Christina Hoag, La Política’s Los Angeles correspondent, recently interviewed Kenneth C. Burt, author of The Search for a Civic Voice: California Latino Politics. The bulk of the interview is included in this week’s newsletter but here are a couple of questions and answers that we couldn’t squeeze onto the PDF:
Q: What lessons, if any, do Latinos have to learn to advance politically?
A: A steady increase in the number of Latino voters should lead to an ever-larger number of Latino and Latino-friendly elected officials. The lesson from history is that voter registration and voting is not automatic. From 1947 to 1960, CSO systematically signed up more than 400,000 Latinos to vote, and ran get-out-the-vote drives. There is not a comparable statewide organization today. Voter registration is more episodic.
The other lesson from history is the centrality of coalition politics. In heavily Latino areas, candidates form competing coalitions. In recent Democratic legislative primaries, we have seen bitter contests between labor and business-backed Latino candidates. For example, Núñez won his first election with the backing of the AFL-CIO, beating a candidate funded by the Chamber of Commerce.
In multicultural districts, the biggest breakthroughs came through coalition politics. I mentioned Villaraigosa’s mayoral campaign, but the same was true for Edward Roybal. He was elected to the Los Angeles City Council in 1949, and to Congress in 1962. Latinos were not the majority in either election.
What is interesting is that the Roybal and Villaraigosa coalitions are so similar. For Roybal it was Latinos, Jews, progressives, labor, African Americans, and Asians. In 1949, the pastor at St. Mary’s, Monsignor O’Dwyer, endorsed, and he helped deliver the Irish vote as well as to help animate the Latino turnout.
Q: You worked on “The Search for a Civic Voice” for 20 years. Why did you decide to write the book?
A: I realized that a lot of the stories of the political pioneers had never been told. I also realized that I had a unique vantage point as an academic engaged in practical politics. Previously I worked for former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and I currently work to help elect politicians on behalf of the California Federation of Teachers. It’s also about family ties, which are so important in the Latino community.
As a young man I worked for the United Farm Workers, and was eager to learn how the UFW grew out of CSO, which in turn was shaped by the union movement and the World War II veterans. While at UC Berkeley, I attended the 1980 Democratic Convention as a Ted Kennedy supporter along with Dolores Huerta.
At Berkeley I also met, and later married, a Latina whose father had helped organize the GI Forum in California in the 1950s. The first assemblymen, congressman, and the first judge in LA were all WWII veterans who were part of this network.
After grad school at Harvard, I also interviewed President Kennedy’s Latino liaison, the architect of Viva Kennedy. He told me that no one else had approached him about his role in the historic election, or how he had helped facilitate the appointment of the first Latinos to high-ranking positions in the federal government.
So, I just found myself having a lot of information that I believed would be of interest to others. The result is The Search for a Civic Voice.
Tags: Kenneth C. Burt
