Several voters in California's 26th state Senate district in Los Angeles County expressed anger and disillusionment over the political process just days before the special primary election slated for Tuesday, suggesting that though candidates may be hard-pressed to convince residents that it's worth turning out to vote for them, it's not for lack of political passion.

Nearly 400,000 registered voters live in the district, yet in the last regular state Senate election, held in 2006, only a third cast ballots. Some observers expect a low turnout again, at least in part because there isn't enough at stake. Tuesday's special primary election is being held to replace former state Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas, who was elected to the county board of supervisors late last year and vacated his office mid-term.

"Clearly in special elections, generally the turnout is lower. In this case, next week's primary election is the only thing on the ballot, so there's nothing else that's drawing out voters," said the county's registrar of voters, Dean C. Logan. "It's really through publicity and efforts of the candidates to generate interest."

Yet conversations with several community members over the past two weeks suggest resentment against elected officials run deep here and could be as much a cause for low voter turnout as is apathy.

"I am an avid believer in 'no vote counts.' Action counts," said Melvin Wilson, a South Los Angeles entrepreneur and owner of The Sharon, a versatile community center that plays host to his barbershop, live music and poetry readings, and other eclectic activities.

Sitting in one of the many rooms at The Sharon, which he named in memory of his mother, Wilson advocated for community activism and personal responsibility over a vote of confidence in an elected representative.

"Politicians are not responsible. We're responsible. We can elect whoever, but the fact of the matter is we're going to have to execute everything," Wilson said.

Wilson shared at least one complaint with several other residents that elected officials in this district often show up just before an election and then disappear until the next campaign season.

"We don't believe anyone in Sacramento has the real sincere interest in the job that they're elected to do," said Lita "Sister" Herron, a community activist who works to reduce the impact of gangs in South L.A.

The 26th district covers a wide swath of Los Angeles County that includes Culver City (known primarily for its rich film studio roots), West Hollywood, portions of Koreatown and South Los Angeles, and myriad other neighborhoods. It is also one of the most diverse in the state and is fraught with what is widely considered the worst gang violence in the nation.

At a public forum held Saturday at the Lucy Florence Coffeehouse in Leimert Park, a traditionally African American neighborhood in South L.A., an at-times rowdy and outspoken group of more than 40 people squeezed into a tiny space that could hardly seat two dozen. Neither moderator nor audience members were shy about voicing their opinions, at times even talking directly over the candidates.

When only five of the eight candidates showed up, the moderator, political analyst and author Earl Ofari Hutchinson did not hesitate to chide the missing candidates publicly.

"We always say that those who come to the table get to eat," Hutchinson said, pointing out there were three empty chairs at the front, though he didn't refer to any of the missing candidates by name.

The candidates present were most vocal about the absence of Curren Price Jr., a current state Assembly member who has raised more money than any of his competitors in this campaign and who was criticized one week earlier at a debate at UCLA for being a longtime Inglewood representative who only just moved to the area to run for the vacant Senate seat. The other two missing candidates were Jonathan Friedman, a financial analyst who declined to take any calls from the media but whose political consultant said he was trying to keep a low profile, and Robert Cole, one of the state directors for the Barack Obama for America campaign last year who serves on the county's Citizens' Commission for Economy and Efficiency.

The candidates endured numerous interruptions from a clearly impassioned audience, which alternately forced them to stay on point or blocked them from answering a question. Several times there would be a roomful of speakers as a candidate tried to speak and audience members spoke up to urge a rabble-rouser who was talking back to be quiet or leave.

Some of the most animated moments came when Rabbi Nachum Shifren stood to speak. The long-bearded candidate, the only Republican in the race in a district that is by and large Democratic, whom nearly everyone addressed simply as "Rabbi," voiced some of the most hard-line and inflammatory comments of the morning, yet often the noise that arose from the audience was in support, often with an "All right, Rabbi!"

Calling for an end to "illegal alien punks who disenfranchise the African American community" and faulting undocumented immigrants for many of the district's ills because they draw public funds away from badly underfunded areas such as education, the former Los Angeles Unified School District teacher told the audience he was the only candidate who had the courage to say what was politically incorrect.

At one point Shifren, standing and stabbing with his index finger toward individual audience members, shouted, "I will represent you, you, you!"

Such comments and antics--and the mixed but animated reaction from a largely African American audience--highlighted the fact that racial tensions still run very hot in a community that was once dominated by blacks but is gradually coming to be dominated by immigrants and citizens of Mexican and South American descent, along with what is assumed to be a significant population of undocumented immigrants from the same regions.

Other topics of the day ranged from tapping the oil reserves under peoples' homes to how candidates would handle gang violence to the candidates' positions on gay marriage and abortion, but rarely did the energy of the audience subside. Whether that same energy will carry a large number of voters to the polls tomorrow remains to be seen.

Among the other candidates running for the 26th district seat are California Assembly member Mike Davis, Culver City School Board member Saundra Davis, business consultant Mervin Leon Evans, and communications technician Cindy Varela Henderson.