eastern suburbs of LA

[freepcrusher]

I haven't told anyone this before but I graduated with a major in history in college and a minor in political science. I'm researching some information about the political history of the communities of Los Angeles county.

I remember hearing someone say that some of the eastern suburbs used to be very reactionary circa 1965-1990. The eastern LA suburbs for the most part aren't and weren't at all like the northern Chicago suburbs or Montgomery County Maryland where half the population were millionaires. These were solidly middle class/working class areas with a large blue collar base and people moving there way up working at entry level white collar jobs. In the mid 1960s, these areas (like Downey or Norwalk) were universally democrat in registration with some areas being by a 3:1 margin.

But the person told me that some of those areas began defecting around 1966 and some even as early as 1964. He told me that this area used to be chock full of Archie Bunker types after Watts happened in 1965. The book Nixonland talks about this on page 75. This area usually voted republican (at least on the presidential level) throughout the 70s and 80s but began to come home to the democrats in the 1990s.

I found this type of stuff interesting. Does anyone who is more familiar with the area or who has lived in California longer know anything about this?

[Sbane]

Those people moved out and Hispanics moved in. This caused the shift to the Democrats. Those areas were always quite blue collar I think and as they have gotten older, have gotten even grittier.

[krazen1211]

Yep. Reagan I believe won Los Angeles County and got about 1.5 million votes. Bush Sr. lost it but won the LA Metro as a whole. W and McCain got about 900k votes... barely 2/3 of the votes than Reagan got in LA County in 1984.

[DrScholl]

As stated, Hispanics moving in changed the political leanings. You can still find some Republican influence in places like Cerritos, Lakewood and Whittier. La Mirada still votes pretty Republican.