The ebullient Villaraigosa, a former union organizer and speaker of the California Assembly, had maintained a slight lead over the reserved (some say stiff) Hahn since the primary vote on April 10. Both Hahn and Villaraigosa are Democrats, there was little difference between the two on major issues; during debates, they often ended up agreeing with one and other. But Villaraigosa’s mayoral bid had captured international attention, as well as the hopes of Latinos seeking to propel one of their own to the top job in a city governed for the last eight years by multimillionaire Republican businessman Richard Riordan. (Term limits required Riordan to step down.) And Villaraigosa had amassed an impressive and diverse roster of supporters, ranging from Riordan to California Gov. Gray Davis, Sen. Barbara Boxer, the state Democratic party, the League of Women Voters, the Los Angeles Times and some of the city’s wealthiest people, such as developer Eli Broad and supermarket magnate Ron Burkle.
Then the letter became an issue. It was a 1996 request to President Clinton to commute the sentence of convicted drug dealer Carlos Vignali, one of many written by L.A. politicians who, like Villaraigosa, received campaign contributions from Vignali’s father. Clinton’s commutation of Vignali’s sentence right before leaving office caused an uproar, and Villaraigosa said he was sorry he had ever written the letter. But the damage was done. The Hahn campaign made the document a centerpiece of its characterization of Villaraigosa as soft on crime. One advertisement that began running during the campaign’s final weeks opened with a crack pipe over an open flame, cut to a grainy, sinister image of Villaraigosa and closed by labeling him as someone “Los Angeles cannot trust.”
In the end, Hahn pulled together a voting bloc that one commentator called “the most unlikely hodgepodge coalition Los Angeles has ever seen.” Hahn attracted the conservative Anglo vote, who said they liked the fact that Hahn has held elective office in L.A. for 20 years, first as city controller, and, since 1985, as city attorney. He also won strong support from the city’s African-American population. Hahn’s father, the late Kenneth Hahn, served four decades as a county supervisor representing a primarily African-American constituency in South-Central Los Angeles. “The Hahn victory is due to the strong dynasty dynamic,” says civil-rights attorney and activist Connie Rice. “The children of prominent leaders always have a presumption of validity. Hahn’s father was the first legislator to bring resources to a very beleaguered and powerless African-American community in the ’40s and ’50s. That was a big part of his appeal.”
But with Latinos comprising some 47 percent of L.A.’s population, the loss of city hall is unlikely to signal a political retreat, says political scientist and author Raphael Sonenshein. “Latinos have truly arrived at the doorstep here.”
That’s true not just in L.A. New census figures show a surging Latino population in Iowa, Florida and other parts of the country. Inevitably, Hispanic immigrants are reshaping communities-and politics. “People should give Villaraigosa enormous credit,” Sonenshein says. “It’s always risky to be the first minority candidate of your group. Change happens in stages.” And as L.A.’s Latinos have discovered, change isn’t easy.
