Is he up to it?
James Hahn’s victory this week shows the limits of Latino power; but the new mayor will be judged by whether he can make the city work
THE Latino ascendancy seems to have been postponed—again. The next mayor of Los Angeles, where Latinos make up 46% of the population, will be James Hahn. The city attorney beat his fellow Democrat, Antonio Villaraigosa, who was seeking to be the first Latino mayor of the city since 1872 (when the place was a village in the desert), in a run-off election on June 5th by 53.5% to 46.5%. In April, Mr Villaraigosa, the speaker of the state Assembly, had finished ahead of Mr Hahn in the first round of voting; he also went into the election with the support of both Richard Riordan, the outgoing Republican mayor, and Gray Davis, the governor of California. But he did not prevail.
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Is he up to it?”
From the June 9th 2001 edition
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