L.A. mayoral candidates try to impersonate Republicans

Perng is a fourth-year political science student and chairman of
Bruin Republicans.

By Simon Perng

The race for L.A. mayor has already made a turn for the unusual
and grotesque and the mayoral hopefuls know it. Both Jim Hahn and
Antonio Villaraigosa now espouse themes of “fiscal
responsibility,” being “tough on crime and
gangs,” “low property taxes,” “reforming
education,” “Riordan legacy” and
“bipartisanship.”

Now Villaraigosa prides himself as being the choice of Mayor
Richard Riordan and Sen. Jim Brulte, R-Calif. Hahn also possesses
equally notable Republican endorsements from Councilman Hal Bernson
and the State Assembly GOP to complement the liberal Democrat
endorsements of Rep. Maxine Waters and Councilman Nate Holden.

You can see the images of Villaraigosa and Riordan firmly
clasping their hands in the air. You can envision Hahn as a
moderate, take-no-prisoners, crime-busting city attorney. You can
picture both candidates struggling to swallow the
“Republican-sounding” words, eagerly yet bitterly.

Even though Hahn and Villaraigosa won’t admit it, the two
liberal Democrats are now fighting and falling all over each other
to capture Los Angeles’ Republican voters. It’s as if
suddenly those Democrats now love us L.A. Republicans after they
chewed our guy Steve Soboroff up and spit him out. Yeah,
you’ve got to love those Democrats.

So why are local Republicans today so politically popular, as
though they were the best new thing since the George Foreman grill?
It’s simple: they will ultimately determine who will be the
next mayor of Los Angeles.

“Surely, you jest,” you might be thinking,
“there are more Democrats than Republicans in L.A.” I
kid you not. I certainly wouldn’t be writing this submission
if both candidates weren’t actively trying to recruit GOP
voters by espousing Republican themes in their rhetoric or flooding
my home constantly with phone calls and mailers.

This week alone, I got simultaneous phone calls from the Hahn
and Villaraigosa campaigns. I got all sorts of targeted mailers
from both of them, showing off their faux GOP credentials. Their
campaigns espouse all sorts of Republican themes that click in my
mind, but I can only suspect that they’ll only be talking
like Republicans until June 5.

In a city dominated by Democrats, Hahn and Villaraigosa somehow
believe that Republicans will elect the next mayor! Here is the
political dynamic behind the new L.A. GOP love-fest:

First of all, Democratic support for L.A. mayor is split almost
evenly between the candidates. This near even split of Democratic
loyalties may be attributable to conflicts of perspective between
state Democrats and local Democrats.

Villaraigosa portrays himself as a successful bipartisan state
politician removed from the local Rampart scandals occurring on
Hahn’s watch. Likewise, Hahn portrays himself as an
accomplished, crime-busting city attorney far removed from the
California energy crisis instigated by Sacramento politicians like
Villaraigosa.

Villaraigosa has the support of Gov. Gray Davis and the state
Democratic Party establishment and its core constituencies such as
the AFL-CIO. Hahn holds the support of many prominent local
Democrats, including Waters, Holden, County Supervisor Yvonne
Burke, and Ethel Bradley, the widow of Mayor Tom Bradley.

Second, the results of the primary election ensured that the
fragmented Democrats’ allegiances would stick. Since those
two Democrats made it into the runoff, there remains little
incentive for Democrat voters to gravitate towards a single
candidate.

Third, common sense dictates that the candidates instead focus
on the regular voting Republicans left without their own standard
bearer. Republicans still comprise about 30 percent of L.A. voters.
Best of all, Republicans are relatively indifferent to individual
Democratic preferences (as am I, because they’re all equally
liberal), thus every L.A. Republican vote can be hotly contested
and won. Hahn holds the overwhelming majority of Republican support
so far and comfortably leads Villaraigosa by about 10 percentage
points.

Theoretically, Republicans could vote for Democrats during
exceptionally odd and inopportune times. A few examples that come
to mind include the last two recent mayoral campaigns in San
Francisco. San Francisco Republicans campaigned for liberal
Democrat Frank Jordan against the bigger liberal Democrat Willie
Brown in 1995.

Just the very mention of the name of legendary powerbroker
Willie Brown, the notorious former assembly speaker, evokes terror
in the hearts of Republicans. This same Willie Brown is the one who
prevented Republicans from assuming control of the state assembly,
even when they had the majority of seats in 1994.

Hence, the San Francisco GOP had its reasons to try to thwart
Willie “Emperor Palpatine” Brown. But that’s not
even the worst of it. Willie Brown defeated incumbent Frank Jordan
and when it became time to seek reelection in 1999, he received the
support of those same San Francisco Republicans. So what prompted
San Francisco Republicans to stoop to this new low?

They supported “Palpatine” Brown to defeat even
super-liberal Tom Ammiano, president of the San Francisco County
Board of Supervisors and an anti-growth, pro-rent control advocate.
Obviously, the San Francisco GOP did not have the power of the
force.

My colleagues might not appreciate me regaling Viewpoint readers
with tales of our not-so-proud moments. However, I wrote this
submission to make the point that even with extreme Democratic
domination of city politics, conservative Republicans and their
issues will still matter.

The Democratic Party is less cohesive as a ramshackle coalition
of constituencies than the Republican Party, a party united by a
common ideology. Thus, Democrats immediately splinter into factions
of liberal vs. super-liberal or state vs. local when they do not
have to unite to win.

These Democrat factions will be inclined to take on Republican
support to fight their intra-party struggles, and risk compromising
the ideological integrity of the party or losing the election. Then
the task of the typical liberal Democrat politician becomes even
harder, to win over their liberals and some of their conservative
Republican opponents.

Now those Democratic politicians cannot ignore Republicans
anymore. They must begin to recognize the common sense, consensus
issues of fighting crime, promoting job growth, reforming education
(ending social promotion), and creating fiscal responsibility and
low property taxes. Otherwise, their other Democrat rivals and
colleagues might become their abrupt successors in the distant
future.