ENDORSEMENT WARS
Looking for every advantage, mayoral candidates
dogfight over endorsements
By Dean Kuipers
The e-mailed memo flashed through the City Hall offices of staffers loyal to Mayor Jim Hahn during work hours, spurring them to action. "We need you for the Los Angeles County Young Democrats (LACYD) Endorsement Hearings, which take place tomorrow," read the breathless plea from the personal e-mail account of staffer Mandy Olvera, going on to describe a process in which attendees could vote that same night to endorse Hahn.
According to an account in the Los Angles Daily News, as many as 40 staffers heeded the call and packed the LACYD meeting, paying $25 and casting their vote - which ended up split and resulted in no endorsement, perhaps scuttling a nod that went to former California Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa in 2001. At least one of Hahn's people even used a city vehicle to get there, in violation of city policy.
The idea that an incumbent mayor's staff might bend a few rules to support their boss's re-election is nothing new. More notable is the idea that they would work so hard to get - or block - an endorsement that might mean little in the way of money or volunteers. If the 2001 race for mayor of Los Angeles was any indication, big endorsements aren't the deciding factor for taking City Hall. In that election, Villaraigosa scored the endorsement of the county Democratic Party and the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, two of the biggest prizes, and he still lost the runoff. This year, Hahn has already nailed down the bulk of the big endorsements, including the county fed and the L.A. Police Protective League, the police union - yet his campaign continues to scrap for every single name it can add to the list posted on his website, hoping it will mean a few more votes.
"[Labor] did for Villaraigosa," says Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a senior scholar and election expert at the University of Southern California, speaking of the 2001 campaign. "They didn't get him to the mayor's office, but they were certainly instrumental in getting out his vote in the primary."
This time around, the county Democratic Party could not come to an endorsement decision, though Villaraigosa outscored Hahn 97 to 81 in the internal voting. The county party blessing can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in state party money and logistical support; it doesn't look good for an incumbent to lack the support of his party, nor does it look good for Villaraigosa to have lost this backing. Both campaigns claimed victory for having blocked the other's endorsement.
"This is the guy who is sitting mayor, and he can't even nail down an endorsement from his own party? That's pretty much a vote of no confidence," says Nathan James, press spokesman for the Villaraigosa campaign.
"By obtaining the county federation of labor and denying Villaraigosa the county Democratic party, that's a huge plus for this campaign," says Hahn spokesman Kam Kuwata. "Never in our wildest dreams did we think we could get the county party, but we wanted to block him from getting it because that was a significant part of his campaign in 2001."
It seems clear that the money was more of an issue for Villaraigosa than it would be for Hahn. "It isn't always money that's important, particularly in a local election in which there are campaign financing limits, and particularly when you are the incumbent mayor and you can get it elsewhere," chuckles Bebitch Jeffe.
What is important, however, is navigating the shifting field of political blocs in the 2005 campaign, which so far have been marked by split allegiances in voter ethnicity or self-interest. The Latino vote, for instance, seems likely to be divided between Villaraigosa, Hahn, and state Senator Richard Alarcón. The black vote may lean toward Parks, but only in the primary; in a runoff they might flow back to Hahn because of the reputation of his late father, county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn. Villaraigosa is a former labor leader, but Hahn has used city contracts - and particularly the promise of an $11 billion LAX rebuild - to woo labor with jobs. On this fractured playing field, endorsements have become a symbol of a neighborhood-by-neighborhood grind, winning votes the hard way, one at a time.
"Labor and the party endorsement are the big ones," says Robert Stern, president of the nonpartisan Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles. "You don't need to have them to win, but they will fight for them. I mean, the Young Democrats? My goodness.
"The reason is," he adds, "the turnout is not as high as it is for presidential races. So every vote really does count."
Hahn has already secured the bulk of the major prizes, including as of January 21 the endorsements of 24 labor unions from the building trades to cops to firemen to municipal workers. He's nailed down city councilpersons Eric Garcetti, Tom LaBonge, Cindy Miscikowski, Jan Perry, Ed Reyes, Greig Smith, and his sister, Janice Hahn. He's got U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein and influential state senators Gil Cedillo and Jack Scott and members of the L.A. Board of Education. He's got city father Eli Broad and a list of businesspeople as long as your arm, and even Watts activist "Sweet" Alice Harris. Some of these might only be individual votes, but they demonstrate momentum.
But there are some notable gaps. City Council President Alex Padilla, who endorsed Hahn in 2001, has yet to declare. And there are those homeowners associations out in the San Fernando Valley, like the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association, or the Valley Industry and Commerce Association, or VICA. Collectively, they do show where the Valley's concerns lie. Among them, the anti-secessionist Hahn is not figured to be a favorite. Despite the fact that Hahn delivered his 2005 "State of the Valley" address at VICA's annual committee fair Wednesday night, handicappers are still saying these bodies will lean toward former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg, a Valley resident and sympatico.
"That's the conventional wisdom," says Bebitch Jeffe. "Although he opposed secession, per se, when he was speaker, he helped move the legislation that allowed secession an easier road to the ballot. That's a lot different than leading the opposition and funding the campaign and then winning - as Hahn did."
Villaraigosa has scooped up a lot of the city's most progressive Democrats, including U.S. reps Howard Berman and Henry Waxman, as well as the California Democratic Council and the Southern California Chapter of Americans for Democratic Action. This week, he also reeled in the Stonewall Democrats, the California League of Conservation Voters and its SoCal analogue, the L.A. League of Conservation Voters.
Many of the city's African-American churches and its most prominent black businessmen, like Magic Johnson, have yet to declare. City Councilman Bernard Parks has secured an impressive list of entertainers from Bill Cosby to Vivica A. Fox, plus county supervisors Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and conservative Mike Antonovich, and even the Apartment Association of Greater L.A., but it is not at all clear that his troubled campaign has locked in the black vote.
Alarcón has so far been endorsed by the East Los Angeles Democratic Club, Democracy for America L.A., Utility Workers of America, L.A. Community Leadership Coalition (an Eastside community organization), and the Mexican American Political Association-San Fernando Valley.
But they're not done. While all four of his principal rivals for mayor participated in a debate put on by the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association on the evening of Wednesday, January 19, Hahn looked elsewhere for votes. Giving his opponents a bit of a slip, he turned up to give a stump speech at the endorsement meeting of the Northeast Democratic Club of Los Angeles, a group representing 3,000 county Democrats, which took place the same night up in Eagle Rock.
"We had already agreed to the Sherman Oaks event, so we sent Corina, Antonio Villaraigosa's wife, to speak [at the Northeast Democratic Club event] on his behalf," says Nathan James. "The Northeast Democratic Club voted to endorse Antonio anyway. But Hahn is trying very hard to get these party endorsements."Published: 01/27/2005
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT
