From Calexico to Contra Costa, the retail giant has successfully fought efforts to keep out the centers, which combine the trappings of a regular Wal-Mart with aisles of groceries.

But in Inglewood, near Los Angeles International Airport, Wal-Mart has employed a new strategy.

The world's largest company has put an initiative on the ballot that would sideline local officials and allow the development without the usual traffic studies, environmental reviews and public hearings.

"The stakes in Inglewood are the highest they have ever been anywhere," said Madeline Janis-Aparicio, executive director of the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, a community organization that is trying to rally residents against the initiative. "They want to throw out all the local planning laws and make themselves a little Wal-Mart city."

In Inglewood, Los Angeles and elsewhere in the state, many labor and community groups are opposed to the nonunion Wal-Mart stores because they say they depress wages, drive out existing businesses, create traffic problems and actually reduce the total number of jobs in the surrounding area.

Wal-Mart officials say they are only trying to give consumers what they want: low prices, jobs for young people and sales tax revenue for cash-strapped cities.

"It's important that Inglewood consumers have the same shopping that many of the neighboring communities have had for years," said Wal-Mart spokesman Peter Kanelos.

"Wal-Mart and our customers are tired of being bullied by the unions. If the unions and the local politicians they put in office want to attack Wal-Mart, they can rest assured that we'll fight back."

In the city of Los Angeles, where officials are putting the finishing touches on an ordinance that would effectively prohibit the Supercenters in much of the city limits, political and labor leaders say they are watching Inglewood closely for clues to the kind of fight the company may wage against them.

Los Angeles Councilmen Eric Garcetti and Ed Reyes introduced a motion more than a year ago that would prohibit stores with more than 100,000 square feet that devote more than 10 percent of their inventory to nontaxable food and drugs in areas of the city designated as economic assistance zones, which cover about 60 percent of the city. A Supercenter can run 200,000 square feet.

(The Wal-Mart and associated Sam's Club under development on Ke'eaumoku Street in Honolulu will have 317,000 square feet of combined space.)

The proposal still must go before Los Angeles' Planning Commission; the council could vote on it as soon as this summer. Mayor James K. Hahn has said he supports the idea.

Garcetti said the ordinance is necessary to "maintain small businesses and protect decent paying jobs."

But some local leaders take issue with blanket prohibitions against Wal-Mart Superstores.

Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard C. Parks has opposed Garcetti and Reyes' proposed ban. A traditional Wal-Mart store opened in his district last year and has proved to be tremendously popular, he said.

Impact on industry, labor

Ever since Wal-Mart announced plans to build 40 Supercenters across California, their impending arrival has triggered changes in the grocery industry and sparked skirmishes between the company and organized labor and their allies.

The specter of the Supercenters fueled the longest supermarket strike in Southern California history last fall and winter. About 70,000 grocery workers, who earn an average of $19 an hour, walked picket lines for five months to protest proposed reductions in health benefits, which the supermarkets said they needed to hold their own against Wal-Mart. The strike settled at the end of February with a two-tiered system under which the stores will pay new hires less in wages and benefits than veteran workers.

With the strike over, organized labor, including the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents grocery workers, has turned its attention to mobilizing local communities to keep the Supercenters out.

In communities such as Hemet and Bakersfield, residents, often backed by union money, have sued to block construction.

In others, such as Oakland and Turlock, city and county leaders, at the urging of organized labor, have enacted laws that would prohibit them.

Wal-Mart has been fighting them every step of the way — and has not yet lost a Supercenter battle.

In Calexico and Contra Costa County, for example, the company has persuaded voters to repeal prohibitions against Supercenters.

In other instances the retailer has filed lawsuits against cities.

$1 million campaign

Wal-Mart is using a new strategy in Inglewood, pushing forward with an initiative that would allow construction of a shopping center the size of 17 football fields.

Both sides are pushing hard in the working-class town, which is roughly split between blacks and Hispanics. Wal-Mart has spent more than $1 million in an election in which fewer than 10,000 people are expected to vote.

Mayor Roosevelt F. Dorn, who says the Wal-Mart development will create 2,000 construction jobs and more than 1,000 permanent jobs for residents, is the only Inglewood elected official who has endorsed the plan.

The other side, meanwhile, is trying to make the point that the development would not only hurt Inglewood's established businesses and bring in the wrong kind of jobs, but would set a dangerous precedent.

"Beyond the question of do you like Wal-Mart or not, the real issue is: Is it appropriate for them to bully their way into the city and not comply with local laws ... state environmental law ... and public input into the process," said Assemblyman Jerome Horton of Inglewood.

Horton says that he intends to introduce legislation that would require future developments of this size to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act.