Will Latino Voters Pass a Test of Maturity?

Are Latino education activists confident enough to let a white man with a solid record as an advocate for better schools remain in office even if he is not Latino?

Such an admittedly tactless query must be posed because a few months back, some potent political operatives set Los Angeles school board member David Tokofsky up for what they assumed was certain political defeat. When new school district boundaries were drawn, Tokofsky, who already represented a mostly Latino district that sprawled from Eagle Rock to Lincoln Heights, saw his district changed to include several small, heavily Latino cities, increasing its Latino population.

The move was orchestrated by former L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan and his rich pals, like busybody philanthropist Eli Broad, acting under the guise of their Coalition for Kids. Behind its benign-sounding name and pro forma rhetoric, the coalition is a lobbying group that uses hefty political donations to play hardball politics.

The logic behind the coalition’s move against Tokofsky was the cynical assumption that Latino voters support only Latino candidates. So, to protect Riordan and Broad’s favorite school board puppet, Caprice Young, Latinos were drawn out of her district and shifted to other board members -- especially Tokofsky, whose independence and outspokenness have long annoyed Riordan.

Sure enough, no fewer than three bright, ambitious Latino candidates filed to run against Tokofsky. But Riordan’s well-laid plans began to fall apart March 4 when city voters sent both Young and another coalition-backed board member down to defeat.

In the meantime, Tokofsky, who speaks Spanish and is well regarded by those Latino constituents who know him, was just a few hundred votes shy of winning outright. He fell short in new precincts added to his district and faces a runoff May 20 against Nellie Rios-Parra, a Lennox teacher married to Eastside political activist Alvin Parra.

The runoff would pose a difficult dilemma for Latino education activists under any circumstances, but it comes at an interesting time. It coincides with the 35th anniversary of what many Latinos in Los Angeles regard as the start of the Chicano civil rights movement.

The East L.A. Blowouts, as they are now remembered, were protests that disrupted five heavily Mexican American high schools (Lincoln, Garfield, Roosevelt, Wilson and Belmont) in 1968. Although they followed by three years the grape pickers’ strike that made Cesar Chavez famous, the Blowouts were the first sign that the political restiveness of Mexican Americans had spread from California’s farms to its big cities.

Many of the problems the student demonstrators of 1968 were protesting -- a high dropout rate, the need for more and better facilities and the lack of Latino teachers and principals -- are still very much at issue today.

Which brings me back to my question: Can only Latinos fight effectively for Latino kids? In the heady aftermath of the Blowouts, a lot of Latinos would have answered yes without a second thought. But school board politics in L.A. today are more complicated, so the answer must be more nuanced.

It must take into account the troubling fact that although Rios-Parra seems a well-meaning candidate, Riordan and his cronies gave $41,000 to her campaign in the hope of beating Tokofsky and most likely will give even more for the runoff campaign. And few things anger Eastsiders more than efforts by rich Westsiders like Riordan and Broad to buy their votes.

I’ve written in the past that I like Tokofsky’s independence -- the way he stands up not just to Riordan but to the teachers union, which also plays hardball politics in the school district -- so my sympathies are clear. Eastside Latino activists can take justifiable pride in the fact that the Blowouts marked the start of an important political movement. However, it will be a test of their political maturity to see whether they give Tokofsky a fair chance to prove he cares about Latino students as much as they do.