New York's Ever-Changing Electorate: Next, the White Minority

The New York Times
September 13, 2005

By SAM ROBERTS

Today's Democratic primary is the prelude to a potentially revolutionary turning point in New York City's traditional tribal politics: In November, for the first time, non-Hispanic whites are projected to constitute a minority of the voters in a mayoral general election.

The impact of the shift, coupled with changes wrought by term limits and public campaign financing, is already apparent in the choices voters face today. Polls say the front-runner for the Democratic nomination is Fernando Ferrer, a Puerto Rican raised in the South Bronx. Among his three challengers is C. Virginia Fields, a black woman who grew up in the South. William C. Thompson Jr., who is seeking a second term as comptroller, is black. And dozens of black, Hispanic and Asian candidates are competing for borough presidencies and City Council seats.

But rather than guaranteeing minority domination of New York government, the demographic changes have just made the city's politics more complex. A surge of new immigrants - many of them not bound, like their predecessors, to the Democratic Party - has so diversified black, Hispanic and Asian voters that some of the monolithic blocs and natural coalitions once taken for granted among those minority groups no longer apply.

Non-Hispanic whites became a minority of the city's overall population in the 1980's, but still made up a majority of voting-age citizens, registered voters and, according to exit polls and other surveys, New Yorkers who actually turned out on Election Day. It is estimated that non-Hispanic whites were 52 percent of the electorate in the 2001 mayoral race and 51 percent of the city's voters in last year's presidential election.

"This is the first election in New York City history where the majority is minority," Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic political consultant, said.

Mr. Ferrer's pollster, Jef Pollock, said, "There's no question that it's a historic moment."

One sign of Hispanic ascendancy is that Rodriguez has now become the most common surname on New York's voter registration rolls, according to an accounting by John H. Mollenkopf, director of the Center for Urban Research at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

The biggest test of minority voting power is embodied by Mr. Ferrer, who hopes to win the nomination today or in a runoff on Sept. 27 by recreating the multiethnic coalition that propelled David N. Dinkins to victory in 1989 as the city's first black mayor. But given the increasing complexity and fractiousness of New York's minority electorate - and the absence of a polarizing opponent like Rudolph W. Giuliani - replicating that coalition may be more challenging. Matched against Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who is white and a Republican, Mr. Ferrer managed to attract 53 percent of Hispanics in a New York Times poll last month, to 36 percent for Mr. Bloomberg and 11 percent who were undecided.

No wonder Mr. Bloomberg has learned to speak Spanish and is tailoring his appeal to Spanish-speaking New Yorkers. In 2001, Hispanics made up about 23 percent of the Democratic primary electorate and about 18 percent in the general election, and most pollsters predict that both proportions will grow this year.

"We've been watching that trend line developing," said William T. Cunningham, a senior adviser to Mr. Bloomberg, "What it means we won't know until after the votes are cast. Whites will still represent a very large voting bloc. But it will be interesting to see what the disparities are among the various subsections of the electorate - whether outer-borough home-owning whites, home-owning African-Americans, home-owning Hispanics and home-owning Asians have similar views because they are homeowners."

And Mr. Sheinkopf noted that Representative Anthony D. Weiner, who with Gifford Miller rounds out the Democratic mayoral field, had been gaining in opinion polls by focusing on "a social class instead of an ethnic class" - middle-class voters.

The political calculus in New York is more complicated than in Los Angeles, which elected a Hispanic mayor earlier this year. Hispanics there, who constitute about half the population and about a quarter of the electorate, are mostly of Mexican heritage. In New York, Puerto Ricans like Mr. Ferrer have traditionally dominated Latino politics, largely because they are United States citizens. But their share of the Hispanic population has been declining with the influx of immigrants and as Puerto Ricans have moved to the suburbs.

"This is a test of how together the sense of Latino identity is in New York City," Mr. Mollenkopf said.

Also, compared with Los Angeles, New York has a larger proportion of blacks. "In Los Angeles, liberal politics was Jews and blacks against the white Republican old guard, with Latinos as a distinctly junior partner," Mr. Mollenkopf said. "Now that Latinos are the plurality group in Los Angeles, or close to it, they can form the core of a winning coalition. Latinos are still a long way from being in this position in New York.

"Steadily and gradually, it means that the racial polarization that produced victories for Koch, Giuliani and, even to a degree, for Bloomberg can't alone deliver a majority."

Measuring who actually votes is inexact. The validity of exit polls - surveys of voters right after they cast their ballots - depends largely on whether respondents answer honestly and on whether the sample mirrors the electorate. Also, the polls can be skewed by practical difficulties, like the reluctance of some voters to fill out the questionnaire.

A poll released last week by the Community Service Society, a research and advocacy group, concluded that low-income New Yorkers, who are disproportionately black and Hispanic, are less inclined to vote this year. "The candidates are not speaking to this large base of low-wage working people," said David R. Jones, president of the society.

Between 1990 and 2000, the number of non-Hispanic New Yorkers declined by 11 percent. The Hispanic population grew 21 percent.

According to exit polls, non-Hispanic whites made up 56 percent of the electorate in 1989, 55 percent in 1993, 53 percent in 1997 and 52 percent in 2001. They made up about 48 percent of Democratic voters in the 2001 primary and 47 percent in the runoff between Mr. Ferrer and Mark Green.

Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociology professor at Queens College, projects that non-Hispanic whites will account for just 48 percent of the vote this November. At least one scholar feels that because of that trend, blatant and divisive ethnic and racial appeals may be less and less likely to win citywide elections.

"No one will ever be elected in New York on an appeal to racial solidarity," said Kenneth T. Jackson, the Columbia University historian, "which I think is the greatness of New York."

* Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company