Galanter Says She’ll Be Healthy Enough to Hold Office

Speaking in a throaty, slightly tremulous voice that grew stronger as she talked, Los Angeles City Council candidate Ruth Galanter, in her first interview since she was brutally stabbed in the neck on May 6, said Thursday that she will be healthy enough to hold political office.

She faces City Council President Pat Russell in a runoff election June 2 in the 6th Council District. She said she hopes to resume campaigning before Election Day.

“Everything the doctors have told me is that I am recovering very, very well,” Galanter told reporters as she sat in a chair in a hospital visitors’ room in a white bathrobe. She answered questions in a lucid, cheerful manner, offering a few details about the pre-dawn attack by an intruder in her Venice home. The attack, she said, is “still scary” to think about.

A 46-year-old urban planner, who has not run for office before, Galanter built her campaign around neighborhood concerns that Russell has allowed excessive commercial development, pollution and traffic congestion throughout the heavily residential 6th District.

Accuses Opponent

Galanter has also accused Russell, a 17-year incumbent, of avoiding the development issue in favor of questions about Galanter’s political associations.

On Thursday, Galanter responded for the first time to Russell’s charge that her campaign is in the hands of radical left-wingers.

“I do not screen the entire political history of people who want to work in my campaign,” she said. “There are also registered Republicans . . . and there may be any number of other people from a whole range of parties for all I know.”

Making light of her frail voice, Galanter said it would not prevent her as a council member from saying what she had to say.

“You know, they’ve never shut me up yet. And when the occasion requires it, I’m sure I can say what I need to say.” Nevertheless, Galanter would not immediately agree to let reporters look at her medical records. “I’ll think about it,” she said. “I feel some concern about my privacy.” (Later, her campaign manager said she would not release the records). Galanter also said that the loss of a carotid artery, one of the vessels in the neck that carries blood to the brain, means she faces a “theoretically” higher risk of a stroke.

Galanter stepped gingerly into the visitors’ room at UCLA Medical Center where the interview took place, her neck partially bandaged and dappled with bruises and one side of her face noticeably less animated than the other.

Marcela Howell, Galanter’s campaign manager, said after the 10-minute interview that the left side of Galanter’s face looked comparatively immobile because it was still numb from the severe wound inflicted on that side of her neck. She insisted that Galanter had not suffered a stroke.

Galanter offered a glimpse of the experience that nearly took her life.

Asked if she saw her assailant, Galanter replied:

“Listen, It was pitch black in my house and I heard a noise. I fought back and the next thing I knew there was a knife going in my neck.”

Praises Neighbors

She credited neighbors with saving her life by responding quickly to her screams and to the alarm she set off.

“What I think saved my life essentially was that we had a Neighborhood Watch program that I felt confident would respond. And when I screamed, somebody did.

“I hit the alarm and I yelled at the same time.

“The next thing I knew I remember a policeman saying to me, ‘You are going to UCLA.’ And the next thing I knew it was a couple of days later in the hospital. . . .”

Galanter has undergone two operations, the first lasting for five hours, since entering the hospital, and she indicated Thursday that she may have to have more surgery on her vocal chords.

“My voice sounds funny because the result of the injury is some disruption of eating and swallowing and talking. And the vocal chords have to regenerate. . . . It (her voice) may come back all the way as it was. If not, there are minor procedures that can be done that help it along, one of which was done the other day on a temporary basis.”

Release Date Undecided

She said she will not be released from the hospital until doctors can find the correct balance of food and medication.

“It’s a question of adjusting the medication and the food and it’s a question of how long it takes to get that balance,” she said.

When asked if she knew the man, Mark Allen Olds, whom police have charged with her assault, Galanter said she knew of him. She also said she had talked to police about the attack and said she plans to attend Olds’ preliminary hearing scheduled for June 1, the day before the election.

Olds, who is 27 and has a history of heroin use and gang membership, was living in a boarding house across the street from Galanter’s home on Louella Avenue.

Galanter’s neighbors said that in February they, along with Galanter, wrote a letter to Russell asking her to do something about the boarding house, which they suspected to be the source of criminal activity in the neighborhood.

Question Response

The neighbors, who held a press conference after Olds’ arrest, said Russell had never responded to their letter and that, if she had done something, she might have prevented the attack from taking place.

Although it was later learned that the letter to Russell was not addressed to the correct City Hall office, Galanter, when asked about the matter, said she, too, was not happy that Russell had not responded.

Asked if she held Russell accountable in any way, Galanter said: “Well, I was very disappointed that nothing was done. Yes. We are not the only Neighborhood Watch group that’s had that problem, I understand.”

Spokesmen for Russell’s campaign continued to insist that Russell never received the letter. Moreover, Kam Kuwata, Russell’s press secretary, questioned Galanter’s leadership ability for not following up on the letter.

‘We Could Have Helped’

“As Councilwoman Russell has said, I wish we had received the letter. Then, we could have helped them out,” Kuwata said.

“It’s rather odd,” he said, “that she made the complaint and never followed up with a phone call. For someone who aspires to the City Council, she did a pretty poor job of leading her own neighborhood group.”

Galanter also said she thought that Russell, who began stressing her crime prevention record after the stabbing, has been doing her best to exploit the attack for her own political advantage.

“The issues the Russell campaign has been looking for are a whole series of things to avoid the real issues of the campaign.”

The ‘Real Issues’

“I think that the vote in April is clear that for most of the voters the real issues are that the neighborhoods are being overrun by a whole series of influences that are not congenial to comfortable, safe, modern urban life,” she said, referring to the April 14 primary vote. Galanter said she does not want people to vote for her out of sympathy.

“I want people to vote for me if they feel I am right on the issues,” she said.

In the primary election, Russell fell short of the 50% plus one majority she needed to win outright. A field of five challengers led by Galanter, who received 29% of the vote, held Russell to 42%.