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Last Updated June 22, 2005
Los Angeles in the years just after World War II was the fastest growing metropolitan area in America. If a traveler deplaning today at LAX could suddenly put himself in the postwar Los Angeles of 50 years ago, he would see quite a different city. LAX, today the nation's third-busiest airport, with eight central terminals, was then a small airfield, standing amid open country. The mile-square grids east, north and south of the airport were just filling up with rapidly built subdivisions. North of the airport on open fields you would find the spanking new middle class Westchester subdivision; just beyond you would see the wetlands along Ballona Creek, where Howard Hughes took his Spruce Goose, the largest airplane ever built, up for its one and only flight. Inglewood, the rapidly growing suburb just east of the airport around the Hollywood Park Race Track, was filling up with the young families of people who had moved to Los Angeles during or after the war--workers in the giant aircraft factories or in the small factories built by entrepreneurs manufacturing products that Californians got from factories back East before the war. Inglewood would become a focus of sports fans when the Forum opened in 1967, the home of the Los Angeles Lakers for 32 years. In Hawthorne, just to the south, home of a big Northrop Grumman plant, future celebrities were growing up--Sonny Bono and the Beach Boys. Gardena, east of Hawthorne, was famous for its legal poker clubs and its Japanese American residents, back from the wartime internment camps. East of Gardena is the part of Los Angeles called South Central or, more recently, South Los Angeles, after the city council in 2003 officially renamed this community to rid it of the stigma as a place of gang wars and race riots. In the days of residential segregation, much of this area was the home of Los Angeles's black community, its numbers greatly expanded by migration from the South during and after the war. Here you could find the Central Avenue entertainment district, at whose clubs and theaters you could see the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Billy Eckstine, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Later, it was the epicenter of L.A.'s two postwar riots, in the Watts district of Los Angeles in 1965 and at the corner of Florence and Normandie in 1992. In the last 20 years, Latinos have been buying houses here, which are among the cheapest in the metro area--only five L.A. zip codes have median prices below $200,000--and new businesses have been cropping up in garages and small factories. The 35th Congressional District of California today is made up of all these areas, with a landscape and populations very different from what you would have found 50 years ago. At its west and east ends are two of the Los Angeles area's great transportation facilities. One is LAX and the cluster of hotels and office buildings all around; the swooping arches of LAX's theme building, intended in 1961 to symbolize the jet era, are now an historic landmark, like Disneyland's Tomorrowland or the Jetsons, an antique version of a surpassed future. In December 2004 the Los Angeles Council approved Mayor James Hahn's $11 billion expansion plan, which includes $500 million for soundproofing and other measures to placate nearby communities. The other is the Alameda Corridor, the 20-mile rail express line connecting the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach with rail distribution points near downtown Los Angeles in a trench 33 feet below ground, built between 1997 and 2002 at a cost of $2.4 billion. Westchester, once all white, now is home to many blacks and Latinos. Inglewood, once all white, later mostly black, is now 46% Hispanic; it also has a school system that is producing some of the state's highest test scores. Hawthorne, with more Hispanics than whites or blacks, is home of the Western Museum of Flight. Gardena still has its poker clubs and a large Asian population. South Los Angeles, an almost entirely black neighborhood at the time of the Watts riot, now is home to more Hispanics than blacks: the 35th District's population in 2000 was 34% black and 47% Hispanic. Since the 1992 riot, local businesses have revived though it still has high crime rates and plenty of mistrust of local police, exacerbated in February 2005 when a policeman shot a 13-year-old boy who was stopped after a freeway chase and backed his stolen car toward police officers and into their cruiser. Politically, this is an overwhelmingly heavily Democratic district. The congresswoman from the 35th District is Maxine Waters, a Democrat first elected in 1990. She grew up in St. Louis, one of 13 children; she has said, "I know all about welfare. I remember the social workers peeking in the refrigerator and under the beds." She moved to California in 1961; she worked in a garment factory and raised two children, got a sociology degree at California State University in Los Angeles and became an assistant Head Start teacher after the Watts riot of 1965. She likes to call herself "The Organizer", and has shown the capacity to draw big supportive crowds to her protests over the years. From 1973 to 1976 she worked on the staff of a Los Angeles councilman. In 1976 she won a seat in the California Assembly. She became a Democratic national committeewoman in 1980 and Phil Burton consulted her on the 1982 redistricting. When Augustus Hawkins retired in 1990 after 28 years in the House and 28 years in the California Assembly, Waters was the obvious choice for the seat and won it easily. Waters comes from a background of poverty and believes with fervor in federal aid for the poor and for racial preferences to help blacks overcome years of slavery, segregation and discrimination; she has favored drastic reductions in defense spending. She was one of six members who voted against supporting the Gulf War once it started, asking how urban gang members could be expected to stop fighting when America's own leaders were waging battles. In March 2003 she was one of 11 members who voted against the resolution to support the troops in Iraq after battle began. She brings to her work a fury that is almost palpable, and an insistence that she will assert herself regardless of protocol, partly perhaps a result of anger but also a weapon she uses shrewdly to get both publicity and results. ''I don't have time to be polite,'' she says, beginning her House career by getting herself included in a post-riot White House meeting with George H. W. Bush. The Los Angeles riot was occasion for both Waters' best and worst moments. She flew home immediately and roused the Department of Water and Power to restore water to the riot area, and was effective in gaining provisions to the post-riot emergency act that eventually made it through Congress and was signed into law. But she also suggested rioters were morally justified and claimed ominously, ''Los Angeles is under siege," she said. "The violence could spill over to many other cities in this country.'' Waters isn't afraid to step on toes in pursuit of her legislative agenda. She is a chief deputy Democratic whip. She has produced specific legislation and pushed Section 108 loan guarantees to cities for economic and infrastructure development. To the terrorism insurance bill she added an amendment for a 50% discount on deposit insurance premiums for low-income people with lifeline bank accounts. In a rare legislative success in the Republican House, Waters sponsored an amendment to triple spending for the erasure of the debts of poor nations, mostly in Africa; many Republicans agreed, and it passed 216-211. She has sponsored bills to repeal mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes, and charges that the war on drugs has created "apartheid." Her husband, a former professional football player and Mercedes Benz salesman, became Bill Clinton's ambassador to the Bahamas. But she voted against the crime bill rule in August 1994 when the administration desperately needed votes. Waters said she ''could not vote for a crime bill that sweepingly expands the death penalty to include sixty new crimes.'' In 1996 and 1997, she attracted attention for pushing the theory, supported in a story in the San Jose Mercury News (later repudiated by the paper), that the CIA had worked with Nicaraguan Contras to import crack cocaine into South Central Los Angeles. During the Judiciary Committee's Clinton impeachment inquiry, she assailed ''trumped-up charges" and said Kenneth Starr was ''guilty'' of ''raw, unmasked, unbridled hatred and meanness that drives this impeachment coup d'etat.'' Waters is a force to be reckoned with in L.A. politics as well. Other politicians are eager to be included on her Progressive Connections slates that are mailed out to many thousand black voters. Politicians pay to be included--a common California practice. In the April 2001 primary for city attorney Councilman Mike Feuer paid $10,000 to be on the slate and ran even in black areas with Deputy Mayor Rocky Delgadillo. But Feuer wouldn't pay $25,000 to be on the slate for the June runoff; Delgadillo paid $35,000 and got 65% in black areas. For mayor in 2001 she strongly supported City Attorney James Hahn over former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa. Hahn is the son of Kenneth Hahn, Los Angeles County Supervisor for 40 years, whose work for black constituents made him beloved among black voters. Hahn won with the support of 80% of black voters and 60% of white voters; Hispanics heavily favored Villaraigosa. After Hahn won, Waters approached banker and LA Focus owner Jheryl Busby and insisted he fire columnist Najee Ali, who had backed Villaraigosa. Busby fired Ali in July 2001. Ali sued Busby, and Busby's attorney said Busby "told me he needs a positive relationship with Waters because of her ability to help him with his bank and other business interests." (Waters is on the Financial Services Committee). But Waters sharply opposed Hahn in February 2002 when he urged the 10-member Police Commission not to reappoint Chief Bernard Parks. Waters wrote an opinion article strongly criticizing Hahn. "The city of Los Angeles deserves better leadership than he has shown. His father would not be proud of that. … Mr. Mayor it is you--not Chief Parks--who has failed to earn the right to serve a second term." In March 2005 she supported Villaraigosa against Hahn. "Jimmy Hahn is not Kenny Hahn. We gave him a chance. He's failed, so we're moving on." She was one of the most visible opponents of an Inglewood referendum to permit a Wal-Mart superstore; it was defeated 61%-39% April 2004 in a turnout of 11,000 in a city of 115,000. Waters was one of the few officials to oppose November 2004's Measure A, a .5% sales tax increase to pay for more police officers; it failed to get the needed two-thirds majority and got less than 50% in South Los Angeles. She opposed Hahn's LAX expansion plan and drew more than 1,000 to protest the proposed closing of the trauma unit in King/Drew hospital, a county facility which, a Los Angeles Times investigation found, is much more costly than other hospitals because of high spending per patient, high payments to injured and absentee employees and high fees to doctors. Waters has been reelected without difficulty. The 2001 redistricting removed some black areas from the district and added Westchester, LAX and Lawndale, which do not have large black percentages. The one potential threat to her tenure is the rising Hispanic percentage in the district; blacks are still a majority of Democratic primary voters, but that may no longer be true in 2010. Her strong support of James Hahn over Antonio Villaraigosa in the 2001 Los Angeles mayor race risked angering Latino voters; the late labor leader Miguel Contreras said that many Latinos in her district felt that she "played the race card against the Latino candidate." Her support of Villaraigosa in 2005 may have soothed any angry feelings on this. She is one of many Democrats who has sought a seat on the Appropriations, but with Republicans in control open seats have been scarce, and she has not been successful yet.
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