Proportional Representation and the Decline of Progressive Reform in Los Angeles

1911 AND 1913 ELECTION CAMPAIGNS in Los Angeles have been viewed traditionally as the demise of the city's progressive movement. Both the 1910 bombing of the Los Angeles Times building and fusion of the Socialist Party with local laborites pushing for the election of Socialist mayoral candidate Job Harriman terrified reformers and forced them into an alliance with the old guard, revealing the fundamental conservatism of the progressives. When Harriman ran again in 1913, the progressive right wing rejoined the old guard in the Municipal Conference to again defeat the threat from the left. At the same time as this second union with the city's conservative establishment, the left wing of the progressive movement formed its own People's Campaign Committee in opposition to both the Municipal Conference and the Socialists. This split resulted in a major defeat. Although a few progressives remained in office and occupied strategic positions within the city and county bureaucracy, their political organization was in shambles and the mayor's office (and direction of municipal policy) rebounded to the opponents of reform.1

Demographic economics · Development economics · Economic history · Economics · Political science · Representation (politics) · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Race, History, and American Society

• Party Splits, Not Progressives

  Open Access•Jack Santucci•American Politics Research•2017

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