After campaign of inclusion, LA mayor-elect faces racial challenge

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Monday, June 6, 2005

After campaign of inclusion, LA mayor-elect faces racial challenge

By: MICHAEL R. BLOOD - Associated Press

LOS ANGELES ---- As a candidate for mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa packaged his ethnicity as carefully as he knotted one of his designer ties. Looking to appeal across the racial rainbow, he became the candidate who happened to be Latino, not the Latino candidate.

Days after his watershed election as the first Latino mayor of modern Los Angeles, a rash of fistfights between black and Latino students forced him to speak to the racial lines that crisscross ---- and sometimes divide ---- one of the nation's most diverse cities.

On issues from jobs to housing to education, the city's complex and shifting racial milieu will test his promise to be a mayor "for all Los Angeles."

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http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/06/06/news/state/6505200058.txt