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Bernard Parks faces a tough reelection campaign

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Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard C. Parks’ bid for a third term in his South Los Angeles district once looked to be a lock.

The councilman was elected with 78% of the vote in 2003, riding a wave of anger among black voters over his ouster a year earlier as police chief after 37 years with the Los Angeles Police Department. No one challenged him in 2007. And his two opponents in the March 8 contest have meager campaign treasuries and a fraction of his name recognition in the 8th District, which stretches from the neighborhoods around USC almost to the 105 Freeway.

But suddenly, the 67-year-old Parks has found himself in a heated race with citywide import. The two-term councilman has become the top target of the city’s highly organized employee unions, which have tightened their grip on the City Council in recent years. His defeat could shift the balance of the City Council toward a majority already heavily influenced by union leaders.

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Parks’ chief opponent in the March 8 election, Forescee Hogan-Rowles, has been helped somewhat by discontent in the district over continued high unemployment. But unions are the driving force in turning the contest into a fight. They have already spent more than $469,000 on her behalf, dwarfing the $10,000 her campaign treasury held at the end of the January filing period.

Both sides see more than a single council seat at stake. Over the last few years, as Los Angeles has struggled to keep its finances out of the red, Parks has guided the city’s Budget Committee, nudging colleagues to make politically perilous employee layoffs and furloughs and to weigh cuts to future pension benefits while warning that delays could lead to insolvency.

Though the mayor and council backed job cuts, Parks’ repeated assertions that the city has been too generous with employee benefits have made him the focus of unions’ anger. Their campaign against him could serve as a warning shot to other elected leaders who dare to cross them.

At a recent rally near Parks’ headquarters on Crenshaw Boulevard, San Fernando Valley Councilman Greig Smith told Parks’ supporters that they were on “the front line of a much bigger fight.”

“He has one word that doesn’t go over well on the City Council — it’s ‘No,’” said Smith, who shares Parks’ fiscal conservatism. “There are people coming after him that don’t like being told ‘No.’ ”

If Parks “somehow loses this fight,” he said, “the city of Los Angeles will go bankrupt.”

On the other side, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 18, which represents 8,551 DWP workers, has aired gauzy television ads to introduce Hogan-Rowles as the candidate focused on “job opportunities.” The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor has spent more than $122,000 for field work, consultants, phone banks and brightly colored mailings that highlight her work helping low-income businesses at the nonprofit organization she heads, the Community Financial Resource Center.

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The Los Angeles Police Protective League, which represents about 9,000 rank-and-file city police officers, has aired radio ads attacking Parks as a “typical politician and a hypocrite.” It sent out a campaign flier last week falsely charging that Parks “took 1,000 police officers off our streets.”

Hogan-Rowles cannot legally coordinate her efforts with the unions’ independent committees, but she is clearly thrilled that labor is raising her profile.

“I kind of feel like one of those people who has been in a rock band for a long time — they’ve been playing in those nightclubs that nobody hardly goes to — and then all of a sudden they think they’re an overnight success,” she said during a recent teleconference with voters.

For Parks, the union opposition is an uncomfortable replay of his unsuccessful 2008 run for the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, when labor spent $8.5 million to aid his opponent, Mark Ridley-Thomas.

The unions, he said, demand a “100% voting record for their wishes” and “believe that they are in charge of the City Council.”

“Folks that do not live here do not have a voice in the 8th District,” he said.

Labor leaders say Parks should have seen this coming. The Police Protective League has sparred with Parks since he was police chief. His history with the county labor federation does not stretch back as far, but his relationships with its members have been strained as the city’s budget deficit has worsened.

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Few of Parks’ stances have rankled more than his advocacy for scaling back pension benefits for future workers to curtail what he views as unsustainable city spending.

The unions opposing Parks believe their most potent ammunition is the fact that Parks collects a $265,000 police pension and a $178,789 council salary.

“He espouses this frugal approach when it comes to others, but he certainly hasn’t practiced what he preaches,” said Maria Elena Durazo, the labor federation leader.

At a candidate forum Saturday, Parks dismissed the criticism as “ludicrous” and noted that he did not set the rules for his salary or pension. After serving the Police Department for nearly four decades, he added, “I think I deserve the pension I earned.”

In his district, Parks gets mixed reviews. Many share the frustration of Kathryn Wallace, a retired corrections employee from Leimert Park, about the lack of progress on Marlton Square, a 22-acre development that has been stalled for decades.

“If he’s done anything about that, it’s his secret,” Wallace said, even though Parks recently held a news conference announcing that the project had emerged from bankruptcy.

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Parks waves off complaints about economic development by noting that his district was the only one to see job growth between 2007 and 2009, in part because of the openings of venues like Maverick’s Flat, a soul and R&B club, and Buffalo Wild Wings.

When Parks is engaged, as he was on a recent precinct walk, he makes a compelling case for himself. For several hours, in a tan 8th District ball cap and Nike sneakers, he moved at brisk pace through the Canterbury Knolls neighborhood.

Kinikki Guy, a California Department of Transportation worker who met the councilman on his walk, said that under Parks’ leadership, she has seen more beautification projects, festivals and activities. The big hit in her household was the snow that Parks trucked at Christmas for children to play in.

“I see the community changing,” she said.

But Parks has alienated others with his aloof and sometimes abrasive manner. At a recent candidate forum, he chided an older woman who had shouted out for him to answer the moderator’s question: “This is not your party,” he told her as a low murmur rippled through the startled crowd.

When the councilman hosted a recent breakfast for preachers at the Expo Center, he greeted his guests at the door. But when it came time to eat, he sat alone at a table in the front of the room, flipping through a packet of information about services that he hands out to constituents.

In the case of rank-and-file union members, Parks is counting on his sharp-edged candor to win him votes. As he sought the backing of Service Employees International Union, Local 721 at its headquarters last month, Parks reminded city workers that he too had been a union member and that he was trying to ensure the city’s fiscal stability.

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But he also said he would vote again for layoffs this year to whittle down the $350-million deficit, a move he said he believes will spare the majority of city employees “inhumane” cuts.

“People came up afterwards and said you’re the only one that speaks to us like we’re adults. You’re the only one that never lies to us,” Parks said.

They politely walked him to his car. And a few days later they endorsed Hogan-Rowles.

maeve.reston@latimes.com

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