Governor Villaraigosa and the Latino Majority in California

LATINO VOTE-It is no secret that ex-Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is interested in running for governor in California in 2018. As a matter of fact, he is already actively going around the state and the country lining up both the financial and political support necessary to make him only the second Latino to hold the governorship since Romualdo Pacheco in 1875. 

Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom has been considered the frontrunner in the race, especially when he passed on a run for the Senate. But I think the reason Newsom has been seen as the inevitable winner presupposes the traditionally low Latino vote in previous elections. It overlooks what a systematically organized majority Latino voter constituency could offer to one of their own like Villaraigosa or Alex Padilla. 

It is my belief that a seasoned politician like Antonio Villaraigosa could easily be instrumental in creating a dynamic and engaged Latino electorate around his own campaign for the governorship. 

In so doing, he could ensure that the issues that have profoundly and disproportionately affected Latinos -- education, immigration, language and culture – could finally get the attention they are entitled to and deserve from our state government. 

If Villaraigosa continues doing what he has already started in his campaign for governor – lining up Latino support around the state and across the political spectrum -- nothing will stop him or the other Latino candidates who are smart enough to mobilize not only their base but other segments of the population who want to create a super majority that will serve the 99%. 

In order to effectively take advantage of the new Latino majority in the state, Villaraigosa needs to make himself the common point of reference for this constituency. Up until now, even though Latinos have made up a significant portion of the electorate, their voter participation has not reflected these numbers. Various Latino communities in the state, like prior immigrant communities, have steered clear of government engagement, fearing such involvement can only cause one trouble. 

What Villaraigosa can do is focus his campaign on his Latino base, making it clear to them that they and their children will not be able to achieve fair and complete integration into American society unless they actively do something about it. Fundamental things like an excellent public education need to be seen as their absolute right -- not just empty rhetoric. Only then will they know that their government has heard them. 

Villaraigosa's own involvement in what can only be viewed as the failed effort of the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools (PLAS) to change public education should have taught him a lesson: Those presently in power see allowing the majority Latino population to achieve their potential as a threat that will not be tolerated. Ironically, the status quo that deprives Latinos of their equal share of the American dream also deprives countless other American of becoming something more than they might have started out as – an aspiration that has always been this country's real strength. 

While nobody can really predict the future, I think the only thing that might stop Antonio Villaraigosa from becoming our next governor is if he were to do something stupid…or if he is tapped to be Hillary Clinton’s running mate in a campaign that would see the first woman and the first Latino to ever head the executive branch.

 

(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He’s a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected]) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

-cw

  

CityWatch

Vol 13 Issue 89

Pub: Nov 03, 2015