>What I say? That white-dominated Green politics should not throw stones.
>When the Green legislator in Oakland was elected to the state legislature,
>the white Green candidate succeeded partly by gaining the support of white
>Oaklanders opposed to her black opponent. And there was some pretty racist
>undertones to the comments about that opponent noting his providing fried
>chicken to his supporters.
Wall Street Journal - June 4, 2001
Los Angeles Mayoral Race Highlights Tension Between Black, Hispanic Voters
By JOHN HARWOOD Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
LOS ANGELES -- Mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa's bid to harness growing Latino political power is running into a formidable obstacle: a wall of resistance from African-American voters.
While Mr. Villaraigosa has galvanized the support of a Hispanic community that now has parity with whites in the Los Angeles population, more than seven in 10 blacks are backing his mayoral rival, James Hahn, who is white. That stark disparity is due largely to the legacy of Mr. Hahn's late father, a politician revered for good works in the African-American community.
But simmering social and economic tensions between blacks and Hispanics also are helping to polarize a campaign that pits two Democratic contenders with similar left-of-center views. "If the Spanish guy gets in there, he's going to open doors for the Spanish," says retired municipal worker Albert Vernon, who is black, standing outside a Hahn campaign event in the largely African-American community of Crenshaw. A Hahn victory, he adds, means "more doors being opened for blacks."
Those tensions could resonate in the nation's second-largest city well beyond Tuesday's election. Mr. Hahn, who led by seven percentage points in last week's Los Angeles Times poll, is closing his campaign with attacks on Mr. Villaraigosa's trustworthiness that some Hispanics say play on negative ethnic stereotypes. Mr. Villaraigosa, a son of Mexican immigrants, compares them to the tactics used three decades ago by white mayoral candidate Sam Yorty, who critics said exploited the racial fears of conservative whites to hold off his black opponent Tom Bradley. Only this time, Mr. Hahn seeks to combine moderate and conservative whites in the San Fernando Valley with African-Americans, in an unusual coalition opposing Mr. Villaraigosa's blend of Latinos and white liberals on the city's West side.
New Census Data
Los Angeles is hardly the only place where such tensions are flaring. New Census figures show Hispanics are surpassing blacks and becoming the nation's largest minority. (There's some overlap between the two groups, but in California it is small; less than 1% of Hispanics statewide also identify themselves as black in the 2000 census.) Rivalry between the groups seems likely to multiply as the Hispanic contingent seeks to convert its increasing numbers into political power.
In Houston, a Cuban-American City Council member is challenging incumbent Mayor Lee Brown, an African-American. In New York, Hispanic mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer's attempt to forge a multiethnic coalition has run into trouble over black activist Al Sharpton's insistence that Mr. Ferrer grant reciprocal support for black politicians. Mr. Ferrer declined to do so.
"There's going to be a certain amount of polarization," says U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, an African-American lawmaker whose Harlem-based district now has more Hispanics than blacks. "In some of the races, it can get nasty."
What fuels the competition is demographic change, from urban centers to communities in the Deep South. In largely black Oakland, Calif., where Hispanics swelled to 22% of the population from 14% during the 1990s, African-Americans chafed earlier this year when Mayor Jerry Brown [the former California governor] backed a move to require workers in some city departments to be bilingual. In Georgia, where the Hispanic population tripled during the 1990s, black legislators this year delayed legislation providing tax benefits to firms that hire Hispanic subcontractors; the legislation subsequently passed after lawmakers determined it would have had only a small impact on other minority-owned firms with whom the new beneficiaries would be competing.
As minority groups with shared interests in issues of health, education and economic advancement, blacks and Hispanics tend to identify with the Democratic Party, though to different degrees. Nine in 10 blacks supported Democrat Al Gore over Republican George W. Bush last fall, as did six in 10 Hispanics.
But competition between the two groups poses opportunities for Republicans, who view the Hispanic community as a prime target for swelling their minority voter constituency. Outgoing Mayor Richard Riordan, a Republican considering running for governor next year, has endorsed Mr. Villaraigosa, a former Democratic speaker of the California Assembly.
Voters in Election
All told, blacks are expected to comprise roughly 14% of Tuesday's electorate here, while Hispanics are expected to be 20% or slightly more. Both Mr. Villaraigosa and Mr. Hahn, the longtime City Attorney, say they are vigorously seeking support across the spectrum of this city's diverse population. Mr. Villaraigosa eschews appeals to Latino solidarity, and claims success in attracting younger black supporters less swayed by memories of Mr. Hahn's father. Mr. Hahn has won endorsements from some Latino politicians and voters alike. The Los Angeles Times poll showed Mr. Hahn leading among white voters 47% to 40%, the same percentage as in the poll's sample of all voters.
But they are campaigning against a backdrop of strains between the two communities that flared during the 1990s amid riots over the Rodney King police-brutality case and later California's Proposition 187. Many Hispanics among other nonblack minorities felt threatened by the rioting that erupted following the arrest and beating of Mr. King. Meanwhile, nearly half of blacks voted for Proposition 187, which aimed to deny some public services to illegal immigrants.
Since then, continued immigration has brought increasing numbers of Hispanics into the low-income African-American enclaves of South-Central Los Angeles as well as the more upscale black neighborhoods of Crenshaw. At Crenshaw High School, where Darryl Strawberry once starred on the baseball diamond, Hispanics have swelled to 23% of the student body from 1% in 1980.
"There's some tension out there," says Mr. Hahn, who spent his early years in a South-Central Los Angeles neighborhood that he says included whites, blacks and Latinos. An important challenge for the new mayor will be building greater harmony, he adds, which in turn could help "write the blueprint for other cities" facing similar issues.
Campaign Controversy
Meantime, some Latino observers complain, his campaign may be making matters worse. They see derogatory stereotypes about Hispanics in Mr. Hahn's attacks on Mr. Villaraigosa's positions on antigang initiatives. In recent days, his campaign has aired an ad depicting images of cocaine, followed by an image of Mr. Villaraigosa. The ad attacks Mr. Villaraigosa for having written a letter supporting the successful attempt by convicted drug trafficker Carlos Vignali to win commutation of his prison sentence. Mr. Villaraigosa has termed the letter a mistake.
"Los Angeles can't trust Antonio Villaraigosa," the ad concludes. Separately, U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, a prominent African-American politician, complained in Crenshaw last week that the ex-speaker "sold us out on police racial profiling" by supporting weaker prohibitions than Mr. Hahn has backed.
The Hahn campaign is "playing the race card," says Harry Pachon, director of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, which studies Latino attitudes. "It has the potential to exacerbate longstanding tensions."
Mr. Hahn and his backers defend their campaign as targeting his opponent's record, not his ethnicity. It is the Villaraigosa campaign that wants voters to think Mr. Hahn is "just for the blacks and not for other people," says elementary school teacher Jimmie Woods-Gray. She was sitting in the Hahn campaign's Crenshaw headquarters where phone-bank volunteers say they have had another successful evening of calls to identify and motivate Hahn supporters.