Fault Lines Below Latino Politicians

The power struggle over control of the Los Angeles Unified School District last year highlighted a question first raised seriously in the mid-1990s: What might the inexorable advance of Latino politics have in store for Los Angeles and California? The question will loom larger as Latinos become the majority population in L.A. County and win more and more statewide and local offices. Furthermore, for the first time ever, two prominent Latinos, Assembly Speaker Antonio R. Villaraigosa and Rep. Xavier Becerra, have declared their candidacies for mayor of Los Angeles.

In answering the question, it’s important to focus on two facts of the ‘90s that will shadow Latino politics in the new century. One is that the general political landscape will remain riven with fault lines. When an issue activates one of these enduring sources of tension, some pressure may be released--and political damage can be done--but the fault doesn’t go away. The school board’s awkward attempt to reorganize authority at the expense of a Latino superintendent set off one such fault line: the disparity between an overwhelmingly Latino district, on the one hand, and a board whose membership included just one Latina, on the other.

Immigration, especially illegal immigration, is another notorious California fault line dividing heavily immigrant communities from the majority of voters who passed Proposition 187. Its activation energized the Latino electorate, which altered the political landscape. Discontent in the San Fernando Valley describes a divide of another sort, one not specifically ethnic. The secessionist fault line threatens to redraw the map of both city and school district.

The second fact is the large number of Latino politicians first elected in the 1990s. This generation of politicos aspires to dominate Latino and, ultimately, L.A. and California politics for decades to come. Their ambition has compelled them to become a different group of Latino politicians, one that cannot exclusively rely on Latino votes to succeed.

The question is whether this new breed of Latino politician, ever mindful of broadening his or her appeal, can navigate the state’s and city’s treacherous sociopolitical fault lines and still advance electorally. The record isn’t all that encouraging.

A common denominator for successful entry-level Latino candidates in the ‘90s was that they were relatively nonthreatening, which distinguished them from the old guard first elected in the ‘70s and ‘80s. In particular, Latina candidates enjoyed unprecedented success because they were perceived as sincere and more interested in solving problems than acquiring power. But even more Latino men than women were elected in the same period, and, in general, their appeal was different.

The ‘90s Latinas are a highly diverse lot, ranging from longtime community leaders such as Rep. Grace F. Napolitano and Assemblywoman Nell Soto, to left-leaning activists like school-board member Victoria Castro and Assemblywoman Gloria Romero, to centrist professional women such as Rep. Loretta Sanchez and state Sen. Martha Escutia.

By comparison, L.A.’s Latinos seem remarkably alike, from Becerra, first elected to the state Assembly in 1990, to Villaraigosa, first elected in 1994, and Councilmen Alex Padilla and Nick Pacheco, winners last year. Roughly speaking, they were the political equivalent in their inaugural races of Oscar De La Hoya. They tended to be younger, athletic, smoothly articulate, experienced in campaign field operations and focused on rising quickly up the electoral ladder.

Along with Assemblymen Tony Cardenas, Gil Cedillo, Marco A. Firebaugh and Abel Maldonado, state Sen. Richard Alarcon and even Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera, who served in the Assembly from 1992 to ‘97, the ‘90s Latino generation shared a crossover appeal, at least in their first elections. They generally presented themselves as highly educated good sons who selflessly returned from college to serve their community almost as if it were an extension of their families.

Their combination of formal academic achievement and polite demeanor made them presumptively successful and worthy in the minds of Latino voters, while certifying them as impressively assimilated and capable in the eyes of non-Latinos. Furthermore, their youthful vigor in their first campaigns, all marked by marathon precinct walking, gave them a patina of innocence, sincerity and even quaint civic idealism.

Previous Latino leaders have been identified almost exclusively as champions of Latino interests. But such one-dimensionality is anathema to the ambitions of the ‘90s Latino politicos.

Alarcon, for example, was the San Fernando Valley’s breakthrough Latino candidate in the ‘90s. His innovation was to define himself as a Valley man, which obligated him to maneuver around the nettlesome secessionist fault line. With his eyes on the mayor’s office, Alarcon has always opposed Valley secession, though he supported procedures that would allow Valley voters to decide the question themselves. Furthermore, the state senator has long backed demands to separate the Valley from the LAUSD.

Even insiders have forgotten that Alarcon was the first-mentioned Latino candidate in next year’s mayoral race, and he plotted to parlay his dual identity as a Valley Latino into a citywide campaign, using his bid for the state Senate as a stepping stone. But in his race against former Assemblyman Richard Katz in 1998, Alarcon stumbled, and his mayoral aspirations were overturned by a Jewish-Latino fault line unexpectedly triggered by a controversial 11th-hour campaign mailer.

Villaraigosa also has long identified himself as more than a Latino politician, trumpeting his organized-labor background and his Westside-based, ACLU-style liberal politics. He has woven these messages together in his mayoral bid, defining himself as the best person to close L.A.’s widening socioeconomic divide. His commitment to a broad-based political approach compelled him to disavow Latino-only efforts to reverse the school board’s emasculation of Superintendent Ruben Zacarias, which drew criticism from many ethnic activists.

Villaraigosa has been conciliatory on the Valley secessionist issue, while soft-pedaling his personal opposition. He has even risked alienating his labor allies by not opposing the breakup of LAUSD. By contrast, County Supervisor Gloria Molina says she won’t run for mayor because, among other things, she would tell the Valley, in no uncertain terms, that she opposes secession.

But the city’s fault lines threaten to trap the ‘90s Latino politicians between their ambitions, which call for some daring, and their early success pursuing a cautious crossover strategy. Villaraigosa won himself some precious early media attention when he boldly claimed that L.A.’s deepening inequality is a mayoral issue, but his temporizing in the Zacarias controversy had no payoff. Becerra, who enjoys a reputation as a fist-pounding ethnic pol, has, so far, been cautious to the point of invisibility in his mayoral bid.

These political golden boys might take a lesson from De La Hoya, who lost his title last September in a perplexing display of excessive restraint.

The ‘90s generation of Latino politicians is jockeying to lead the ethnic transition in Los Angeles and California politics. In order to climb the political ladder rapidly, they strive to build coalitions that bridge the many social and political fault lines crisscrossing the region. The main reason for their strategy is timing. Although Latinos will soon be the majority in the city and county, they will only account for a minority of votes for years to come--probably just 20% in next year’s mayoral election--for a combination of reasons, including citizenship and age.

But for Latinos and Latinas who cut their political teeth in the ‘90s, the future is now. Made anxious by their dreams, term limits and the inevitable competition, rivalries and jealousies increasingly visible among them, they cannot wait for Latino citizenship drives to catch up with their surging ambitions. *