Compton’s Council Race: Issues Emerge Amid the Brickbats

Four chairs sat arm to arm in a boxing ring at this city’s YMCA. Each had a name taped to it.

The occasion was a scheduled forum featuring the four candidates for two city council seats in Compton’s June 4 runoff election. The discussion turned out to be rather one-sided when only the incumbents showed up, but the setting was appropriate to a race characterized by all participants as an unusually bitter one.

The incumbents, Floyd James and Robert Adams--councilmen in Districts 2 and 3 respectively--are fighting for their political lives on the premise that Compton has made major strides under their leadership.

They are backed by Mayor Walter Tucker, who easily won reelection in the April 16 primary.

The challengers, Patricia Moore and Emily Hart-Holifield, are charging that important areas of civic concern have gone begging while the councilmen have demonstrated little sensitivity to the city’s problems.

“I know the caliber of the person I’m facing,” said Moore, who is challenging James in District 2. “He cannot stand on his record.”

Said Hart-Holifield, Adams’s opponent in District 3, “We’re sick and tired” of the leadership provided by the likes of Adams.

Both challengers ran narrowly ahead of the incumbents in the primary.

Incumbents See ‘Bossism’

Adams and James counter by characterizing the challengers’ campaigns as attempts to impose outside “bossism” on local goverment in the person of the Congressmen Mervyn Dymally (D--Compton), who backs both challengers. “It would be totally unfair” for such an attempt to succeed, said James.

Between the personal barbs and insults, however, some real issues seen to have emerged. From the challengers’ points of view, they fall roughly into the areas of development, unemployment and crime.

The challengers say that while several major projects have come to the city under the tutelage of the present City Council, they have been attracted only by the “give-away” of Compton land--by deals in which the developers get land at prices lower than assessed value.

As an example, both cite a Compton Boulevard shopping center built on land they say was assessed at $1.5 million but sold to a developer for $500,000. As a result, they say, the developer, Compton Development Corp., reaped huge profits with dubious benefit to the city’s people.

“Compton should not be in the business of giving its land away,” said Moore, 36, who works part-time as an aide to Dymally and is president of the city’s United Council of Block Clubs.

Hart-Holifield, 44, a special-education teacher and member of the Compton College Board of Trustees, has said of the commercial project, “Someone really gained, but it wasn’t the community.”

Land Prices at Issue

While the incumbents admit that land has been sold for less than assessed value, they say it was done to attract developers to Compton. They say the city will be compensated by increased property tax revenues and employment.

“I’d rather see the downtown area operating with some retail stores in it than with nothing,” said Adams, 53, a councilman since 1977 and owner of two funeral homes. “The shopping center will be here for years to come--we’ve never given anything away.”

James, 44, said Moore’s criticism showed a lack of “knowledge or concept about how you use a redevelopment area to build your city.”

Regarding unemployment, the challengers charge the incumbents with failing to insist that developers employ local workers in their projects and with doing little to provide training and incentive for the city’s unemployed youth.

Regarding crime, Moore and Hart-Holifield both charge their opponents with presiding over a city whose police department is slow to respond to problems, particularly in the area of drug abuse.

“Cocaine is taking over our city,” Moore said.

Hart-Holifield added, “We need to sit down and give some goals to our police department.”

James and Adams say the police are shutting down as many as two cocaine “rock houses” a day, and that crime in the city has lessened.

On the subject of unemployment, the incumbents say they have enforced affirmative-action ordinances requiring Compton developers to hire at least 27% of their work force locally.

Dymally Is Issue

Much of the criticism, the incumbents say, stems from what they characterize as an attempt by Dymally to impose outside “bossism” on Compton.

“It’s clear to me that Dymally wants control of this city,” said James, the owner of a local dry cleaning business who, like Adams, has been on the council since 1977.

Although Dymally has supported him in the past, James said, it was in name only. “He wasn’t giving me money and running my campaign,” the councilman said.

“When Dymally puts money into Pat Moore’s campaign, who do you think she will listen to? Definitely not the citizens of Compton. If Merv tells her to jump, she’ll jump.”

Dymally has denied the charges of bossism, and though Moore admits the congressman has loaned her $5,000 for the race and helped her raise the rest of the estimated $17,000 she has spent on her campaign, she says the money doesn’t make her beholden to him any more than the other candidates are beholden to their contributors.

“I can’t be controlled by outsiders,” Moore said.

Hart-Holifield has said she expects to spend no more than $2,000 in the general election after spending $8,000 in the primary, and none of the money came from Dymally.

James, who spent about $25,000 in the primary, said he expected to spend at least that much in the general election.

Adams, who also spent about $25,000, has refused to disclose his expenses in the general election.

At times, the emotionalism of the race has erupted into bitter denunciations. Late last month, Moore sent a letter to the Los Angeles district attorney and state attorney general’s offices, asking them to “act swiftly and decisively” to halt “blatantly dirty campaign tactics” she said were being used against her.

Moore said in her letter that she had returned home one night to find one of her campaign posters nailed to her door “graphically defaced with profanity, physical mutilation” and threats. The incident, she said, was indicative of a number of “scare tactics and intimidating acts” she said she has encountered both in this race and four years ago, when she ran against James.

Pet Poisoned During Campaign

She said that during the previous campaign, “My home was shot at, my car windows were smashed, and a favorite pet of mine was brutally poisoned and killed.”

Although the letter did not mention James by name, Moore said in an interview later that she held him personally responsible. “Floyd will go to any level,” she said. “It’s dirty, low-life tactics.”

Candace Beason, a deputy district attorney with the county’s special investigations division, said the allegations were being reviewed by her office. Kathy Laber, staff analyst in the attorney general’s office, said Moore’s letter was being studied to determine what department’s position will be.

James denied knowledge of any intimidating tactics against Moore or anybody else. “That same dog has been shot and killed three or four times,” he said. “She seems to believe that if she can make people feel sorry for her that she can get them to vote for her.”

Still, he said, he was surprised by the outcome of the April 16 primary, in which Moore garnered 48.9% of the vote, compared with his own 43.3%. In the same election, Adams took 40.2% to Hart-Holifield’s 41.8%.

Both incumbents say they have spent much of the time since then pounding the pavement, and are now confident of victory.

Both challengers cited other commitments as reasons for not attending last week’s forum in the YMCA boxing ring, and Hart-Holifield added that she was “just worn out,” as far as such appearances are concerned.

‘Issues on the Table’

“The issues have been put on the table well enough for the people to make a very intelligent choice,” Hart-Holifield said later.

So Adams and James spent more than two hours explaining to an audience of 15 people why they believe they should be returned to office.

“The rhetoric of running for public office is a lot different than the reality of holding it,” James said.

Polls will be open Tuesday from 7 a.m to 8 p.m.