The midterm elections marked a new era in the governing of the state of California. In South Los Angeles, that change was not ushered in at glamorous campaign parties but instead in quiet lines at the area’s hundreds of polling places.
The race for Governor, Senator and Attorney General were on the ballot, as were the controversial Propositions 19 and 23.
In an area with historically low voter turnout, poll workers noticed unusually high turnouts. Ana Garcia, a poll worker at the Walker Temple African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Central, said their polling place had been busy all day.
For residents like Rodney Askew, heading to the polls was a “civic duty.”
“It’s voting day,” he said, beaming after voting at F. Griffith Joyner Elementary School in Watts. “Get your vote on.”
And South Los Angeles did “get its vote on”—Democratically, that is.
According to an exit poll survey conducted by the reporting team at The South Los Angeles Report, the majority of the South Los Angeles community voted for Democratic candidates.
Gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown was the overwhelming favorite of the day, garnering 127 of 141 voters polled, an astonishing 92.7 percent.
“California hasn’t been stable in about eight years now,” Askew said. “So with Brown, he knows how to balance the budget, so it won’t take him too long to balance it. Then, people can get save their jobs and they won’t have to cut too much funding.”
For Leimert Park voter Oneil, the vote for Brown was mainly a vote against his opponent Meg Whitman.
“I don’t usually vote,” Oneil said. “But this time I had to get out and make a difference. Whitman hates unions, and I’ve got a union job with the MTA [Metropolitan Transportation Authority].”
A similar breakdown was seen in the Senate race between Barbara Boxer and Carly Fiorina. Boxer, who has already served three terms in the Senate, won 91 percent of the voters polled in South Los Angeles.
Isaid Nieto, one of the few Republicans encountered at South Los Angeles polls, said he respected Boxer’s efforts.
“But she has to take some time to relax,” Nieto said.
While there was still a Democratic majority, the votes for Attorney General were more balanced.
Democrat Kamala Harris, who spent Sunday morning in South Los Angeles speaking in six area churches, favors the environment and prison reform. She is also vehemently against the death penalty. Harris received 85.7 percent of the exit poll survey’s vote.
Steve Cooley, her Republican opponent, supports the death penalty. He claims to support what voters pass into law. The voters polled gave him 13.4 percent of their votes.
The Proposition races proved more heated. Proposition 23 suspends Assembly Bill 32, which enacts caps on carbon emissions, in favoring of lowering the unemployment rate.
Jamie Aguilar, a 19-year-old resident of South Central, called Assembly Bill 32 a “a valuable and effective law” and he said that with the current economy, the Proposition’s goal of achieving 5.5 percent unemployment is “impossible.”
Hiram Grisson, a fellow South Central resident, agreed. “We need clean air. Companies go to the extreme.”
A majority of 76.3 percent voted “no” on Proposition 23.
The much-debated Proposition 19 saw a smaller margin. In the South Los Angeles Report survey, a slight majority (56.5 percent) voted “yes” on Proposition 19.
“When something’s prohibited, people want to use it more,” said Ana Gonzalez, a South Central resident who voted for primarily Green Party candidates.
Another Green Party voter went to the polls with her mother and voted “yes” on Proposition 19. After saying she voted for all the Green Party candidates, she quickly added, “But please, don’t tell my mother.”
One voter in Leimert Park said that she voted for Meg Whitman even though she did not care about the gubernatorial race. She just wanted to get down her ballot quickly so she could vote “yes” on Proposition 19.
Askew, however, was among the opponents of what is known as the “Pot Proposition.”
“If you legalize marijuana that’s going to make things like drunk driving happen. It’s crazy. That’s a no brainer,” Askew said.
First-time voter Luciano Morales had his sister draft a “how-to-vote cheat sheet” for the election, but Proposition 19 was not something on which he needed guidance.
“Why would I want it to become legal? I’m thinking about future generations,” Morales said. “I believe it’s not right. It’s going to affect the kids.”
The future was on the minds of many South Los Angeles voters as they drove to the polls, stood patiently in lines and marked their ballots.
Some came with clear choices emblazoned in their minds, and others, like Blanca Camacho “just voted for whatever.”
Many voted on party lines. Some even had guides on how to vote produced by organizations like the NAACP.
But, overwhelmingly, the sense at South Los Angeles polls was that voters felt honored to participate in the political process.
“We did our patriotic duty,” South Central resident Paul Thornhill told his son as they exited the polling place.
Reporters Raquel Estupinan, Emily Frost, Emily Henry, Kaitlin Parker and Christine Trang contributed to this report.
