Six leading Los Angeles mayoral race

LOS ANGELES
(March 17, 2001 1:29 p.m. EST) - It takes a special politician to lead this sprawling, fractured metropolis, with its newly arrived immigrants, millionaire movie stars and everything in between.

The city's legendary mayor of 20 years, Tom Bradley, did it by creating a coalition of blacks and white liberals. His successor, Richard Riordan, found his base in the conservative San Fernando Valley and later relied on support from white, Jewish and Hispanic voters throughout the city.

Now Riordan is being forced out by term limits, and six leading candidates are vying to replace him in the nation's second-largest city. They'll face off in a nonpartisan primary April 10 , and if none wins a clear majority the top two vote-getters will run in a June 5 general election.

The race "has national and international importance," said Raphael Sonenshein, a political scientist at California State University, Fullerton.

"What's going on in the whole world now is people are experimenting with how to run these urban cities," he said. "Los Angeles is a city that everyone is watching."

To triumph, a candidate must forge a new coalition from the shifting and competing interest groups spread across the city's 468 square miles and nearly 4 million residents.

The challenge comes at a critical time, with the federal government preparing to assume oversight of the police department and with secession movements afoot in the San Fernando Valley, Hollywood and the harbor area - where groups claim City Hall has been remote and unresponsive to their concerns.

"This is a city where people are distant from politics. And if you're going to bring the city together, you have to find a way to bridge that distance," Sonenshein said.

Analysts agree on some key factors in Los Angeles politics these days: the importance of votes from Hispanics - poised to become the city's new majority; the growing strength of organized labor; the continued importance of the San Fernando Valley, whose generally moderate and conservative residents vote in disproportionate numbers. The six leading candidates are struggling to assemble the right mix of alliances.

James Hahn, the city attorney and according to polls the leading candidate, said he's trying to follow in Bradley's footsteps by assembling a cross-cultural base.

Hahn's name is well-known in part because his late father was a longtime county supervisor beloved in the inner city. So Hahn, who is white, is basing his support in the black neighborhoods of south Los Angeles. He also is looking for support from labor and traditional moderates and liberals.

U.S. Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Los Angeles, and former state Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, are seeking to become the city's first Hispanic leader in more than a century. Each is running despite worries by some Hispanic leaders that they will split the Hispanic vote.

While Hispanics are close to 50 percent of the population, they made up only 14 percent of voters in the 1997 mayor's race. That number is expected to rise to about 20 percent this year.

City Councilman Joel Wachs, a fiscally conservative independent, and businessman Steve Soboroff, the one Republican in the race and Riordan's chosen successor, are both looking for conservative voters in the San Fernando Valley and throughout the city. State Controller Kathleen Connell is hoping to base her support among women.

Whoever wins will face a host of challenges, from threatened secession to police reform. Organized labor is newly emboldened by successful strikes by janitors and bus drivers, and a possible walkout by actors and writers could cripple Hollywood. Meanwhile, a new city charter will give the mayor more power and demand more accountability.

"We are really politically and demographically going to be a new city to govern for whoever gets there," said David Diaz, an urban studies professor at California State University, Northridge.

Analysts agree that a key task for the new mayor is to project a compelling vision for the city's future. In a huge city broken into hundreds of different neighborhoods, analysts said, residents must share a common idea of their city or risk growing increasingly splintered.

"Los Angeles has so many possible different futures now, one of which is to blow up completely," Sonenshein said. "The new mayor has a selling job to do - selling the city to itself."

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