What do the candidacies of James K. Hahn and Antonio Villaraigosa mean for the black community?
Much of the talk during this campaign has been about coalitions, particularly which candidate for mayor of Los Angeles will revive the Tom Bradley-style coalition. With all the talk about coalitions, one might be tempted to believe that there actually is one. But what we really have are candidate coalitions, not community coalitions. And what Los Angeles needs is less of the former and more of the latter.
The foundation of the Bradley coalition was the support of two communities, African Americans and Jews, with a genuine relationship on a number of levels, not just during an election campaign. Such community coalitions are built around a common agenda--school and housing desegregation, civil rights--that is of vital interest to everyone in the coalition.
Candidate coalitions, on the other hand, serve to advance the interests of a candidate--namely, to get elected. They are constellations of support for a person. Community coalitions are constellations of support for a set of shared goals.
So does Hahn have a black/white/Jewish coalition, and Villaraigosa a Latino/Jewish/white one? No. Hahn has the support of black, white and Jewish voters. Villaraigosa has the support of Latino, Jewish and white voters. The man who should be mayor is the one who can lead us away from this kind of political coalition and into genuine community coalitions.
The harder challenge is for Villaraigosa, not because he is not willing but because the black community has a hard time seeing a common agenda with the Latino immigrant community. Many blacks view it as a zero-sum political calculation: Their gain is our loss. That's true if you view it from the ethno-centric politics of the past. It's not true if you view it from the perspective of the kinds of coalitions that will be needed in the future.
In the primary, 71% of black voters supported Hahn, while 12% voted for Villaraigosa. Black voters were the most cohesive voting bloc in the recent primary. Two Latino candidates shared Latino support. Jewish support was widely distributed. White and Asian votes were in every column.
Cold political analysis could cause Villaraigosa to conclude that the black vote is lost to him and that money and time spent wooing such voters would be wasted. He may even be able to win that way. But he'll be a better mayor if he doesn't.
