Well-Oiled 'Anti-Establishment' Slate Unable to Sway Voters

With remarkable clarity, Los Angeles voters last Tuesday rejected a campaign for their city mounted by a New Age coalition of greens, journalists, billionaires, and long-time Democratic insiders, in favor of a more practical, nuanced politics.

Mayoral hopeful Antonio Villaraigosa and City Attorney candidate Mike Feuer were marketed as anti-establishment, yet each was backed by the state Democratic Party machine and such super-rich "radicals" as ex-developer Eli Broad, Ralphs grocery magnate Ron Burkle, and Haim Saban, marketer of the Power Rangers and similar children's TV fare.

The triumph of Mayor-elect James Hahn and Rocky Delgadillo, the new City Attorney, proves that even in a heavily one-party town, there are limits to spin.

Indeed, the election results repudiated much of the major media, nearly all of which backed the losing slate. Each of the Los Angeles Times' endorsements for mayor, city attorney, community college board and two of five City Council seats were defeated. In contrast, all of the San Fernando Valley based Daily News' endorsements--and those of this paper--ultimately won.

Prior to the election, the ultra-left Nation, citing support from the city's "tony West Side," Gov. Gray Davis, the state Democratic Party and a who's-who of liberal special interests such as the Sierra Club and the National Organization of Women, hailed Villaraigosa as the "most progressive" candidate in city history.

"This is the most important L.A. coalition in 40 years," gushed Loyola Marymount's Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles. "For the first time, we have an electoral coalition in tune not only with the electorate, but also with the whole city itself."

Well, no. Despite channeling hundreds of thousands of dollars from Broad, Burkle, Saban and other multimillionaires into Villaraigosa's campaign, an effort even the Times reported as possibly circumventing city election finance laws, the Democratic elite exhibited its profound misunderstanding of even left-leaning Los Angeles. As their election prospects dimmed, moreover, they resorted to smearing a Liberal stalwart like Hahn as a small-minded bigot, mischaracterizing adverse polls as "too close to call" or ignoring Villaraigosa's checkered past, tactics that alienated even the city's bedrock-Democrat African-American constituency.

The city attorney contest best illuminates the gap between elite ambitions and political realities. Unlike Villaraigosa, who four times failed (and has yet to pass) the state bar and accomplished little outside of politics, candidate Delgadillo brought sterling credentials before the electorate. A native of East Los Angeles, he gained admission to Harvard, earned a law degree from Columbia University, and worked for one of the city's premier law firms, O'Melveny & Myers. At the very depths of the 1990s' recession, a time Los Angeles was widely perceived as one of the worst communities in the world, he agreed to join the city's seemingly quixotic business development team and later became Deputy Mayor.

Incredibly enough, Los Angeles' media and political elites by and large opted against a Latino candidate with such a proven record of real-world and educational achievement in favor of Feuer, a Westside City Council member. Like Delgadillo, Feuer also went to Harvard. But instead of working to boost the region's sagging economy during especially critical times, or even thinking about creating jobs for the city's poor, he focused on the "problem" of billboard blight. Married to the head of the local Natural Resources Defense Council chapter, Feuer made prosecuting environmental crimes a top campaign priority despite the region's already tough air, water and soil regulations.

Such contrasts were simply ignored by the media. In enthusiastically endorsing Feuer, the Los Angeles Times briefly dismissed Delgadillo as "Mayor Riordan's point man on a number of redevelopment deals." The left-leaning L.A. Weekly, while at least citing Delgadillo's background in its endorsement, anointed Feuer "the best-qualified candidate for city attorney in the city's history."

In the end, the pragmatic, hard-working Delgadillo trounced his chi-chi, New Age opponent and now ranks as one of Los Angeles' most influential Latino politicians. The moral seems clear: Even in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, true accomplishment, and balanced, practical judgment still trump even well-financed elite fantasies. That's a lesson Los Angeles' would-be king makers must, but still haven't, taken to heart.