Bitter Victory

The ballots were in and counted, the outcome decisive. By 53.3% to 46.7%, Los Angeles voters last week elected Mayor Sam Yorty to a third term, repudiating both their own primary verdict of the previous month and election-eve opinion surveys. There was a palpable realization that something was missing. No gracious concession came from the loser, Negro Councilman Thomas Bradley, who said that the preceding weeks had witnessed "the dirtiest campaign in this city's history." Yorty, normally so jaunty when things break right for him, was no Struttin' Sam on election night. Surrounded by bodyguards, he made a perfunctory appearance before his supporters, said unwontedly little, and left early. Nor, indeed, was there much to celebrate in the bitter post-election atmosphere. Unmistakably, the prime components of Yorty's victory were crass appeals to racism and fear.

Transcendent Issue. In the initial election round April 1, fully 74% of the electorate went for Yorty's opponents. Bradley led the field of 14 with 42%, a remarkable showing for a black candidate in a city where Negroes constitute less than one-fifth of the population. But Democrat Bradley is no insular ghetto politician. A lawyer and retired police lieutenant who had bootstrapped himself out of poverty (as youngsters, he and a brother took turns with their single suit), Bradley organized what he called a "coalition of conscience." It included blacks, Mexican-Americans, white liberal Democrats and independents. After the April round eliminated the Republican Party from the nominally nonpartisan election, he also picked up support from liberal Republicans. Bradley is 51 and lacks any great dynamism, but he attracted thousands of young volunteer workers, both black and white, nevertheless. Many of his supporters had worked long and hard last year in the presidential campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy.

Yorty, 59, realized that the runoff would finish him unless he could find a transcendent issue that would not only bring out his normal conservative constituency in heavy numbers but would also chip at Bradley's strength in the center. His own record after eight years was not much to boast about. Routine city services operate efficiently enough, and the L.A. area has enjoyed a dramatic economic expansion. However, with power in Los Angeles fragmented between city and county government, Yorty has never attempted to exercise the strong and dynamic leadership that any major city needs. Furthermore, instances of high-level corruption tainted his second term.

Love It or Leave It. The mayor found his salvation in Angelenos' apprehensions over racial and radical unrest. Like other cities, Los Angeles has witnessed campus turmoil down to the high school level. Mexican-Americans have been asserting their rights with increasing militance. Two extremist black organizations, US and the Panthers, have been feuding with each other as well as with whites. The promising community relations program promoted by former Police Chief Thomas Reddin has all but disintegrated recently, stimulating new tensions between police and the ghettos.

Yorty seized on Reddin's resignation after the April vote as evidence that if Bradley won, police morale would be impaired. Reddin, who took a lucrative job as a television newscaster, seemed to support Yorty's stand while interviewing the two candidates on TV just before the runoff. His questioning of Bradley was harsh; to the mayor, Reddin was uncommonly sweet. Yorty, meanwhile, was twanging the only string left to him. "To elect Tom Bradley," he said at one point, "would be an invitation to violence in this city." Burt Lancaster campaigned for Bradley; Yorty called the actor a "militant extremist." John Wayne hailed the mayor as the man needed in these "dangerous times." Ignoring the fact that Bradley drew support from such respectable, centrist sources as the Los Angeles Times, the Democratic national leadership and Republican Congressman Alphonzo Bell, Yorty nevertheless repeatedly equated his opponent with the horrors of black and Red revolution.

Bradley rarely strayed from his sober discussions of Yorty's past performance and the city's future prospects. He tried to deflect the attacks on him by telling well-dressed, middle-class audiences: "Funny, you don't look like black militants and white radicals." The line was no match for the Yorty advertisement showing a rather menacing picture of Bradley and asking the question: "Will your family be safe?" In white suburban neighborhoods, a new paste-up slogan appeared: AMERICA --LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT.

Strange Allies. Yorty's strategy, which Bradley last week called a "blatant appeal to racial prejudice," was effective even beyond the mayoral contest. It produced a vote of 840,000, or 75% of the 1,100,000 voters eligible, 137,000 more than had turned out in April. Two school board candidates who traded heavily on the violence issue defeated moderate incumbents.

The outcome was surprising not only because of the April vote but also because two authoritative California polling firms, Don Muchmore's and Mervin Field's, found Bradley ahead into the last week. Field's final report gave Bradley a lead of five points, with Yorty gaining. Muchmore's sampling put Bradley 17 points ahead. Both surveys, however, indicated a large undecided vote. The trouble with any poll involving a Negro candidate, of course, is that many of those interviewed are reluctant to admit to racial prejudice. Some who succumbed to Yorty's argument and their own fears may have chosen not to say so when they were confronted with the question.

Los Angeles must now live with the decision it has made, and that may not be easy. Bradley appealed for calm on the streets and cooperation with the Yorty administration in healing the campaign's scars. But some of his supporters --without his cooperation--are thinking of organizing a recall movement* that could renew the ugly dispute. There was also concern that the disappointment would undercut the position of moderate black leaders and that it might even contribute to new disorders in the ghettos. Herbert Carter, executive director of the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission, was among the pessimists: "This plays into the hands of the separatists. They've been saying all along that all you can expect at the hands of the white community is racism. It's likely that the black community will pull into itself, become more alienated than before."

The corollary to Carter's conclusion is that violent extremists, black as well as white, in ghettos as well as on campuses, are also allies of politicians like Yorty. Each disorder and each irresponsible threat of upheaval lends credibility to his kind of campaign. Last week's election could cause ripples far beyond Los Angeles. Other cities share the tensions and fears that Yorty capitalized on. Mayoral elections this year and next in New York, Cleveland, Newark, Detroit and Atlanta could turn on substantially the same emotions. With Sam Yorty's example so clear before them, other candidates may well be tempted to exploit the racial issue with all the fervor of a Sam Yorty.

* A leftover of the old Progressive era, the device allows citizens, by a two-stage process of petition and referendum, to oust an incumbent. Rarely attempted seriously, recall did unseat a Los Angeles mayor in 1938.

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