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Sunday Morning News

Los Angeles is Home to Rich Political History

Aired August 13, 2000 - 9:30 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, I guess you could call it the "Chinatown" syndrome. Los Angeles may be known as the City of Angels, but its original settlers had a devil of a time dealing with political agendas of those seeking to control the water.

To this day, the Hollywood game is still played through the watering-down of politics.

CNN's Charles Feldman explains all this.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHARLES FELDMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Go with the flow, follow the water.

ROBERT TOWN (ph), SCREENWRITER: When William Mulholland stood at the end of the aqueduct and said to the citizens of Los Angeles, "There it is, take it," they took it, and they took it...

FELDMAN: Noted screenwriter Robert Town followed the water and penned the motion picture "Chinatown" about L.A.'s water scandals. Go with the flow, follow the water, use some alchemy to transform a desert into an oasis. Water is king here. Water is power here.

Go with the flow. Follow the water. Find the power. Understand what Los Angeles is all about.

RAPHAEL SONNENSHEIN, HISTORIAN: It seemed at times like a pyramid scheme, because whoever came had an interest in making it continue to succeed, even though, for example, they didn't have enough water in 1910.

FELDMAN: Politics is the art of getting things done. Getting water was what politicians had to do, one way or another, by hook or by crook. Politics, L.A.-style.

A powerful family, a powerful newspaper, promote L.A., get more people, increase profits one way or another. Politics, L.A.-style.

OTIS CHANDLER, FORMER "LOS ANGELES TIMES" PUBLISHER: "The Times" took a leadership role because its future depended upon how many new people they could hopefully lure to come in to southern California.

FELDMAN: "The Los Angeles Times" welcomed newcomers with open arms. "Bring your money, bring your resources, feel the sunshine," said the paper, "taste the salt air," said the paper. The most powerful newspaper, the most powerful family, together willing the modern Los Angeles into existence.

WILLIAM DEVERELL, HISTORIAN: The newspaper becomes the epitome of southern California boosterism, a very aggressive and even exciting championing of the Southland and its delights, both for the tourist and the settler.

FELDMAN: But L.A. back then was a conservative sort of town, just say no to big government, just say no to labor unions. Politics, L.A.-style.

CHANDLER: In their day, I think it was one of, No one's going to tell me how to run my business, no labor union chief is going to come in and tell me how many men I have to put on the press or how many men I can put on my trucks as swampers when they deliver the papers to the dealer. I think that's basically the attitude that existed with General Otis and Harry (ph). And my father was -- he was quite anti- labor.

FELDMAN: Labor's response, they blew up the Times Building in 1910. Twenty-one people were killed.

No unions and no big-city political bosses like back East, nope. Politics, L.A.-style.

SONNENSHEIN: It was designed specifically to be unlike the traditional metropolis, especially New York City and Chicago. It was a city that was built by migrants from the Midwestern small towns of the United States who came at the turn of the century. They wanted a great city. They wanted a metropolis. But they wanted it to be governed like a small town.

FELDMAN: But there's a problem now. Seems like there always is. You see, those Midwesterners considered themselves settlers. But the Latinos, who happened to have founded Los Angeles, considered them something else.

DEVERELL: Los Angeles was formed as an American city in the midst of a cauldron of immense violence, the Mexican-American War. That violence doesn't simply end with a treaty that's signed in 1848. There's a trajectory of violence and hostility on this landscape.

FELDMAN: In the eyes of some, violence can also be against the environment. All of those Anglo settlers needed water, lots of it. And draining this lake and altering an entire ecosystem was the way to get it.

Which brings us back to "The Times," the Chandlers, the Mulhollands, the water.

CHANDLER: In the early days, when we needed water and we went up to Owens Valley and the Mulhollands and Harry Chandler and others needed the water, they knew they had to have water for southern California for the city to prosper and for their own businesses to prosper. And so they used a lot of muscle on other counties to agree to bring the water through various counties coming down from Bishop and then through the San Fernando Valley, which was the quickest route.

And there was some benefit to those individuals who had that far- sighted view of the need for water, and some of them benefited to some degree, but not to the degree that most historians write, or else I would be a billionaire today.

FELDMAN: Water flows fast, so hang on. More L.A. political history cascades by.

Uncle Sam proclaims to California Japanese-Americans, "I Want You" -- behind barbed-wire fences, that is, as things in L.A. turned somewhat ugly for some locals that happened to be in the minority during World War II.

A few years later, Latinos in colorful zoot suits take a beating by Anglos wearing the uniform of Uncle Sam, white servicemen pummeling Hispanics, and cops arresting the victims.

Latino Congressman Edward Roybal tried to crack the color and ethnic barriers of the time. His daughter recalls what he was up against.

REP. LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD (D), CALIFORNIA: It was a time when children were punished for speaking Spanish in school. It was a time when Latinos were not allowed to enter certain buildings or places in the city of Los Angeles.

FELDMAN: Hollywood images of the '50s and '60s pick up where "The L.A. Times" of old left off. L.A. is in, L.A. is chic, L.A. is fun, sun, L.A. is paradise. L.A. is like a scene from "Beach Blanket Bingo."

But what about those barred entry to this dreamworld? Answer for some, the Watts riots of the '60s.

JOHN MACK, LOS ANGELES URBAN LEAGUE: The city was just torn apart in every kind of imaginable way, lives lost, major confrontation between blacks on the streets and the police.

FELDMAN: Political jump-cut here. Out with the old, in with the new. For the first time, L.A.'s white majority voted for a black man to be mayor.

MACK: Tom Bradley put together a coalition principally built around African-Americans and Jews. Tom ran against Sam Yorty, a superconservative racist.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR TOM BRADLEY (D), LOS ANGELES: I will use all of the energy...

(END VIDEO CLIP) FELDMAN: Suddenly, L.A. is noted for political, not to mention racial, innovation. And yet L.A. helped give the nation two conservative presidents. Without L.A. backing, Ronald Reagan would probably not have been elected California's governor, his training job for the presidency.

And without "The Los Angeles Times" and the Chandler family, you may not have ever heard of Richard Nixon.

CHANDLER: A columnist named Bill Henry identified this young lawyer from Whittier and thought that he'd be a good candidate to run for the Congress and brought him in to see my father. And my father was impressed. And we had a political editor, very powerful political editor, he really was a kingmaker, named Carl Palmer (ph). And so my father endorsed Nixon.

In the early days, that's the way it was done. You would get behind a politician, a local politician, and you would hand-pick those people, and you would try to get them elected, because it helped your readership and helped your influence, if you will.

FELDMAN: But that was then, and this is now. Now in L.A., Latinos rule, in numbers at least, if not yet in political power, although some say that too will soon change.

DEVERELL: The population will, through the use of political leadership and the rise of new political leaders on the landscape, begin to exercise a fair amount of political power, more than they do now. And it's not insignificant now.

So we will see Los Angeles city and county government begin to reflect more and more that rising demographic power, I suspect.

FELDMAN: And what about the city's African-Americans?

MACK: With the rapid population growth among Latinos, and increasing political power among Asian-Americans, clearly it suggests to me that maybe we're going to have to look at some new relationships and maybe some different ways of doing business.

FELDMAN: Los Angeles is also a city where a political dream can come alive, but also die. In 1960, John F. Kennedy was blessed by the Democratic convention to run for the presidency. In 1968, Robert F. Kennedy's quest for the presidency ended in a Los Angeles hotel after winning California's primary.

There's no doubt that the 21st century will bring about new dreams and political changes in the City of Angels. But as the city grows, so too does its never-sated thirst for water.

And that means it will be, as always, politics, L.A.-style.

Charles Feldman, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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