California Conservative

This morning’s SacBee reports: “All eyes on the valley - Residents will likely cast 40% of ballots in L.A. mayor runoff”

In this case, it’s referring to San Fernando Valley, “the vast expanse of tract homes and mini-malls north of the Santa Monica Mountains has long been a source of humor and derision.”

It appears the humor stops short during election times.

“San Fernando Valley residents were so fed up with City Hall’s lack of respect they waged an unsuccessful campaign to divorce themselves from Los Angeles three years ago.

Now, their votes are expected to decide who will run City Hall for the next four years: Mayor James Hahn or City Councilman and former state Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, who would be the city’s first Latino mayor in modern times.”

So, how will the vote swing? The SacBee gives some perspective:

Historically, the San Fernando Valley has favored the more conservative candidates. But like the rest of Los Angeles, immigration has transformed an almost all-white enclave into a sprawling suburb where racial and ethnic minorities are now a majority of the population.

This statement either confirms or presumes that racial and ethnic minorities vote for more liberal candidates. Guess we’ll see.

But in anycase it proves that in the future, even within a city like Los Angeles, politicians can no longer ignore the folks on the other side of the hills.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 11th, 2005 at 8:03 am and is filed under California, Elections, Immigration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.