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But even as Clinton allies like Rep. Maxine Waters and the Rev. Jesse Jackson were accepting congratulations on the black mobilization -- and talking about what they expected in return -- the political story in California was very different. In 1998, Latinos eclipsed African-Americans as political players in the state, surging from 7 percent of the total electorate in 1990 to 14 percent, while blacks stayed level at 7 percent. Californians elected the first Latino to statewide office this century, and the new legislative class had a record 26-member Latino caucus, while the black caucus was pared back to six .

The election results crystallized what has become increasingly obvious over the last decade: Black political power is on the wane in California.

Less than 20 years ago, black political power was at its peak here. In the early 1980s, Willie Brown of San Francisco was speaker of the Assembly, and he eventually became the state's most powerful Democrat. Tom Bradley was entering his third term as mayor of Los Angeles. Lionel Wilson was mayor of Oakland, perhaps the capital of black California, with black majorities on the City Council and School Board. Wilson Riles was finishing his third term as the state's superintendent of public instruction, and Los Angeles Democrat Mervin Dymally was lieutenant governor.

In 1982, Bradley earned the Democratic nomination for governor, marking the first time a black had run at the top of the ticket in California. Though polls showed him leading Republican George Deukmejian on Election Day, Bradley lost the election by 52,295 votes out of the 7.5 million cast -- or 0.6 percent. But that apex of African-American political power is a distant California memory.

"Black politics is at an incredibly crucial point," said Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. "Nowhere in the country were black politics as successful as they were in California. From the mid-1970s to the mid-'90s, blacks were overrepresented in the Legislature when compared to their percentage of the population. Plus, you had Bradley, Wilson Riles, Merv Dymally and Willie Brown, who were all elected to positions of power outside of black districts."

Today, that power has largely eroded. While the numbers of blacks elected to local office has remained relatively constant, they are scattered across the state, and in big cities, black elected officials have lost much of their clout. Today, the speaker of the Assembly is not black, but Latino, and the mayor of Los Angeles, Republican Richard Riordan, is white. In a nationally watched election earlier this month, a Riordan-backed School Board slate defeated three incumbents, including African-American Barbara Boudreaux, who had the support of most of the black political establishment.

Meanwhile, the city of Oakland, with a plurality of African-American residents, is now represented by a white mayor -- former Gov. Jerry Brown -- as well as a white state senator and white assemblywoman, and a racially mixed City Council and School Board. Across the bay, Willie Brown is the embattled mayor of San Francisco, with sagging popularity and a tough reelection bid coming this fall. And there is not a single black representative from Northern California in the state Legislature.

There are as many explanations for the decline in black political power as there are examples of it. One is simply demographic: Blacks are no longer the largest minority in California, Latinos are, and their political power is being eclipsed as Latinos play catch-up. Another is a backlash among black voters against the black political establishment -- as was seen both in Los Angeles and Oakland this year. There has also been a generational shift in black leadership, with a new generation of black political leaders emerging without the strong grass-roots ties of their predecessors.

And finally, there's some good news in what seems like a bad-news story: As opportunities have opened up for the state's burgeoning black middle class, politics is no longer so important. Some observers have even suggested the decline in black representation represents a new maturity among black voters, who are no longer bloc-voting for blacks, but choosing the best candidate.

Next page | Latinos surge to polls