Fighting the odds in the supervisor race

Every day, Martin Luther King Aubrey reports to work as a maintenance painter at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk. In his spare time, he familiarizes himself with the county budget and, after work, he campaigns -- visiting churches, supermarkets and restaurants -- for a hotly contested seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

Aubrey is one of seven little-known, under-financed candidates whose names will appear on the June 3 ballot in the race to succeed Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke in the 2nd District. Donors, other politicians, interest groups and other campaign players are treating the race as a two-man contest, lining up behind state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles) or Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard C. Parks. And seasoned observers have no doubt that voters will award the seat to one of these two experienced politicians.

That doesn’t appear to faze Aubrey -- who is not raising money for mailers, campaign workers or other ways to reach voters -- or the others interviewed by The Times.

They say they offer a welcome alternative to “career politicians.”

And they could have an effect on the contest in that together they might pull enough of the vote to deny one of the two main candidates a majority next month. That would throw the race into a November runoff between the two top vote-getters.

The possibility of a runoff “is not a long shot,” said Kerman Maddox, a political consultant who is not associated with any of the campaigns.

Two physicians, a dentist, a real estate agent, a civic activist, a self-described attorney and Aubrey are running in the district, which has about 2 million residents and stretches from Culver City and Mar Vista to Watts and Compton, Lynwood and Carson.

“There are people that will come out and vote against [Parks and Ridley-Thomas] if they knew there was an alternative,” said Delaney Smith, one of the physicians in the race. “And they’re going around acting as if they’re the only two candidates. It’s going to blow up in their faces.”

Smith says his experience as an emergency room doctor makes him uniquely qualified to represent the district and to solve one of its biggest issues: how to reopen the shuttered Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Medical Center.

“Unless the underlying problem of just too many patients going through the emergency room is fixed, its reopening is going to fail,” he said.

He also wants to curtail wasteful spending within the county’s government, the nation’s largest.

“I have every confidence that I will come in at least second,” he said. “I have tons of support. It’s late in coming, and I’m just waiting for it to materialize.”

Dentist Florian Thompson also places the reopening of King-Harbor, in Willowbrook, at the top of his priority list. Without a successful public hospital in the area, he said, the community will be dragged down.

“Someone has to point out the problems in L.A. County,” said Thompson. “We’ve got to have a person who is playing by the proper rules and is going to take care of our community.”

Thompson said he has attended two debates.

“I’m using my private funds,” he said. “All I need to do is have the exposure.”

Wrapping his pickup truck with his election banners is how Antonio Alvarez is hoping to get exposure. The real estate agent is the only Latino in the race, which he says gives him an advantage.

“The votes are going to be split,” he said.

Aside from reopening King-Harbor, Alvarez said “all those little small issues that you have to live with” make up the bulk to his campaign platform: poorly maintained neighborhoods, trash on the streets, traffic lights with no left-turn signals.

“I feel very good about this,” he said.

Civic activist Morris Griffin, physician Drew Fenton and attorney Thomas Neusom did not respond to several telephone and e-mail requests to discuss their candidacies.

“I haven’t raised money, and I’ve told constituents not to give me any money,” said Aubrey, the painter. “I just need them to tell everyone that I want to make a difference.”

He said one of his first priorities would be to bring more jobs to the area. He blames illegal immigration for the stagnant economy.

“I’m not walking in like I don’t know anything,” said Aubrey, who has run for Los Angeles mayor three times. “Sometimes you want to do things small, but you know people at the top are not going to do the right thing.”

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jp.renaud@latimes.com