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Issues of Race Grip Los Angeles Mayoral Contest
All the candidates in this hotly contested mayoral race pledge to
unify the city's widely diverse ethnic groups -- a promise made and
broken before
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Pacific News Service
LOS ANGELES - Mar 01, 2005 - The hotly contested March 8 mayoral race
in Los Angeles has put a spotlight on the contentious issues of urban
racial balkanization, white flight, surging Latino voter strength,
declining black political power and police abuse. Two of the top
challengers in the race, California State Sen. Richard Alarcon and Los
Angeles City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa are politically savvy and
nationally known Latino candidates. Villaraigosa was a national co-chair
of Sen. John Kerry’s presidential campaign.
Alarcon and Villariagosa have made no overt appeals to Latino voters.
But if either one wins, he would become the first Latino mayor in modern
times to run the nation’s second-biggest city. That would be a major
boost for Latino political power in Los Angeles and in California, the
nation’s most populous state. Latinos now make up nearly half of the
city’s 3.8 million residents. In the past decade their vote numbers have
nearly tripled. They now account for one in five Los Angeles voters.
Many Latinos have prospered in the professions and business and have
deepened their influence within the Democratic and Republican parties.
Latino political leaders and activists relentlessly demand that
political and social issues no longer be framed solely in black and
white.
As Latino voting strength has grown, black voting strength has declined
in Los Angeles and in California. The number of blacks in the state
legislature has plunged in the past decade. In Los Angeles, Latinos now
make up the majority of the population in what were once exclusively or
predominantly African-American neighborhoods in South Central Los
Angeles. The number of black elected officials in Los Angeles almost
certainly will erode further in the next decade.
These facts have deeply worried some African-American leaders. A win in
the mayor’s race would be a chance to stop the political hemorrhaging.
Many black leaders have rallied behind the candidacy of Bernard Parks,
an African-American. During a contentious term as LAPD chief, Parks and
the department garnered national headlines following the 1999 shooting
of Margaret Laverne Mitchell, a middle-aged, homeless African-American
woman. The killing sparked massive protests and renewed demands for LAPD
reform.
Parks was a popular, reform-minded chief, but he bumped heads with the
mostly white police union. The city’s white mayor, James Hahn,
unceremoniously dumped him. African-American leaders screamed racism and
betrayal. They had overwhelmingly backed Hahn for election largely on
the promise that he’d retain Parks as chief if elected. Parks banks
heavily on the anger and long memory of black voters to help put him
over the top.
The recent shooting of an African-American teen, allegedly while fleeing
from police, again dumped the hot-button issue of police violence back
on the city and nation’s political table. The mayor and the other
candidates have promised to make LAPD reform a priority issue.
Mayoral candidates have repeatedly promised reform in the past. Yet, the
issue of police violence continues to tatter relations between the LAPD
and African-Americans in Los Angeles. Whoever wins the top spot again
will be called upon to fulfill that promise. Elected officials in other
cities will be watching closely to see if that happens.
White flight has also inflamed passions during the campaign. Another top
candidate, former California Assembly speaker Robert Hertzberg, has
demanded the breakup of the Los Angeles school district, which is
predominantly black and Latino. This is a not-so veiled effort to pander
to suburban whites. In the 1970s and 1980s, white parents waged bitter
court fights, lobbied the state legislature, and sponsored ballot
initiatives to split the district. That would have created a two-tiered
system in which white students attended better-funded, high-achieving
suburban schools, and blacks and Latinos remained trapped in poorer,
grossly underserved inner city schools.
California’s Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has endorsed
Hertzberg, another signal to conservatives to line up behind Hertzberg.
Villaraigosa has barnstormed through the city promising to forge a
multi-ethnic coalition. If he can pull it off, that could serve as a
model for racial peace and progress in Los Angeles and beyond. Four
years ago, though, Villaraigosa’s multi-ethnic pitch fell on deaf ears
in black communities. He got less than one-fifth of the black vote.
Blacks went overwhelmingly for Hahn. While Hahn won’t get much of the
black vote this time around, the real test for multi-ethnic politics is
whether enough blacks, Latinos and whites can resist the tacit and overt
racial appeals and vote for the candidate that has the best program to
combat the city’s towering urban and racial ills.
Mayor Hahn and his challengers have publicly promised to unify the
city’s widely diverse ethnic groups, a promise made and broken time and
time again. This election is yet another chance for the candidates to
keep that promise. The nation is watching.
PNS contributor Earl Ofari Hutchinson is author of
the forthcoming "Beyond Michael Jackson: The Clash of Celebrity, Sex and
Race" (AuthorHouse Press, April 2005).
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