How Jewish Voters Still Count

You really did read it here first: That the Los Angeles mayoral primary, with six formidable contenders, would come down to a June 5 mayoral face-off between the Eastside kid, former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, and the son of liberal Los Angeles, James Kenneth Hahn, was predicted in this column several months ago. No, I’m not a fortune-teller. But as my grandfather would say, "I do know my customer, the Jewish voter."

Tuesday’s election results assert that the Jewish "customer" still counts, now more than ever, in the even playing field that is L.A. politics.

As the Los Angeles Times exit poll reveals, Jewish voters are a huge chunk of the declining white electorate — 17 percent, or one in three. Villaraigosa’s successful re-creation of the progressive Tom Bradley coalition joining a rising ethnic minority — in this case, Latinos who Tuesday made up 21 percent of the vote — and liberal whites, was largely dependent upon Jews.

It will remain for another time to analyze just how Jews influenced both the tone and outcome of the primary; how the upscale Jewish voter found comfort with a candidate who himself, at least in part, reflects the immigrant-laden union politics that dominates some segments of Latino Los Angeles.

At the moment, the big story is that Jews rushed to embrace an encompassing, ethnic vision of our city rather than a white-dominated conservative, pro-business view. For those who had criticized the Jewish "establishment" for ignoring Latino causes, Tuesday’s answer was, we still have heart.

Also on Tuesday, and just as I predicted, the two Jewish mayoral candidates killed each other off in appealing to the city’s conservative voters.

However, real estate developer Steve Soboroff and veteran City Councilman Joel Wachs did not split the Jewish vote. What interested me this week was that liberal voters in the San Fernando Valley joined their fellows on the Westside in support of Villaraigosa. Yes, there are liberal Jews in the Valley; a fact that, among other things, should be a warning to those aching for a separate Valley city.

Soboroff and Wachs split the Valley’s rebellious conservative voter. There are plenty of them, but not for two candidates. Soboroff and Wachs jointly pulled 32 percent, compared with Villaraigosa’s 30 percent, guaranteeing that the notorious enmity between the two will continue. Together, Wachs and Soboroff destroyed the Riordan coalition that in 1993 brought many Jews into the Republican column for the first time. We’ll be watching to see a) how Hahn moves to the right; b) how the son of beloved county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, with his traditional black base in the central city, appeals to Valley voters; and c) how the predicted endorsement of Hahn by Villaraigosa’s former buddy, Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg, influences the mix.

As I made the rounds of election headquarters late Tuesday, it was clear what strange bedfellows our urban politics have created.

I was at Soboroff’s Radisson hotel headquarters in Sherman Oaks at 10:30 p.m., in time to see the fortunes of Richard Riordan’s chosen successor go south, leaving some of his supporters muttering that the results must have come in from "East L.A."

Then at 11:15 p.m., before joining the huge Antonio lovefest at Union Station, I was over at the Holiday Inn off Vineland, to find Wachs, his shirt still pressed and his hair unrumpled despite a depressing evening, embracing the last few stragglers of well-wishers.

"I should have stressed the arts connection more," Wachs conceded.

In fact, Wachs has reasons for regret. From any perspective, he and Villaraigosa ran the most interesting, and complex, campaigns, almost mirror images of each other in their attraction of opposite political bases.

As a friend of mine, Jonathan Zasloff, a UCLA law professor, has noted, in any other city Wachs would have been the "liberal" candidate, with the greatest appeal to Jews. His natural constituency includes gays, Hollywood, the rent-control crowd and the MOCA/LACMA/Bergamot axis interested in a vision of Los Angeles in which arts and lifestyle are more than music CDs from Starbucks. Yes, this is the Ed Koch guard, and it is larger than the paltry 11 percent who rallied this week behind the councilman. Yet Wachs, who reiterated that he intends to leave local politics after his L.A. City Council term ends in two years, projected himself too narrowly. He seems to suffer from a failure of will, never making his interests seem what they are, critical to humane life in our tense metropolis.

There are so many stories to be told in the historic cobbling together of Villaraigosa’s new coalition. One surprising wrinkle: the appeal of the Latino candidate to Russian Jewish voters.

"I found Antonio to be wonderful in person, genuine, honest — almost painfully so," attorney Boris Gorbis told me, recalling his first meeting with the man who might be Los Angeles’ first Latino mayor in nearly 130 years. Soboroff had targeted the Russians, assuming that this group’s long-standing affiliation with conservative candidates meant they’d go for him.

"When you grow up an outsider in the seaside Ukrainian city of Odessa, you know you’re not included," Gorbis told me. "Villaraigosa had a similar experience here in L.A."

"There are similarities in our stories that transcended the divides," Gorbis said.