Nathan Newman's friend, Maxime Walters, is particularly disgusting, claiming that Hahn is "just another boy from the 'Hood".
What do Democratic party supporters say to this? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Race issue permeates L.A. mayor contest
Thursday, May 31, 2001
Mercury News Los Angeles Bureau
LOS ANGELES -- As the spirited mayoral contest in America's second-largest city enters its final days, the subject that has repeatedly vexed Los Angeles -- race -- has emerged again with the formation of political alliances seldom seen here.
Supporters of Antonio Villaraigosa, the former Assembly speaker, had hoped that a multi-ethnic coalition would make him the first Latino to win the mayor's office in more than a century.
But in the last week of the campaign, his opponent, James K. Hahn, who is white, has come from behind by building an unlikely coalition of centrist to conservative whites and liberal African-Americans.
The election takes place as Los Angeles leaves behind a decade of remarkable demographic change and social upheaval. Latinos are on the verge of becoming a majority in a city that for years defined its politics in black and white.
Race has always been an especially contentious subject in the city, which has endured the Watts riots, the police beating of Rodney King and the polarizing O.J. Simpson trial.
In this campaign, race is playing a subtler but nevertheless pervasive role as voters prepare to cast their ballots Tuesday. Both black voters and moderate to conservative whites have become key constituencies to the election and both candidates are trying to win them over.
Villaraigosa and Hahn, the Los Angeles city attorney, are both young Democrats with moderate-to-liberal positions on economic development and quality-of-life issues. So the campaign has been played out not along ideological lines but largely according to experience, personality and other intangibles.
Public safety concerns
The polls are close, and either candidate could win. Though the issue of race may not determine the outcome, it has been a significant factor in the campaign, said Raphe Sonenshein, a political science professor at California State University-Fullerton. And to a great extent, he said, the race issue has been shrouded in a debate over public safety.
Hahn is blanketing the airwaves with messages focusing Villaraigosa seeking a presidential pardon for convicted cocaine kingpin Carlos Vignali, an action the former speaker later called a mistake. The narration unfolds against shadowy images of crack paraphernalia and slow-motion footage of Villaraigosa. ``Los Angeles can't trust Antonio Villaraigosa,'' the ad concludes.
Villaraigosa supporters -- including outgoing Republican Mayor Richard Riordan -- have denounced the ad as a thinly veiled attempt to play the race card.
But Hahn defends the spots. ``Everything in there is based on fact,'' he said this week.
The candidates have expressed their strongest differences on the public safety issue. Hahn emphasizes his use of anti-gang injunctions to clear the streets, while Villaraigosa, who came from a single-parent household and dropped out of high school, speaks of prevention, rehabilitation and second chances when discussing crime control.
Hahn and Villaraigosa are the two survivors of a 15-candidate primary in April. Both are trying to reach out to the 45 percent of voters -- many of them white -- who chose other candidates the first time.
Although Mayor Riordan, a moderate Republican, has endorsed Villaraigosa, many of his supporters are lining up behind Hahn, according to a Los Angeles Times poll. The city attorney enjoys a 20-percentage point lead among this group.
Among them is David Fleming, president of the Los Angeles fire commission, who likes Hahn's stand on public safety. ``I think he has done a better job of reaching out to the LAPD and giving them what they want,'' Fleming said.
Hahn grew up in the Crenshaw district, where the population has shifted from overwhelmingly white to mostly black in recent decades. His father, the late Kenneth Hahn, was a longtime county commissioner whom many African-Americans revered.
The primary
In the primary, Hahn gained 70 percent of the black vote citywide. He's also favored in the San Fernando Valley, where the voter base is somewhat whiter and more conservative than the rest of Los Angeles.
Villaraigosa, a former teachers union negotiator who spent six years in the state Assembly, overcame a 10 percent approval rating in early polls to lead the crowded primary field. Latino voters helped achieve that result, but so did Villaraigosa's crossover appeal to liberal whites from the affluent West Side, Asian-Americans and younger African-Americans.
Latinos now make up 46 percent of Los Angeles residents, according to the 2000 census. But they only cast 20 percent of the votes in the primary.
Whites delivered 52 percent, Asians 4 percent and African-Americans 20 percent.
Given their strong voter turnout, blacks have been eagerly courted by both campaigns.
And much of the ambivalence about demographic change that has surfaced during the campaign comes into sharpest focus among the city's African-Americans.
One elected official who endorsed Villaraigosa has had to justify his choice to constituents who contend he's selling out their community. At the same time, a lawmaker who supports Hahn has insisted there's no racial implication to her assertion that she doesn't know his opponent.
After a recent Hahn news conference, U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Los Angeles, who is black, extolled the city attorney as ``the boy next door. He's the boy from the 'hood.''
By contrast, Waters said, Villaraigosa is unknown to many black voters. ``I am someone who's been in politics for many years,'' she told reporters. ``You know when I met him? Last year!
``Who is Antonio Villaraigosa? Where did he really come from?''
Identity considerations
Troy Coleman, an accounting manager for an entertainment company, said he doesn't buy the idea that African-Americans and Latinos share much political or social common ground. Villaraigosa, he said, ``is talking about
Latinos as people of color, but on the census, half of them consider themselves white.''
According to recently released census data, 48 percent of Latinos nationwide -- and 40 percent in California -- identified their race as white or Caucasian. To Coleman, that translates into an eagerness to distance themselves from African-Americans and an unwillingness to acknowledge the civil rights struggles that helped black and brown citizens succeed.
The city council member whose South Los Angeles district includes the largest concentration of African-Americans has endorsed Villaraigosa. Mark Ridley-Thomas, who has known the former speaker for 20 years, believes his pledge of support helped political observers recognize that neither mayoral candidate could take black voters for granted.
``I think people will ultimately think I'm making a decision in our best interest,'' he said during a recent community meeting.
Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, believes the city's Latinos will mobilize strongly for the opportunity to elect the first Mexican-American mayor in their lifetimes.
``It's as significant as black voters gaining political power in Gary, Ind., and Detroit in the 1970s.''