Councilwoman Lorri Galloway attributes her reelection last fall to campaigning among Latinos in central and western Anaheim, a community she said typically has been ignored while mostly white politicians courted loyal voters in the upper-class neighborhoods in the city's east side. That won't be the case much longer, she suggests.
Anaheim's transition from a mostly white suburb to a majority Latino city parallels the dramatic changes Southern California cities have experienced as immigration surged and communities diversified.
Now, as immigration slows, demographers envision places like Anaheim emerging as stable settling grounds for Latinos rather than depots for immigrants.
In Anaheim, fewer than half of Latinos are now foreign-born. Though housing figures are not broken down by ethnicity, about half the residents own their own homes and the median annual income is a healthy $58,000.
"It's the dream of having a single-family house and a white picket fence and a dog," said Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at USC.
An increase in home ownership probably was one factor propelling the rise of Latinos in Anaheim. During the housing boom earlier this decade, upwardly mobile Latinos bought homes in record numbers, freeing up space for more recent immigrants in apartments.
"Now it's a heterogenous mix," said Louis DeSipio, a professor of political science and Chicano/Latino studies at UC Irvine.
"It's two things: Latinos moving in and non-Latinos moving out."
Leading the way for change was the lure of jobs in manufacturing, service and technology, which gave the city the second-highest job growth in Orange County over the last 15 years, just behind Irvine, according to a report by the Orange County Business Council.
Unlike Santa Ana, Maywood or Huntington Park, which have all-Latino city councils, the new majority in Anaheim has made few political gains.
"We don't have the juice up there in the City Council," said Amin David, leader of Los Amigos, an Orange County Latino advocacy group that meets in Anaheim once a week for breakfast. "We don't even have an entree. For anything to happen, of course, it takes three votes, and we don't get much progress."
David said it may be time for Latino representation to be boosted by carving the city into council districts. Currently, all five council seats are elected at large.
