L.B. City Council Race Lures Long Slate of Early Hopefuls

Ray Grabinski knocked on one Wrigley District door after another last week, celebrating an anniversary of sorts.

Voter registration lists in hand, Grabinski, 41, was marking his sixth month on the stump for the District 7 seat now held by veteran City Councilwoman Eunice Sato.

Dressed in gray slacks and blue blazer and armed with pamphlets and “Grabinski” giveaway sponges, he has campaigned most nights and weekends since April. And the city’s primary election is still six months away.

“I want to meet every voter in the district . . . . by next April,” said Grabinski, the short, stocky owner of a Bixby Knolls delicatessen who is making his first run for office.

Grabinski’s presence on westside doorsteps--along with lucrative fund-raisers by other candidates, a new campaign for a full-time mayor, and District 1 Councilman Marc Wilder’s announcement that he will not seek a third term--have ushered in a new political season here.

Already, races for four of the five council seats available next spring have begun to take shape.

Only Mayor Ernie Kell, who represents the 5th District and received nearly 80% of its votes four years ago, is not likely to be opposed. Even so, he hosted a $150-a-plate campaign dinner a week ago on the Queen Mary, and guests said perhaps 300 people attended.

The primary election will be April 8, with the final balloting June 3.

In District 7, Grabinski, a leader in California Heights and Wrigley area neighborhood groups for several years, is using the shoe-leather strategy increasingly popular with underdog council candidates in Long Beach.

He points to maverick Councilman Warren Harwood’s overwhelming defeat of 13-year 9th District incumbent Russ Rubley in 1982 as evidence that months of walking districts can work.

Sato, however, has been a hard-working, virtually full-time council member since 1975, who handily defeated current Planning Commission Chairman Richard Gaylord in 1982 even though his campaign was nearly three times as costly as hers. The 64-year-old former schoolteacher said she’s not worried about Grabinski.

“It’ll be a race, I guess,” she said. “I know he’s trying to take credit for things he hasn’t done. He says he’s responsible for the oil pipeline ordinance and the (city) staff developed that.”

Grabinski said that in the wake of the frightening Gale Avenue pipeline break and fire in 1981, he worked hard to get the city to adopt a pipeline safety law that remains a model nationwide. He has also led a successful effort to keep a toxic waste plant out of Wrigley Heights and initiated a city hazardous waste law that established a 2,000-foot buffer between waste facilities and homes, he said.

“(Sato) is effective in her own way,” said Grabinski. “She’s hard-working and she attends a lot of meetings. But a council member has to be a catalyst, not just someone counted on the roll. She waits until the decision is almost made by circumstance or other council people, then she votes.”

Sato said Grabinski has conjured up his own version of past events and misrepresented her actions. “I vote for fairness and justice,” she said, “I have to do what’s right even if it’s against another council person.”

The campaign in District 3 promises to be a repeat of the free-swinging $100,000 race between Councilwoman Jan Hall and dentist James Serles in 1982. Hall has already raised about $32,000, while Serles, who lost by 387 votes out of 7,700 cast last time, said he is lining up pledges and will spend what it takes.

Resurrecting the issues of 1982, Serles, 44, said he would focus on traffic and crime problems in the city’s affluent southeast, and what he sees as Hall’s lack of business experience.

“In me (voters) are getting someone with a solid business background,” he said. “She sits as a member of a council with a $1-billion budget, and she has never to my knowledge been employed or had to make a payroll or sign a paycheck.”

Hall, 42, a housewife and a community activist before election to the council in 1978, said she worked professionally in 1969-72 for a public opinion firm and is a partner in the insurance business her husband runs. She also has had much experience with business as a leader in government, she said.

Crime is down sharply in her district since 1981, she added. And she said she has fought her district’s traffic battles for 15 years, including leadership in a campaign against an east-west freeway in the early 1970s.

Her qualifications and support, she maintained, are even stronger than four years ago.

DISTRICT 9

In District 9 in North Long Beach, Harwood’s seat appears secure for now, even though 1982 also-ran Norm Kermode, 70, and Jay Cain, who headed a failed campaign to recall Harwood last year, have said they may oppose him this time.

However, Harwood, who has frequently angered several council colleagues with what they call his headline-grabbing style, said he would be surprised if downtown business interests he has alienated do not field a candidate by the time filing closes Jan. 30.

Henry Meyer is chairman of the Long Beach Political Action Committee, a business-oriented fund-raising group that is supported by the interests that Harwood said may try to oust him. Meyer said the councilman’s suspicions reflect a “persecution complex.” Meyer allowed that PAC members have been concerned about some of Harwood’s votes, but no endorsements have been made yet.

DISTRICT 1

The race for Wilder’s downtown council seat may develop into the city’s most interesting.

“We have a brand-new ballgame in the 1st District, and it could be more important than any of the others, because there is so much business there,” said Meyer.

Seven candidates are lining up to replace Wilder, including the lawyer stepson of Democratic Long Beach Rep. Glenn Anderson, Wilder’s legislative aide, and a former Cal State Long Beach student body president.

Evan Anderson Braude, 38, said he will make a decision on his candidacy this weekend. If he runs, and he thinks he will, “I’ll get a lot of support” from Anderson’s longtime backers, he said. “I’ve already made a lot of calls, and I’m feeling fairly confident.”

Braude, who has practiced law here for three years after working as a deputy Los Angeles city attorney and with state and federal agencies, said he is known best locally as a stand-in for his father at community functions. He has lived in District 1 for 3 1/2 months, he said.

“I’ve known and worked in the community for many years,” he said. “I know most council members and have good working relationships with them.”

Downtown Contacts

Joy Melton, 42, Wilder’s full-time aide for two years and a professional medical office administrator before that, said no one could know the downtown better than she. With her contacts, she said, she might be able to win while spending no more than $20,000. She has Wilder’s support.

Lawyer Ron Batson, 46, who handles mostly personal-injury cases, said his attorney’s skill is needed on a council “that has been just flying blind” on some thorny legal questions. He cited last year’s lawsuit settlement that led to the council’s purchase of Bluff Park for $9.2 million rather than the $1.9 million originally proposed by the seller as a situation where his skills could have saved money.

Unlike the other District 1 candidates, Batson said he would give up his legal practice to devote full time to the council.

Jenny Oropeza, 28, two-time student body president at Cal State Long Beach and now an aide to Assemblyman Charles Calderon (D-Alhambra), moved into the 1st District in August to run for council. The district particularly suits her, she said, “because I’m very concerned about the disadvantaged. I don’t relate as well, say, to the East Side.”

Mary Alice Romero is the second candidate hoping to become the first Latino on the Long Beach council, said several other candidates. Romero, a veteran in local Democratic Party politics, could not be reached for comment.

Louis Mirabile, 71, owner of a downtown dealership that sells Lotus automobiles, is also a candidate, although he has not yet moved to the 1st District, he said. Ski Dempski, known for the gigantic American flag he flies at his Lime Street residence, has also entered the race.

When announcing last month that he was retiring from public life, Wilder, 36, said he was leaving in part because he needs to spend more time making a living.

Council members are paid $12,000 a year, and are considered part-time employees even though several, including Wilder, say they work at least 40 hours a week for the city.

The part-time status of council members and the mayor may, in fact, become the key political issue of 1986.

A broad-based committee, Citizens to Evaluate a Full-time Mayor and City Council, was formed independently of city government three months ago. All nine council members, except Kell, have made presentations to that committee, which is composed of prominent citizens.

“I think there’s a consensus on every level in this community, beginning with the general public and on up to the City Council, that certain modifications of the present form of government have got to be made and should be made soon,” said businessman Alex Bellehumeur, committee chairman.

No specific proposal will be forwarded from the committee to the council until at least the end of November, said Bellehumeur. The council, acting as the city’s Charter Committee, would have until March 4 to place the proposal on the June ballot. Most council members have said they generally favor making the mayoralty, and perhaps the council, full-time positions.

Voters rejected by a 3-to-1 margin a 1982 ballot measure that would have changed the mayor’s job to full-time status and provided for a citywide mayoral election. The mayor is currently one of nine members of the council and is chosen for two-year terms by his colleagues. Pay is $13,200 a year.

Cal State Long Beach political science professor Paul Schmidt said all California cities as large as Long Beach have full-time mayors and councils.

“Across the country, I don’t know of any city as large as Long Beach that doesn’t have a full-time mayor,” said Schmidt, committee vice chairman. “I think we may be unique.”