IN THE 1990S, I lived on Olympic Boulevard, a kind of Mason-Dixon line that divides Los Angeles into the promising north and the more dubious south. On my stretch of the boulevard, in midcity, Olympic separated the nascent gentrification of the new Hollywood from the increasingly strained gentility of midtown and the Crenshaw district.
My representative on the City Council then was Nate Holden, known chiefly for his public gaffes, his questionable ethics and his support for development projects of uncertain merit. Now the district has a new representative, Herb Wesson, the former Assembly speaker who was termed out of the state Senate and needed a new job. Wesson, known as a coalition builder, has none of the rough edges or impolitic leanings that Holden was infamous for. But he could in many ways be worse.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday January 20, 2006 Home Edition California Part B Page 13 Editorial Pages Desk 0 inches; 30 words Type of Material: Correction
10th District: Erin Aubry Kaplan's column on Tuesday said that L.A. Councilman Herb Wesson was termed out of office in the state Senate. He was termed out of the Assembly.
Wesson is a product of an electoral machine that has operated with frightening efficiency in the black political set for a decade or so, ever since its members began realizing that their numbers and influence are in decline. Their response to the long-coming crisis has been to keep the old guard employed for as long as possible -- at least until everybody hits retirement age.
It may not be a winning strategy for their constituency, but it works fine for the city's black political elite. So it barely raised eyebrows when Wesson put up his shingle in the 10th District last year, warded off potential rivals by plunking down a war chest amassed over past campaigns, then coasted through an election in which he was essentially the only candidate on the ballot.
Money and familiarity are the mother's milk of politics, I know. But in black circles that milk has curdled into something almost poisonous, a noxious potion that stifles initiative, debate and new ideas.
Consider the case of Holden. His years in office were marked by his mutually beneficial relationship with business owners and developers in Koreatown. It's a common enough dynamic in local politics, but it grated on me because it only served to magnify the absence of any such dynamic in other parts of the district that were significantly black.
And here was Holden, always controversial but nonetheless integral to the 10th District's legacy of cultivating African American politicians, doing painfully little for his African American constituents by comparison. Certainly the black community didn't have a population of business owners or the financial momentum to match Koreatown's. But that was even more reason to pay attention to what it needed, especially after '92.
