VILLARAIGOSA BACKER LOOKS PAST LABELS.

Byline: Marcy Rothenberg Local View

I'M a Valley Girl. Born and raised. (Well, not exactly: I arrived in a Hollywood hospital, but that was only because my mom's doctor practiced there and my grandmother lived nearby. When my parents took me home for the first time, it was to a little two-bedroom tract house in Panorama City.) Until the day I moved into my first apartment while I was attending UCLA, I called the Valley home. As I do today.

I'm also a Jew, but I firmly reject the assumption, made by some political strategists this year, that L.A. Jews aren't voting our self-interest unless we vote for other Jews. If you ask me, that kind of thinking is just as dangerous to the body politic as the recent Sunnis-for-Sunnis, Shiites-for-Shiites and Kurds-for-Kurds electoral adventure in Iraq.

Making assumptions about voters based on external identifiers is dangerous sport. It all too often leads to the wrong conclusion.

Yes, I am a well-educated, middle-class, Jewish suburbanite, living in a conservative neighborhood in the far northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley. I must have voted for Bob Hertzberg, right? No way. Then, I must be a Valley Girl for Hahn, right? As if!

Any political scientist will tell you: People vote for candidates with whom they identify. I identify with Antonio Villaraigosa. His personal experience is much more like my own than that of Hahn, born with political spoon in mouth, or even my co-religionist Hertzberg.

I grew up in Pacoima, a community where I am sure Antonio would have felt right at home. We lived there because it was affordable for my Russian Jewish immigrant GI dad, because my dad and mom - she of German, English, Scots-Irish Lutheran heritage - enjoyed living among neighbors of varied races and religions who nonetheless shared their values and dreams, and because the deed to their house contained no anti-Jewish covenants. I imagine that Antonio's mother lived in East L.A. for many of the same reasons.

My parents worked hard, but they never were going to have the money to send me to college. It didn't matter. The L.A. public school system made sure I got there. Like Antonio, I remember one teacher who cared deeply about my future. He didn't pay my SAT fees, as Herman Katz did for Antonio. But my ``Herman Katz'' (Mr. Pochna, it was you) did something just as profound. He took a Volkswagen bus full of Pacoima Junior High School eighth-graders, including me, to UCLA for a day to show us the campus and take us to classes and to the student union for lunch - all to demonstrate that college could be a reality, not just a remote fantasy.

And, reading Antonio's personal biography and learning of the guests his mother would bring home to dinner - Asians, blacks, gays, Jews, Hispanics and Anglos alike - I'm convinced he'd be just as much at home talking politics around the dinner table with my mishpucha - my Russian, German, Asian, Mexican, Romanian, English, Scots-Irish, Catholic, Lutheran, Jewish, agnostic, Republican, Democratic, Green, married, divorced, living-together clan - as I would be with his family.

To be frank, I didn't like the way Bob Hertzberg ran his campaign. I thought his grandiose promise to break up the Los Angeles Unified School District - something L.A.'s mayor lacks the power to do - was a blatant attempt to pander to Valley voters. His campaign ads were inappropriately cartoonish.

I'm much more at ease supporting Villaraigosa. Like me, he sees politics as the solution to human need. He sees government as a guarantor of opportunity. And he believes that representatives fail to do their jobs if they represent only their own history, their own self-interest - and not that of every constituent they serve.

I'm still a believer in the traditional American melting pot instead of the au courant salad bowl. I respect voters who think for themselves rather than be manipulated by single-wedge-issue campaigns.

L.A. voters should consider the bigger picture. We should vote for the candidate who will do the best job of bringing all Angelenos to the table - not just the people who look or cook or worship like ourselves.

And, if a Villaraigosa victory gives our Hispanic and Latino neighbors a greater sense of empowerment, if it demonstrates to ``his'' people that they, too, can work toward and achieve their greatest dreams, our entire community will be the better for it.

When I observe Villaraigosa, I see my roots. And I see this nation's future.