March 7, 2005

LOS ANGELES -- James K. Hahn should be coasting to re-election as mayor of Los Angeles. He has a solid political pedigree, a reasonably strong economy, a falling crime rate, the backing of the city's pre-eminent labor federation and a long list of endorsements.

Heading into the city's primary election on Tuesday, however, the polls show that the race is a dead heat involving Mr. Hahn and two other Democrats, Bob Hertzberg and Antonio Villaraigosa, both former speakers of the State Assembly and former roommates in Sacramento. The two top vote-getters in Tuesday's nonpartisan primary will meet in a runoff election in mid-May.

Political analysts here are reluctant to predict the outcome of the primary, but several have said that Mr. Hahn has squandered the power of the incumbency, partly by failing to take advantage of the relative peace and prosperity in the city and partly because of his colorless demeanor. He has also been damaged by a criminal investigation into the awarding of city contracts to large political donors and other charges of favoritism in the conduct of the city's business.

Election officials predict that about 30 percent of the city's 1.4 million registered voters will turn out for the election.

Franklin Gilliam, a professor of political science and a scholar of racial and ethnic politics at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the odds were that Mr. Hahn would squeak through the primary, but without a strong vote of confidence from the public.

"It's difficult to beat an incumbent who is presiding over at least a moderately successful economy," Dr. Gilliam said. "There's some sense that voters are turned off by some of the scandal in City Hall, but none of it has stuck on Hahn, at least not yet."

He said Mr. Hahn's endorsement by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, A.F.L.-C.I.O., had provided the mayor with significant support because the federation is providing telephone banks, mailers and volunteers to turn out voters. The federation is contributing about $500,000 in independent expenditures on behalf of the mayor.

But Dr. Gilliam also said that the mayor had been hurt among African-American voters by his maneuvering to replace Bernard Parks, the city's first 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."

Mr. Hertzberg, a gregarious lawyer, is the surging long shot in the race, moving in the past few weeks into a statistical tie with Mr. Hahn and Mr. Villaraigosa, who ran against each other in the general election four years ago. Mr. Hahn won that contest by seven percentage points after finishing second to Mr. Villaraigosa in the primary.

Mr. Hertzberg's television spots depict him as a Gulliver-like figure bestriding the city, proposing big solutions to the city's big problems. Mr. Hahn, in Mr. Hertzberg's narrative, is the Lilliputian mayor, a man lacking a vision befitting the nation's second-largest city.

Mr. Hertzberg, who lives in the San Fernando Valley, is appealing to valley residents unhappy with city services and schools and is trying to put together a coalition of Republican and Jewish voters to win a runoff spot.

Mr. Villaraigosa, a City Council member, 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. Latinos have occupied prominent spots in city and state government and in California's Congressional delegation for decades, but no Latino has won the mayor's office in the modern era.

In the campaign's closing days, Mr. Hahn has opened two lines of attack against Mr. Hertzberg and Mr. Villaraigosa. He has accused them of supporting California's experiment with energy deregulation and then cozying up to Enron and other energy companies that manipulated the state's energy supplies, leading to widespread power blackouts and brownouts in 2000 and 2001. He has also said in advertisements that Mr. Hertzberg and Mr. Villaraigosa wrote letters urging President Bill Clinton to pardon a convicted crack cocaine dealer. Mr. Hahn used that to great effect against Mr. Villaraigosa four years ago.

Mr. Hertzberg dismissed the mayor's charges as the flailings of a drowning man. "You've got a desperate mayor doing desperate things," he said.

Mr. Hahn said that he had been written off before during his 24 years in public life and had come back to win each time.