Oropeza Receives Huge Independent Expenditure Boost

The Los Angeles Times reported that the Morongo Indians has independently spent $270, 000 to support the candidacy of State Senator Jenny Oropeza in the hotly contested 37th district Congressional race to replace the recently deceased Juanita Millender-McDonald. This single expenditure is more than the $219, 000 that Oropeza had raised for her own campaign and dwarfs the mere $105, 000 that Richardson had reported raising. The reason why the tribe is supporting Oropeza is that she voted for ratification of Indian gaming compacts that the tribes negotiated with the Governor of California which must be approved (but not modified!) by the State Legislature before they go into effect. Labor is not happy about the level of worker protections in the current version of the compacts since standard federal labor laws do not apply on sovereign tribal ground. Although Oropeza made a campaign promise to oppose the compacts, she voted for them when they cleared the State Senate. The measure is still pending in the Assembly, where Richardson has vowed to vote against ratification. Labor has thus mainly endorsed Richardson in tomorrow's Special Election.

Mad Professah has been blogging about this race for weeks as it pits the Black, Latino and LGBT communities against one another since the district which the candidates are vying to represent (the City of Long Beach and its environs) has a very diverse demographic profile, with significant populations of LGBT, Black and Latino voters.

Sunday's Los Angeles Times carried an op-ed article ("The delicate balance of black and brown") by Harold Meyerson which argues that the racial tensions between Black and Latino voters are actually less than one would expect.

In a city like L.A., one would expect the city's black and Latino political communities to have clashed more frequently than they have. Liberalism may be their common ideology, but the economic interests of the black and Latino working classes have at times come into conflict as the Latino presence in the city grew. For example, Latinos have largely taken the janitorial and hotel jobs that blacks held 25 years ago. In the poorest quadrants of the city, violence between black and Latino gangs rages.

And yet L.A.'s black and Latino political elites have tended to avoid conflict more often than not. In the 2005 mayoral election, for example, both groups largely supported the candidacy of Antonio Villaraigosa. Multiracial coalitions have been, if not the norm, at least frequent in city politics — surprisingly frequent. Generally, as once heavily black parts of the city have become plurality or majority Latino, the elites have worked together to limit the possibility of Latino candidates winning elections in districts historically represented by blacks.

There are rumors on various blogs that Richardson's polling puts her up by 9 points while Oropeza's polling has the races her slightly ahead but within the margin of error of the poll.