The Logic Behind L.A. Politics Begins at the Ballot Box

Every four years, shortly before the California primary, a colleague gives a party for political junkies like myself. The guests include members of the foreign and national press corps here to cover the election, local journalists and commentators, leading political activists and a sprinkling of elected officials.

It’s the sort of affair where pride of place goes neither to the most attractive nor the wittiest guest, but to the person in possession of the most complete set of numbers from the latest Field Poll.

This time around, however, there was a palpable difference in the conversation. Most of the people had more questions than answers--a novel event in a basically know-it-all crowd--and over all hung a perceptible air of unease.

At one point, I found myself standing in a group that included the former head of a national presidential campaign, an influential Democratic congressman and a political analyst for a television network.

They were seriously discussing what might happen if Ross Perot’s candidacy threw this year’s national election into the House of Representatives--something that hasn’t happened since 1826. (Their consensus was that, whatever the Constitution may say, contemporary political realities dictate that the House elect the candidate who received the largest number of popular votes.)

All agreed that the very possibility of such an event represented a crisis of the two-party system unmatched for decades.

A little later, out on the porch, a small group of smokers gathered. Things being what they are around here, it consisted of myself and four visiting journalists--two from Britain, one from Spain and one from Washington. They wanted to talk about the Los Angeles riot. And, as I answered their questions as best I could, it became clear to us all that the situation we were discussing also involved a crisis of representative institutions.

In fact, to understand what has occurred in Los Angeles over the past weeks, it is necessary to recognize that this city has undergone a series of crises--each of which has gone unresolved and, therefore, has led to the next. The most recent was the crisis of civic order we call a riot. It was preceded and, in large part caused, by an economic crisis in which the incomes and opportunities of the city’s minority people plummeted, while those of white Los Angeles rose. That crisis was preceded and, in some measure caused, by a classic failure of democratic institutions.

The depth of that failure was brought home to me this week, when I examined some of the demographic data used to formulate the redistricting plan recently approved by the Los Angeles City Council. Consider these facts:

While more than half of all the people who live in Los Angeles now are nonwhite and non-Anglo, 64.8% of all registered voters are white. Only 20.9% of registered voters are black and the figures for Latinos and Asian-Americans--11.1% and 3.2% respectively--are even more dismal.

The five council districts with the highest numbers of registered voters all are represented by white council members--Zev Yaroslavsky, Marvin Braude, Hal Bernson, Ruth Galanter and Joy Picus. Together, they represent 1,174,559 Angelenos--69% of them white and 52% of whom are registered to vote. These, by the way, are also the districts with the highest levels of income and education.

The five council districts with the lowest numbers of registered voters all are--or are likely to be--represented by minority council members--Mike Hernandez, Michael Woo, Rita Walters, Richard Alatorre and the projected Latino successor to retiring member Ernardi Bernardi. Together, they represent 1,147,217 people--75% of them Latino and 21% of whom are registered to vote. Their districts also include the poorest and least-educated Angelenos.

Mike Hernandez’s 1st district, which has the city’s lowest percentage of registered voters (15%) is 74.9% Latino, and while he represents nearly a quarter of a million people, he was elected to office by just 5,352 votes.

Numbers like these have practical consequences. As one elected city official said to me this week:

“White elected officials pander to the interests of the people who elected them, even though those people are a minority and their interests are not the same as the interest of most of the people who live here. How could it be any other way?

“The logic of our democratic system is that you pay most of your attention to the people who elect you. Most of the people who elect us to office in Los Angeles are well-educated, affluent white people. We listen to them. Some of us listen to everybody else, if we have the time. Mostly we don’t.”

That is clear from this fact: Over the last decade, the percentage of Angelenos born in a foreign country rose from 27% to nearly 40%. Over that period, the city enacted not one single program and appropriated not one cent from its general revenues for any purpose directed at the needs of immigrants.

As the same elected official told me, “Things like that will change when you give an immigrant at 6th and Alvarado the same ability to put the mayor or their councilman out on the street that somebody in Woodland Hills has. That isn’t likely to happen, but until it does, I don’t think much is going to change.”

That’s probably true, but unless it does Los Angeles will continue to be misgoverned by a system one electoral expert, who worked on the recent redistricting, described to me as “political apartheid.”

As he put it, “What else would you call a system in which 600,000 people who belong to a racial and economic minority--affluent whites--are allowed to make all the decisions for more than 4 million poor people of another race and ethnic group?”

What indeed? Which is exactly what preoccupied us on that smoke-filled porch.