Galanter, Holden Win in City Council Voting : Election Signals Potential Trouble for Bradley, Ends Russell’s 17-Year Tenure in Public Office

From a hospital bed where she lay recovering from nearly fatal stab wounds, Ruth Galanter scored a stunning victory Tuesday over Los Angeles City Council President Pat Russell in a dramatic election that signals the rise of a new constituency in city politics and sends troubling signals to the mayor’s office.

Galanter and 10th Council District candidate Nate Holden, a former state senator, were victors in council runoff elections against Russell and Homer Broome Jr., both of whom were endorsed by Mayor Tom Bradley.

“Wouldn’t you know, it took eight years to get here,” said Holden, a frequent loser in campaigns. “A winner never quits, and a quitter never wins.”

Said Broome, with his aides conceding defeat, “I have had several careers now, and I’m looking forward to my next one.”

Galanter, a 46-year-old urban planner who never ran for office before, rode the crest of a protest by largely middle-class homeowners against the wave of new development in the 6th District that Russell had sponsored and that mirrored the pro-growth policies of the Bradley Administration.

‘Grass-Roots Uprising’

Shortly after the runoff campaign began, Galanter was savagely attacked in her Venice home by an intruder who stabbed her twice in the neck, severing one carotid artery and injuring her throat. Saved by her screams and by a burglar alarm she managed to trigger, Galanter was rushed in critical condition to UCLA Medical Center, where she underwent five hours of surgery. She came out of the operating room determined to stay in the race but hardly able to talk, let alone campaign.

Just after 11 p.m. Tuesday, still hoarse from her wounds, Galanter spoke to her supporters by telephone from the hospital.

“This campaign has been a struggle of people to gain control over their own lives. It was a neighborhood, grass-roots uprising behind a shared vision of the future. Tonight is a beginning. Our vision has taken center stage, and I say we have to keep it there,” Galanter said.

She beat a 63-year-old veteran of the council whose energy was often reflected in marathon running and mountain climbing. In the council, where she served for nearly two decades, Russell became the mayor’s right arm, the person who held together a loose and often contentious coalition that gave Bradley a working majority most of the time.

Russell’s defeat raises a serious question about the viability of Bradley and the Bradley era, one marked by liberal social policies and a partnership with business that helped rebuild some of the city’s most depressed neighborhood, including downtown, in the wake of the Watts riot.

Money vs. Activists

Russell brought money, at least $400,000, and establishment backing into the race. They were no match for Galanter’s army of neighborhood activists, made up of Democrats, Republicans, suburban homeowners and bohemian renters.

In a wistful statement to supporters that fell short of a concession, Russell urged them not to give up.

“This is a crowd that has said, ‘We believe in the future of the city,’ ” she said. “A mission that has brought all of us together continues. If we stay with each other and work with each other and trust each other, the dream will go on.”

In many ways, the 6th District council race was a classic Westside political fight. It was a battle over land and left-wing politics that invoked the names of the late Howard Hughes, who once owned much of the contested real estate, and Democratic Assemblyman Tom Hayden of Santa Monica, whose uninvited presence threatened at times to turn the race into a referendum on his political appeal.

The election was also widely regarded as a harbinger of a new brand of politics in the city, with Galanter leading a protest against the effect of development on traffic, air and water pollution and neighborhood tranquility. Coming on the heels of Proposition U, last year’s successful building limitation initiative, Galanter’s victory confirmed the existence of a new constituency determined to slow the progress of commercial growth in the city.

Russell clearly did not want to meet the anti-development forces head-on. Her efforts to defend her policies on growth backfired in the April primary, when five challengers, led by Galanter, received 58% of the vote. Russell was hit hardest in her own backyard, Westchester, where her sponsorship of four new developments, including the 800-acre Playa Vista project on the Hughes property, infuriated many of her neighbors.

On the advice of three consulting firms hired after the primary, Russell sought to put Galanter on the defensive with a blizzard of campaign literature picturing her as a Hayden crony whose campaign was being run by Venice radicals.

The knife attack on Galanter also helped move the campaign away from development by handing Russell two new issues: crime and Galanter’s health.

Russell’s record on crime reduction drew praise from Police Chief Daryl Gates, no shrinking violet when it comes to boosting council incumbents. At the same time, Russell’s campaign staff embarked on a quiet but persistent quest to raise doubts about Galanter’s physical fitness after the assault.

Crime Issue

Galanter’s staff also found an opportunity to use the crime issue, and they showed they could play as tough as the incumbent.

At the instigation of her campaign staff, a group of Galanter’s neighbors accused Russell of ignoring their pleas three months earlier to do something about suspected criminal activity centered at the house where Galanter’s accused assailant was living. (The suspect, Mark Allen Olds, was described by police as a 27-year-old former gang member with a history of drug use.)

Galanter’s neighbors said they had sent a letter to Russell’s office and never received a reply. Had Russell intervened, they contended, the attack on Galanter might not have happened.

Russell said she never received the letter and noted that it had been sent to the wrong City Hall office.

Nevertheless, the letter hit on something that Russell’s campaign staff had worried about from the start--the question of Russell’s responsiveness to her constituents. It is a common criticism of council members, each of whom answers to 200,000 people. As council president for the last four years, Russell’s growing preoccupation with citywide issues made her especially vulnerable to charges that she was paying too little attention to the concerns of the people who elected her.

Galanter’s team of volunteers, reinforced by two councilmen, Marvin Braude and Ernani Bernardi, who deserted Russell, hammered away at the issue of responsiveness, arguing that Russell was too busy doing the bidding of big developers to pay attention to her constituents.

Going into the final week of the campaign, both sides fought for an edge in a contest that was looking like a dead heat.

Russell pulled together two dozen local government leaders, including Bradley, for a photo session on the steps of City Hall to dramatize the difference between her mainstream standing and her version of Galanter as an outsider beholden to left-wingers.

Russell’s aides believed that their cause was helped by Hayden, whose long flirtation with Galanter’s cause culminated in an endorsement on Friday. With Russell’s polls suggesting that Hayden’s anti-war past would not sit well with Republicans in the district, Russell’s advisers hastily put together one last piece of mail informing voters of Hayden’s endorsement.

Calls From Galanter

Galanter, in her second round of interviews since the attack, made a series of calls to reporters over the weekend to say she would be well enough to hold office.

On Sunday, Los Angeles City Atty. James Hahn, scion of one the area’s most prominent political families, came out for Galanter, breaking with his father, County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, and with much of the rest of the local political establishment.

In the 10th District, Holden, on leave from his job as Kenneth Hahn’s assistant chief deputy to run against Broome for an open seat, spent much of the campaign acting like an incumbent, ignoring his rival in public and avoiding face-to-face debates until the closing days.

Broome, making his first run for public office, resorted to an attack strategy that laced into Holden for his record as a director of the Southern California Rapid Transit District and portrayed him as a hapless politician who may have won a state Senate job in 1974 but who also has run for elective office--and lost--six other times.

As he has done since announcing his candidacy, Broome relied heavily on Bradley during the final days of his campaign. The mayor spent Sunday accompanying his old friend and political protege on a swing through half a dozen local churches and was at his side again at a Monday press conference and on a visit to local community centers.

Precinct Workers

In contrast, Holden concentrated on sending out a network of precinct workers--many of them inherited followers of other primary candidates who have endorsed him--to drum up support. He also took one parting shot at the Bradley-Broome alliance with a Monday news conference complaining that the mayor had misused taxpayers’ money by chauffeuring his candidate in a city-paid car during their tour of local churches.

Dismissing Holden’s complaints as “Mickey Mouse,” Broome played down his dependence on the mayor. Nevertheless, in person, in campaign literature and in campaign style, Bradley’s presence was an unmistakeable part of Broome’s campaign.

Broome, a mayoral appointee to the public works board, resigned earlier this year to run for a council seat at Bradley’s urging. In large part, the mayor’s involvement in the campaign reflected his concern for a district that he once represented as a city councilman. The largely black district runs southwest of downtown through the Mid-City communities and includes the Asian neighborhoods of Koreatown and some white, Jewish suburbs in Palms.

The seat has been vacant since Councilman David Cunningham, another Broome supporter, resigned last October.