The LA Recall Election Of 1938

The self-satisfied gent with the fussy Hitler mustache in the photo is Frank L Shaw (1877-1958), who was mayor of Los Angeles fron 1933 to 1938. He was the only mayor of LA ever to be recalled, and in my view, he'll likely keep that distinction barring major changes -- as Greg Gutfeld puts it about the current situation, lots of ash, no phoenix. The newspaper story below (click on the image for a more legible copy) gives the outline of the story that led to his recall, but as Wikipedia points out, "His administration was seen as one of the most corrupt in Los Angeles history, although he had some defenders and was never charged officially with any crime."

The prevailing "whig history" view of the episode portrays it in pure good-guy-vs-bad-guy terms: Fletcher Bowron, a Superior Court judge, ran against Shaw on a so-called "fusion ticket" of all good elements to recall Shaw, and he won. He was characterized by Time as "a fiercely honest man, and is eternally intent on protecting Los Angeles from itself." According to Wikipedia, he:

earned the reputation of being lawful, unlike his predecessor. This was part of what he called the Los Angeles Urban Reform Revival.

Los Angeles grew enormously during the war years, with very large defense industries. After the war Bowron began construction of the Los Angeles International Airport and the 1st phases of the elaborate freeway system. . . . A high priority was eliminating organized crime from the city's police department. He forced the resignation of numerous officers, and prevented Los Angeles from becoming a wide open town. Bowron ran on nonpartisan fusion tickets, but his popularity declined in his 4th term. The Los Angeles Citizens Committee demanded his recall, claiming he was responsible for high taxes and continued police corruption. In 1952 he lost his reelection bid in the Republican primary to Norris Poulson, a conservative opponent of public housing.

Much of the reform in the police department, however, came via his appointment of William H Parker as police chief, which he did in 1950, only three years before he left office. Parker, who was behind popular television shows that portrayed Los Angeles police like Dragnet, vied with J Edgar Hoover as the public face of law enforcement throughout the 1950s, well after Bowron's retirement.

In fact, the urban reform movement was never quite happy with Bowron. Clifford Clinton, a good-government advocate who'd been a Bowron ally in the 1938 recall, broke with him and ran against him in the 1945 mayoral election:

By the early 1940s, Clifford Clinton had become disenchanted with reform Mayor Fletcher Bowron. . . . [A] poll of potential voters revealed strong support for Clinton as a mayoral challenger.

Clinton initially refused. When liberal county Supervisor John Anson Ford announced he would challenge Boweon, Clinton reconsidered because he didn't believe Ford could win. Ford had lost to Mayor Shaw in 1937.

He joined the race and published a treatise of his plan for the city in a 14-page pamphlet, "The Clock Strikes Twelve: It's Time To Act." During the campaign, Clinton pushed for better leadership to deal with ongoing corruption, infrastructure, and racial polarization.

On election night, Clinton came in a distant second, losing to Bowron.

In fact, Bowron turned out to be a politician much like any other. He ran for reelection in the spring of 1941, only months before Pearl Harbor, and he actively sought the support of Japanese-Amnerican voters:

During the 1941 municipal election, Bowron campaigned in Little Tokyo, and John Aiso was among those who tried to attract Japanese American voters for Bowron. He won the election with an estimated 55% of the vote.

Following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Bowron reassured listeners on his weekly radio program that there was no threat of an attack on Southern California shores. However by January 1942, Bowron became one of the early elected officials to call for the incarceration of Japanese Americans, urging that Japanese Americans be moved several miles inland and be put to work for the war effort, such as raising food.

On January 27, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors discharged all Japanese American county employees and adopted a resolution, urging the federal government to remove Japanese Americans from the coastal areas. Bowron took similar steps and forced all Los Angeles City employees of Japanese descent to take a leave of absence. Bowron's office also embarked on a propaganda campaign to try to control the Japanese American population by encouraging the community to inform on each other and by emphasizing dire consequences for anyone caught committing acts of sabotage.

. . . When the federal government started releasing Japanese Americans from the incarceration camps in 1943, Bowron used his radio program to vehemently oppose their return to Southern California. He felt there could be an outbreak of violence and emphasized that the city could not provide housing or police protection to any returning Japanese Americans. He also continued to publicly advocate that all Japanese Americans should have their U.S. citizenship revoked.

The bottom line is that at least the old-fashioned urban reform movement, grounded in the Progressive era that gave us putative reforms like the recall, didn't cure much of anything that ailed LA. Even if it were possible to recall the current Mayor Bass -- which I very much doubt; a change of heart among the 1% in Pacific Palisades isn't enough to swing an election -- based on the historical record, it isn't going to change much of anything. A new populist coalition, on the other hand, that united the aspirations of the working and middle classes of all backgrounds, might be a different matter.

That wouldn't be a repeat of 1938. Nevertheless, so far, lots of ash, no phoenix.