Los Angeles: Despite their growing clout, there aren’t enough Latino voters to elect a Latino.

With Mayor Riordan having less than four years left in office because of term limits, the mayoral campaign of 2001 already has started. Even at this early date, one element of the outcome safely can be predicted: The next mayor of Los Angeles will come from the Jewish community.

The breakdown of voters in April’s election was 65% white, 13% black and 4% Asian. Although Los Angeles has a Latino majority, Latinos were only 15% of the voters who participated. Accordingly, with white voters divided by ideology and religion, the next mayor probably will come from the second-largest bloc of voters: the Jewish community. The reason is simple: Jewish voters play a key moderating “swing” role in big-city elections, and there will be a gap between white conservatives in the San Fernando Valley and Los Angeles’ emerging Latino vote.

With the mayoral race wide open in 2001, we are likely to see the first major push to elect a Latino mayor. Turnout among Latinos should reach 20% to 25% of the voters, making them the biggest single bloc (whites are the biggest single racial group, but are sharply divided among moderates, liberals and conservatives).

With 19% of the voters in 1993 and 16% in 1997, Jews will have the second largest ethnic bloc. The share of the electorate of all white voters, including Jews, also is in decline from 72% in 1993 to 65% in 1997.

In presidential elections, the swing votes are cast by lower-middle class white Christians in places like the Valley and San Pedro. However, in big-city mayoral races, the spectrum shifts leftward, and these same moderate voters line up solidly behind conservative candidates, particularly when a minority runs. Urban minorities vote solidly for the more liberal candidates who depend on overwhelming support from middle and upper class Jews for their margin of victory.

For example, Tom Bradley became the city’s first black mayor in 1973 by winning all the black vote along with a majority of Latinos, about a third of white Christians and almost 80% of the Jewish vote. It was Richard Riordan’s ability to win almost half the Jewish vote in 1993 that combined with a 80% bloc vote from white Christians to seal his victory.

The key for a Jewish candidate to win in 2001 is to get at least 75% of the Jewish vote and about 10% of the rest of the city. Once in the finals, a Jewish candidate will have options not available to others. If he draws a minority opponent (probably a Latino, but possibly also a black), he automatically will become the “white candidate” to conservative voters and sweep the Valley by default. As Riordan proved, a coalition of the Valley and Jews is quite strong.

On the other hand, if a Riordan clone makes the runoff, a Jewish politician could plausibly slide left to pick up the minority vote and revive the Bradley coalition. A Jewish candidate in the runoff could run as a more moderate version of either Riordan or Bradley, depending on the opposition.

So if a Jewish candidacy for mayor is definitely viable, who will it be? The individuals mentioned most often are council members Laura Chick and Joel Wachs, county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky and Rep. Howard Berman. All have the advantage of representing part of the San Fernando Valley. We even could see a Jewish Republican running in Steve Soboroff, a successful businessman who would be the person most likely to reassemble Riordan’s coalition. The key is getting only one of them to run and holding on to all of his or her co-religionists in the primary.

When any minority group makes its first big push for empowerment, it usually falls short--as Tom Bradley did in 1969 before returning in 1973 to dominate city politics for two full decades. Given the continuing ethnic tensions demonstrated by Propositions 187 and 209, even a strong Latino candidate may not be able to win the support of the one-third of whites necessary to win citywide. Since the Latino community alone probably won’t quite be strong enough to elect one of its own mayor in 2001, a well-organized, well-positioned Jewish candidate will step into the breach.