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It is also an example of the power that these two minority groups, which have long kept their distance politically, can wield when they work together. Analysts say only a handful of long-gone big-city mayors -- David Dinkins in New York, Harold Washington in Chicago, and Federico Peña in Denver -- have benefited from such a black-Latino coalition.

The Los Angeles race also is seen as a statement of the potential of Latino political power. Long dogged by low turnout and poor organization, Latinos in this city and elsewhere in California have matured into a formidable force that could foreshadow increased clout in other parts of the country.

Black-Latino alliance buoys LA mayor candidate
By Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff  |  May 4, 2005

LOS ANGELES -- In big-city politics, electing one's own has always been a path to minority empowerment. But in the country's second-largest metropolis, the political fault lines in a spirited mayor's race are shifting toward a rare, historic alliance of African-American and Latino voters.

Those voters, according to polls, are lining up behind Councilor Antonio Villaraigosa in a convergence of interests that would have been unthinkable four years ago when the Mexican-American was trounced in the black neighborhoods by James K. Hahn, the white mayor who is seeking reelection.

Now, angered by Hahn's dismissal of a black police chief who was replaced by William J. Bratton, the former Boston and New York police commissioner, black residents who gave the first-term mayor more than 80 percent of their vote in 2001 are moving to Villaraigosa. He led Hahn by 20 percentage points among black voters in a Los Angeles Times poll taken April 5 to 11 and led overall by nearly the same margin.

The runoff election between Hahn and Villaraigosa, both Democrats, is May 17.