Rivals Go to Church to Court Voters
Mixing pleas with prayer, James K. Hahn and Antonio Villaraigosa sped from one house of worship to another Sunday, courting the African American vote each considers vital in Tuesday's Los Angeles mayoral election.
For incumbent Hahn, it was repair work, an attempt to rebuild the strong support he once enjoyed in the South Los Angeles community where he grew up and his late father, Kenneth, forged a political legend.
"We are going in the right direction and I want to keep going in that direction," Hahn said at Ward AME Church, standing before a clutch of choir singers garbed in fire-engine red.
For Councilman Villaraigosa, it was an attempt to build something new in the city, a black-brown coalition surmounting the long-standing political and economic tension between African Americans and Latinos.
It was also, for one of the few times in the campaign, an opportunity for Villaraigosa to underscore the historic potential of Tuesday's vote, which could make him the city's first Latino mayor in more than a century. The councilman invoked the 1973 election of the city's first black mayor, Tom Bradley -- noting that Bradley lost his first bid for mayor, much as Villaraigosa lost the 2001 contest against Hahn.
"There were some who questioned whether or not he could represent the entire city," Villaraigosa said of Bradley. "They said, 'I know you can represent them, but can you represent all of us?' In that first election, he wasn't quite able to convince all of the people of this city.
"Four years later, he was back. He was back and with him a broader coalition for a new Los Angeles. Nobody today, no one, would question whether or not Tom Bradley was a mayor for all of us. We know he was."
With the election just two days off, the trajectory of the runoff could be seen as the two campaigns traversed South Los Angeles and, later, the San Fernando Valley -- the hardest-fought turf of the race.
Villaraigosa visited several of the biggest churches dotting South Los Angeles, speaking to thousands from Watts to the Crenshaw district, and traveling with an extensive entourage that included many of the community's most prominent African American leaders. Joining him were Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), county Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, former Assembly Speaker Herb Wesson, Assemblyman Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles) and John Mack, former president of the Los Angeles Urban League.
