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Bell and Bell Gardens are adjacent blue collar towns in southeast Los Angeles County, just across the Long Beach Freeway from each other.
Yet they are on opposite sides of the Latino political revolution that has changed the power structure in large swaths of Southern California during the immigration surges of the last 20 years.
In Bell Gardens, a city that is 96% Latino, every council member is Latino. In neighboring Bell, which is 95% Latino, there is only one Latino on the five-member council.
Why have Latinos gained control of City Hall in Bell Gardens and dozens of other heavily Latino cities in Southern California, but not in Bell?
It is a question Latino activists and others have pondered for years--and not just about Bell. Four other cities in Los Angeles County--Compton, Inglewood, Santa Fe Springs and Whittier--have populations that are more than 50% Latino but have only one or no Latinos on their city councils.
With large groups of noncitizen immigrants in some cities, low rates of Latino voter registration and a lack of Latino participation in the civic life are the most obvious causes. But some voting-rights experts suggest that at-large elections and the power of incumbency have kept Latinos out of power.
In some cities, many Latino voters say they are content with a white council majority and see no reason to replace officials for the sake of ethnic representation.
Ethnicity, of course, does not always determine how minorities will vote. For example, former Los Angeles City Councilman Art Snyder, who is white, represented the heavily Latino Eastside for 18 years. For 45 years, former Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, also white, represented a mostly black South-Central district.
"Ethnicity is a factor, but it's not the only factor," said Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, a Claremont think tank. "People see beyond those things."
These five cities demonstrate that the Latino political revolution that won impressive gains on the state and federal levels has yet to take complete hold locally.
But change may be on the horizon as activists launch voter registration drives and other efforts to get Latinos to play more prominent roles in their local governments.
"I think a new generation of voters are coming in who...