March 9, 2005

The latest tally this morning of Tuesday's primary election for mayor of Los Angeles must have seemed like déjà vu all over again for Mayor James K. Hahn.

That count, reported at 3:56 a.m. on the city clerk's Web site, shows the incumbent mayor coming in second to Antonio Villaraigosa, a city council member and former speaker of the State Assembly, who challenged Mr. Hahn in the last mayoral election. With 99 percent of the vote in, Mr. Villaraigosa had won 33 percent of the vote, while Mr. Hahn had 23.7 percent.

Another challenger, Bob Hertzberg, also a former speaker of the State Assembly, had 22.1 percent, according to the clerk's report. But this morning, Mr. Hertzberg conceded defeat at a news conference at his Encino headquarters.

"I called Mayor Hahn this morning and congratulated him on his victory," Mr. Hertzberg said.

Because no one won 50 percent of the vote, the two top vote getters in the primary advance to a runoff in May. A contest between Mr. Hahn and Mr. Villaraigosa will be a replay of the 2001 mayoral contest.

That year, Mr. Villaraigosa also won more votes in the primary, before Mr. Hahn beat him in the runoff to become mayor of the nation's second largest city.

Incumbency should have given Mr. Hahn an edge in this race. After all, the city has a reasonably strong economy, crime is down from when he took office, and Mr. Hahn had a solid political pedigree and a long list of important endorsements.

But that has not seemed to be enough up until now. In the days before the primary, polls showed Mr. Hahn in a dead heat with Mr. Villaraigosa and Mr. Hertzberg. All three are Democrats in this non-partisan primary.

Some of those watching the race believe Mr. Hahn's lackluster personality has hurt him. Franklin Gilliam, a professor of political science and a scholar of racial and ethnic politics at the University of California, Los Angeles, said earlier this week that it is usually difficult to beat an incumbent. But, he said, the mayor had been hurt among African-American voters by his maneuvering to replace Bernard Parks, the city's second black police chief and one of the contenders in the mayoral primary. The mayor also alienated some Latino voters with his harsh campaign against Mr. Villaraigosa four years ago.

"Beyond that," Dr. Gilliam said, "I think Hahn's got a bigger problem. It's not clear among any slice of the electorate what he stands for or what he does."

If he isn't victorious in the runoff, Mr. Hahn will be the first Los Angeles mayor to lose re-election since Sam Yorty was ousted in 1973.

And if Mr. Villaraigosa wins, he will be the first Latino mayor since 1872 of the settlement its Spanish founders originally called El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles.

About 26 percent of the 1.4 million registered voters in Los Angeles cast ballots in the primary, the city clerk's office said.

Mr. Hahn is the son of Kenneth Hahn, who was a popular county supervisor for 40 years. James Hahn served as city attorney for 16 years before his 2001 election as mayor.

During his tenure, several city departments have been the focus of federal and county criminal investigations into city contracts awarded to political donors. Although his opponents brought up the investigations in political ads against the mayor, no one in Mr. Hahn's administration has been charged with a crime and the mayor denies wrongdoing.

Mr. Villaraigosa and Mr. Hertzberg both campaigned on reducing Los Angeles traffic, the worst in the nation according to the Texas Transportation Institute, and improving public schools.

Mr. Villaraigosa is appealing, as he did the last time, to Latino voters, while trying to broaden his coalition to include whites and African-Americans who voted for Mr. Hahn in 2001 but are now dissatisfied with him.

Mr. Hertzberg, a lawyer who lives in the San Fernando Valley, tried to appeal to valley residents unhappy with city services and schools and he worked to put together a coalition of Republican and Jewish voters