Lesson No. 1: Negative campaign ads work.

The postmortems on this race will all mention the TV spot run by the Hahn campaign focusing on a letter Villaraigosa sent to President Clinton in 1996 on behalf of cocaine trafficker Carlos Vignali. The spot was used by Hahn to show that Villaraigosa was soft on crime and that he could not be trusted. Villaraigosa countered by comparing Hahn to L.A.'s racist mayor from the late 1960s and early '70s, Sam Yorty, claiming the ad, which featured images of a smoking crack pipe, played to racial stereotypes and fed into an attempt by Hahn to create a "climate of fear." The pro-Villaraigosa L.A. Weekly picked up on Villaraigosa's critique, referring to Hahn as the "Son of Sam."

Hahn stood by the ad, claiming that it was Villaraigosa, in his charges that Hahn's ads were negative, who was actually the candidate resorting to dirty campaign tactics. Villaraigosa, the logic circles, is the one who "went negative" by claiming Hahn "went negative," and so on, and so on.

The spot was perhaps the key turning point in a race Villaraigosa once led. In the runoff's race to the center, Hahn's ad helped cement the image of Villaraigosa as the liberal in a race that was actually a battle of two liberal Democrats. Though the city has moved significantly to the left since first electing Republican Richard Riordan eight years ago -- thanks to increased labor activity and new Latino voters that have sent Republican registration down in L.A. from 26 percent in 1993 to 20 percent today -- Republicans still constitute a key swing vote in the city. The Times poll showed that most of the votes from the May primary's third-place finisher, Republican developer Steve Soboroff, went to Hahn.

It was those Republican swing voters who seem to have been most moved by Hahn's portrait of Villaraigosa as a soft-on-crime liberal. Among Hahn voters, 30 percent of them said crime was their top issue, only slightly behind education and the economy. And despite Riordan's endorsement of Villaraigosa, Republicans voted more than 3-1 for Hahn, comprising 28 percent of Hahn's total votes.

Lesson No. 2: Race still matters.

Many of us who write about politics in California want to believe that California is the great American exception; that because we live in state where no one ethnic group makes up more than 50 percent of the population, this means we are somehow beyond race in our politics. But looking at the exit polls from Tuesday's race shows this is simply not the case.

Latinos constituted a record-breaking 25 percent of the Los Angeles electorate Tuesday, turning out in record numbers to vote for one of their own. According to the Times exit poll numbers, Latinos voted for Villaraigosa 4-1 over Hahn.

Similarly, blacks came out to cast their votes for Hahn, whose late father, Kenny, was a supervisor in South Los Angeles for four decades, and was revered as a hero. African-Americans made up just over 18 percent of the electorate Tuesday, with three-fourths of their vote going to Hahn.

But it is true that while race is part of the story, it is not the entire story. Much of the national media attention on the race focused on the black-vs.-brown plot because it's sexy. But it is really a more traditional, economic, issue-based coalition that catapulted Hahn to victory, with Hahn positioning himself as less evil for L.A. moderates and conservatives. Hahn's key to victory was picking up voters who had voted for Soboroff or conservative City Councilman Joel Wachs in the primary. Focusing on issues like crime, and fears that Villaraigosa was too liberal, created that opening for Hahn. And though Tuesday's mayoral vote was something of a Hobson's choice for many L.A. Republicans, Villaraigosa's call for a living wage for city workers and his criticism of police chief Bernard Parks -- and of course the Hahn ad -- helped make Hahn the more palatable candidate.

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