My Life and Times

Hector Mata/AFP ? Getty Images

Los Angeles City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa defeated Mayor James Hahn to become the city's
first Hispanic mayor in more than a century.

L.A. Elects Hispanic Mayor for First Time in Over 100 Years
By JOHN M. BRODER

LOS ANGELES, May 18 - Antonio Villaraigosa, who won the mayor's office in a thorough trouncing of the incumbent, James K. Hahn, said today that he intended to be the mayor of all of Los Angeles, not just the nearly 50 percent of Latino heritage. But his victory confirmed the rising political power of Latinos in the nation's second-largest city.

After a lackluster term tainted by accusations of corruption at City Hall, Mr. Hahn was turned out of office in favor of a high school dropout who went on to become speaker of the California Assembly and a member of the Los Angeles City Council.

With virtually all of the votes counted, Mr. Villaraigosa had 260,721 votes, or 58.6 percent, to 183,749 votes, or 41.3 percent, for Mr. Hahn, according to the city clerk's office. Mr. Villaraigosa swept nearly every ethnic group in this diverse city and won in almost every neighborhood, except Mr. Hahn's home area of San Pedro, near the port, and the conservative northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley.

The mayor-elect was joined this morning by two prominent African-American leaders, Bernard C. Parks, a councilman and former chief of police, and John W. Mack, president of the Los Angeles Urban League. All three spoke of the significance of Mr. Villaraigosa's strong majorities among the city's black and Latino populations.

"I'm an American of Mexican descent and I'm proud of that," Mr. Villaraigosa, 52, said at an auto repair training center sponsored by the Urban League. "But I intend to be mayor of all of Los Angeles. As the mayor of the most diverse city in the world, that's the only way it can work."

He said he had no national ambitions, even though as mayor of Los Angeles he now becomes one of the most visible Latino leaders in the country. He will take the oath of office on July 1.

At a victory celebration on Tuesday night, supporters chanted "Si, se puede!" - Spanish for "Yes, we can!" - as Mr. Villaraigosa strode to the podium. He thanked his family and the people who had inspired him over the years, and promised to "bring this great city together."

"You all know I love L.A., but tonight I really love L.A.," an exuberant Mr. Villaraigosa told his supporters.

The two candidates were a study in contrasts. Mr. Hahn, the son of one of the region's most popular politicians, Kenneth J. Hahn, who served 40 years as a county supervisor, was buttoned-down to the point of drabness. He acknowledged a case of "charisma deficit disorder," but said he was interested in getting things done, not touting his accomplishments.

Mr. Villaraigosa, who is as outgoing as Mr. Hahn is shy, was raised on the Latino east side by a single immigrant mother. He dropped out of high school for a time, then worked his way through the University of California, Los Angeles, and became a union organizer, then speaker of the State Assembly. He has been a member of the Los Angeles City Council since 2003.

The contest was a rematch of the 2001 mayoral race, which Mr. Hahn won by seven points after trailing Mr. Villaraigosa for much of the campaign. That race featured a number of late attacks by Mr. Hahn, who repeatedly attacked Mr. Villaraigosa for a letter he had written seeking clemency for a convicted cocaine trafficker.

Mr. Hahn's campaign was similarly negative this time, even using the same slogan, "Los Angeles can't trust Antonio Villaraigosa." Mr. Hahn accused his opponent, a former president of the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, of being soft on crime. He also noted that Mr. Villaraigosa had accepted thousands of dollars in campaign donations from out-of-state businessmen bidding on city contracts.

Mr. Villaraigosa, who outpolled Mr. Hahn in the primary election by 33 percent to 24 percent, generally ran an upbeat, front-runner's campaign. Although some of his advertisements noted the federal investigation of possible corruption in city contracting under Mayor Hahn, Mr. Villaraigosa mainly stressed what he called his ability to bring Los Angeles's varied geographic, ethnic and racial communities together.

In this he was aided by Mr. Hahn's two most significant actions as mayor. In 2002, Mr. Hahn engineered the ouster of the Los Angeles Police Chief, Bernard Parks, an African-American, which alienated many black voters who had supported Mr. Hahn in 2001. Mr. Hahn also campaigned vigorously to defeat an effort by residents of the San Fernando Valley to secede from the city of Los Angeles, angering a part of the city that had provided a major share of his margin of victory over Mr. Villaraigosa four years ago. Mr. Villaraigosa will be the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles since 1872, but he won the office on more than the votes of the city's Latinos, who make up nearly half of the city's population but barely a quarter of the electorate.

"If you look at Antonio, he would be a credible candidate from any ethnic group," said Harry Pachon, director of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at the University of Southern California, which studies trends in Latino politics. "He has a liberal background, he's an ex-president of the A.C.L.U. for Southern California, he has union credentials, he was speaker of Assembly. He's punched his ticket in so many places."

Dr. Pachon said Mr. Villaraigosa was also able to split the African-American vote, which had been solidly in Mr. Hahn's column in 2001. It was the first time a Los Angeles mayoral candidate had successfully melded a Latino-black coalition to win office, he said.

"I will never forget where I came from," Mr. Villaraigosa said Tuesday night. "And I will always believe in the people of Los Angeles."

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