Word: hahn
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...lose? Because James Hahn, 50, the mild-mannered city attorney and fellow Democrat who most people figured would get lost beside the flamboyant Villaraigosa, turned out to be the better street fighter. With a tough, tightly focused campaign that kept Villaraigosa on the defensive, Hahn managed to convince a winning coalition of blacks and moderate white Democrats and Republicans that there were too many questions about Villaraigosa's integrity to entrust Villaraigosa with running the nation's second largest city. "I can be as tough as necessary," the silver-haired bureaucrat said on Election Day, showing a side...
Villaraigosa, 48, a former labor organizer, certainly had plenty of baggage. A former street tough who grew up in East L.A., he had out-of-wedlock kids and failed the state bar exam four times. But Hahn didn't bother with any of that. He had all he needed in a letter Villaraigosa wrote to the White House in 1996, seeking a presidential pardon for convicted drug trafficker Carlos Vignali, whose father was a campaign contributor. Before the election, Hahn hammered Villaraigosa for a solid week with a TV ad showing images of a crack-cocaine pipe, a copy...
That may have made the difference. More than half of Hahn's voters cited character as a key factor. Villaraigosa complained of Hahn's tactics, but Hahn shrugged. "Campaigns," he said, "are not prom dates." Critics accused Hahn of playing on racial sensitivities at a time when Latinos are surpassing blacks as the city's most powerful ethnic constituency. The races were split: about 4 out of 5 blacks voted for Hahn (like his father, a onetime county supervisor, he is a stalwart supporter of the black community), while about the same proportion of Latinos voted for Villaraigosa. "The negative...
Angelenos have had to deal with more than their share of temblors, political and otherwise, but the transition from Republican Mayor Richard Riordan to Hahn shouldn't bring much of a jolt. Hahn campaigned as a moderate, and that's what Angelenos will get. "We need to all build bridges toward each other," he said after the election. He can start by repairing his fractured party...
...what does this mean for L.A.? Well, we already knew the next mayor of the city was going to be a Democrat. The only question was, which one? Now we know. Hahn, like Villaraigosa would have, will focus on issues such as crime (his favorite, since he's been a prosecutor for so many years), housing, education (as much as a mayor can), and even that old perennial problem here, traffic. But the first issue he should tackle is repairing his relationship with his own party. The state Democratic Party worked avidly against him, and as late as last night...