WASHINGTON — The biggest elections news next month will be whether Manhattan Borough President David N. Dinkins becomes the first black mayor of New York City and whether Lt. Gov. L. Douglas Wilder becomes the first black governor of Virginia--or any other state.
The underlying question in both contests: Can a black candidate be elected in a constituency where blacks are a relatively small minority? While the outcomes of the November races are still too close to call, Californians may be especially interested in the results, having already answered the question. Although blacks made up less than 15% of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley was elected mayor in 1973, 16 years before Dinkins was nominated in New York, where black people are 25% of the city's population. Current Rep. Mervyn M. Dymally (D-Compton) became the first black person elected lieutenant governor of California in 1975, 10 years before Wilder won the same position in Virginia. Then in 1982, when the black population of California was proportionately much smaller than the black population of Virginia is today (about 19%), Bradley ran for governor and lost by a hairbreadth margin.
California's brand of black politics has led the nation in other ways. Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) was elected Speaker of the State Assembly nine years before Washington's Ron Brown was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee. State Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) was elected chair of the Democratic Caucus four years before Rep. William H. Gray III (D-Pa.) was elected chairman of the Congressional Democratic Caucus. In 1986, Waters wrote a law, vetoed by Gov. George Deukmejian, requiring state fund managers to divest stocks of companies doing business in South Africa. That was the same year black congressmen finally rammed through apartheid sanctions over President Reagan's veto.
If the old axiom, "As Maine goes so goes the nation," is true of presidential elections, the paraphrase--as California goes, so goes the nation--is true in black politics. California has set the agenda for important issues and developments in black politics across the nation.
Geography and demography help explain California's exemplary position. Because most of state's black population did not arrive until after World War II, California had no long history of legal segregation. The West didn't experience the freedom rides or anything like the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955. California's three largest cities do not have black majorities, unlike Georgia's Atlanta, Michigan's Detroit or New Jersey's Newark. So in the early '70s, California did not experience a period when black people were first assuming political control in the biggest cities of a state.
