Last stand in Inglewood

AS AN ANXIOUS nation gears up for a midterm election that’s as high-stakes as any in recent memory, I’m already starting to sweat it out in my corner of the country, Inglewood.

It’s not just Congress I’m sweating about. Inglewood is holding its mayoral election Tuesday, and the old adage about all politics being local never felt so true. For the last month, the rhetoric of entrenched power has grown more shrill as the forces of change are finally making serious headway in challenging those in charge. I, for one, am glad. Inglewood has stagnated too long under the current mayor, who treats the populace less like constituents and more like subjects of his fiefdom.

To ratchet things up, the Inglewood election is also partly a referendum on the state of local black leadership; it’s one of the last places in Southern California with a significant black population represented by a significant number of black elected officials. That will certainly shift as the Latino numbers increase. Add to this mix a feeling that this election might be a last stand for black candidates used to running on platforms that freely -- and often hypocritically -- fuse pledges of economic, community and cultural progress.

In the incumbent corner is Roosevelt Dorn. Dorn is a former Juvenile Court judge and longtime minister who plies his judicial and religious credentials to enlist the support of Inglewood’s black, generally cautious middle-class voters. His motto this time is “Inglewood on the Move,” a reference mainly to the dozens of chain stores -- Target, Jamba Juice -- that once shunned hard-luck Inglewood but have sprouted like wild mushrooms along Century Boulevard over the last several years.

Dorn is also known for his dictatorial, my-way-or-the-highway style that has raised serious ethical questions during his tenure. (Full disclosure: In 2005, Dorn sued my father, Larry Aubry, a columnist for the Los Angeles Sentinel, over assertions made in a column that Dorn took $40,000 in kickbacks from the developers of Wal-Mart. The suit was eventually dismissed.)

The latest question involves a $500,000 low-interest loan the mayor took out from a city program meant to encourage executives -- city managers and the like -- to buy primary homes in Inglewood. Public records show that Dorn used about $240,000 to pay off his own mortgage and requested the other $260,000 in a personal check. The mayor has insisted that he’s done nothing wrong, though the city attorney has said the deal potentially violates a provision of the City Charter that prohibits elected officials from entering into any kind of contract with the city.

Meanwhile, the discontent over business-as-usual has grown into an opposition more critical, more politicized and better funded than in elections past. The two candidates running against Dorn, Councilwoman Judy Dunlap and labor activist/former Councilman Daniel Tabor, are hammering away at the mayor’s ethics and his leadership, including his leadership on the Century Boulevard developments that he touts as his best argument for reelection. Why, critics ask, did Inglewood sell the land it owned to developers so cheaply, a mere quarter of the market value? Why does Inglewood sell itself short? Embedded in the back-and-forth are questions of expectations, aspirations and self-worth that have dogged black communities for years and that are now finding expression in debates over land value. Surely there’s more to it -- to us -- than suburban amenities like a Jamba Juice or a Target.

Then there’s crime, the eternal boogeyman of even the most prosperous black communities. In one of his mailers, Dorn dons judge’s robes and claims to be “tough enough to turn Inglewood around.” His opponents use shadowy photos of men behind bars with tattooed faces to make the point that Dorn has prettied up crime statistics to bolster his reformer image. It seems odd that the more progressive factions in town are the ones highlighting crime instead of accusing the establishment of doing it to instill fear in the citizenry and guarantee votes.

But winning is paramount on both sides, and, as I said, the stakes are high. Will the old guard stand? Will a new guard mean anything substantially different, not just for blacks but for all of a changing Inglewood? Whatever happens Tuesday, we probably won’t know who really won for some time.