Houston mayoral race as face of future politics

As Houston voters go to the polls Saturday to select their new mayor, some see the election as simply a matter of streets and schools and taxes.

Others see this race as the beginning of a new political era, one that foretells the look of local politics across the United States.

After last month's mayoral race led to a run-off election, Houston became the first major US city to pit an African-American against a Hispanic.

Mayor Lee Brown (D), the African-American incumbent, and challenger Orlando Sanchez, a Cuban-American Republican, received 43.5 percent and 40.3 percent of the vote, respectively, in the general election. The white candidate, Chris Bell, won 16 percent of the vote and was eliminated.

The two remaining candidates have spent the past month trying to clarify their positions while attacking their opponent. At times, they have found themselves tripping over each other in minority neighborhoods, battling over key voting blocs.

But, more important, they have had to find ways to appeal to white voters - a group that minority candidates have sometimes struggled to connect with and oftentimes overlooked.

"This is now the 21st century, and in cities like Los Angeles, Dallas, New York, and Philadelphia - major, multiethnic cities - no one wins an election by appealing to only one ethnic community," says Stephen Klineberg, a sociology professor at Rice University in Houston.

"Twenty-first century elections are going to be won by those candidates who can form the broadest coalitions."

Houston is typical of major southern cities. Minorities are now the largest group, with Hispanics comprising 37 percent of the population and African-Americans comprising 25 percent.

And as these groups grow in number, they continue to make inroads into the power structure, thus broadening their political influence. But this is not simply a southern phenomenon. Across the US, minorities are taking large political steps forward.

"We are going to be seeing a lot more political energy from these groups, especially Hispanics," says Nestor Rodriguez, a sociologist at the University of Houston. "We are also seeing the emergence of a new type of candidate, one who can play on his ethnic identity, like Sanchez, and also attract a lot of white votes."

But even more significant is how minorities are expressing their political will. Hispanics, for instance, can no longer be counted on as solid Democrats. Large numbers are crossing party lines and even abandoning the Democratic Party altogether.

"There is room for Hispanics in the Republican Party if the Republican Party doesn't become the anti-immigrant party, which was the great mistake in California," says Dr. Klineberg. "That has not happened in Texas."

In Houston's nonpartisan general election, for example, more than 60 percent of registered Democrats voted for Mr. Sanchez, a conservative Republican.

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