It had to do with a strong sense that every immigrant group that shows up in this country then blows right past African Americans in terms of opportunity and economic growth," Sragow said.

Despite winning an astounding 80 percent of the black vote, Hahn soon found himself at odds with some of his base after he urged an appointed commission not to renew the contract of the city's African American police chief, Bernard Parks. Hahn said the chief had failed to prevent a major corruption scandal.

Parks retaliated by running for and winning a seat on the City Council, then running for mayor. He placed fourth in the March balloting despite winning a majority of black votes, according to exit polls.

Now, Parks is one of several prominent African American leaders who have endorsed Villaraigosa, among them former Hahn supporters such as Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and former basketball star and businessman Earvin "Magic" Johnson. Another, Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, said Hahn's support in the black community was inherited from his father and never ran deep.

"I really just got to this point looking over what has happened over the last four years, and I was very disappointed," Burke said. "At some point, you have to consider other things than just knowing people for a long time."

She and other black supporters, though, insist that their votes are not just a rejection of Hahn but a matter of finding common ground with Villaraigosa.

"He's real," said Kevin Pickett, director of a center for AIDS patients in South Central Los Angeles, noting Villaraigosa's rise from an impoverished childhood. "If you've been down and out and struggled, you can identify with Antonio Villaraigosa and what he has to say."

Observers note that the past reluctance among African Americans to support a Latino candidate was a natural wariness about change that can be easily overcome. "Once an idea has been out there for four years, it seems a little less like a perilous jump," said Raphael Sonenshein, a political scientist at California State University at Fullerton.

But Hahn's campaign spokesman, Kam Kuwata, argued that black voters, along with voters across the city, will return to the tried and true: "In terms of trying to find ways to build more affordable housing, to make the city services more accessible, I think people of color understand this is a mayor who has done these things."

While a Los Angeles Times poll a month ago showed Villaraigosa leading Hahn 52 percent to 32 percent among black voters, the gap appeared to narrow last week, with 40 percent of black voters saying they favored Hahn vs. 43 percent for Villaraigosa.

"They might flirt with somebody else," Kuwata said, "but at the end of the day, you stay with what has worked."

In his efforts to broaden his appeal beyond traditional ethnic lines, moreover, Villaraigosa may not have done enough to energize his Latino base -- many of whom feel he has not adequately represented their needs in his current role as a City Council member, said Gabriel Gutierrez, director of the Center for the Study of the People of the Americas at California State University at Northridge.

At Tolliver's Barber Shop a political hot spot in South Los Angeles, Freddie Ford -- a black veteran of World War II -- mulled over the election. "I don't think the city is ready" for a Latino mayor, he said. "Everywhere you go, from the hot dog stands to the service stations, Hispanics have the jobs."

Ford defended Hahn's decision to let go of Parks, whose popularity in the black community was by no means unanimous. "He wasn't fired," Ford said. "He just wasn't reinstated, that's all."

Shop owner Lawrence Tolliver shook his head. Though declining to say how he intends to vote, he argued that political change is inevitable in a rapidly changing city.

"We're going to have a Hispanic mayor sooner or later," he said.