The 1969 Los Angeles mayoral campaign featured two non-Jewish candidates—incumbent Sam Yorty and Tom Bradley—with two very specific and distinct political outlooks. While initially entering public life as a populist with strong liberal tendencies, by 1969 Yorty had become a symbol of the city’s white conservative leadership and a protector of the status quo. Bradley was an African-American liberal, who assumed the role of Yorty’s primary liberal critic on the City Council. Given these choices, the 1969 mayoral election—described by political scientist Raphael Sonenshein as “symbols of social order versus ideals of social justice"—operated as a contest over the future of race relations in post-Watts Los Angeles and the city’s ideological soul.
The two campaigns envisioned the Jewish community as an essential part of their electoral strategy and placed a special emphasis on mobilizing Fairfax’s Jewish voters. The Yorty campaign, which established a headquarters at 420 N. Fairfax Avenue, tapped into the anxiety about the changing character of the Beverly-Fairfax neighborhood and circulated leaflets throughout the neighborhood that linked Bradley with Black Power, social unrest, ant-semitism, and the decay of Fairfax as a Jewish space. For example, the Yorty campaign dispersed flyers throughout the neighborhood that read, “Today New York! Tomorrow Los Angeles! Stop the Militants Now!” to remind Jewish voters of the black-Jewish tensions that grew out of the Ocean Hill-Brownsville school crisis in New York. Bradley also set up a headquarters in and heavily campaigned throughout the Beverly-Fairfax neighborhood; indeed, a Bradley rally in front of Canter’s Deli drew a crowd of 1,000 supporters. While Bradley’s appeals to the Fairfax voters emphasized the importance of black-Jewish cooperation, they did little to court those who felt threatened by the rising tides of integration.
Yorty defeated Bradley with 53% of the popular vote. Much to the surprise of the leaders of the Jewish community who assumed Jews would overwhelmingly support the liberal Bradley, the Jews in the Fairfax neighborhood split their vote relatively evenly between the two candidates. In the aftermath of the election, commentators trying to explain Yorty’s victory often pointed Fairfax neighborhood: as one astute observer of the local political scene noted, “many in Fairfax felt that the future of the community as a secure ethnic neighborhood was at stake. Racial fears and rumors added to the importance that Fairfax residents imputed to their votes.”
