"¡Queremos un cambio! We want change!" mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa hollered before a roomful of campaign volunteers at his South Los Angeles office on a recent Saturday morning.
"That's what we want. We want to be judged by our talents," he went on: "Queremos que nos juzguen ... juzgan?"
Villaraigosa's Spanish stumbled, caught in the perilous rules of the subjunctive. Was it juzguen or juzgan? People in the room called out their suggestions.
"You know, I was born here, man," Villaraigosa said finally, switching back to English. "It's hard.... It's hard."
The room erupted in laughter and applause. They understood.
With Villaraigosa as the front-runner for the May 17 runoff against Mayor James K. Hahn, the campaign is in many respects a fully bilingual affair. News conferences, television advertisements, mailers, speeches and debates reach voters in both English and Spanish.
Today, the contenders are to engage in a bilingual debate broadcast by Spanish-language network Univision. Questions will be posed to both candidates in Spanish and translated to English by earpiece. All answers will be translated to Spanish.
Hahn does not speak Spanish. In official settings, Villaraigosa sometimes offers remarks in distinct blocks, one language after the other. He might opt for that approach in the debate, said campaign spokesman Nathan James.
But on the trail, the candidate's Spanish is different. It's a looser bilingualism that shows a self-effacing candor over an aspect of his heritage that many U.S.-born Latinos consider a source of mild embarrassment: Spanish that is less than perfect. Even bad.
During Villaraigosa's successful run for City Council in 2002, weak Spanish was a brief issue. A mailer from a supporter of incumbent Councilman Nick Pacheco derided Villaraigosa's language as "pocho," a pejorative describing someone who has drifted from his Mexican roots and language.
This time around, the second-generation Mexican American appears to be playing off his "pocho" Spanish much as President Bush has turned his malapropisms into a populist badge.
Although voters with a multicultural view of Los Angeles may eat it up, Villaraigosa's Spanish could alienate others, said Jaime Regalado, executive director of the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State L.A.
"The fact that he's doing something almost equally in Spanish as in English is a strength in keeping his base rallied," Regalado said.
