In W. Hollywood : Candidate Campaigns for District Elections

A twice-failed candidate in West Hollywood’s political wars has proposed carving up the 1.9-square-mile city into five City Council districts.

“It’s the fairest way to go,” said Stephen D. Michael, who picked up 13% of the vote in last November’s special election to fill a City Council vacancy.

Council members currently are elected at large.

Michael, who also ran in a regular election last April, plans to try again in 1988, he said Monday. He and the proposal’s co-sponsor, Robert Davis, will push for a change in the electoral system at the same time.

Panel Proposed

They have not drawn up a map. Instead, they proposed that three retired judges be named to decide the district boundary lines.

City Council members would be required to live in the district that chooses them.

Michael and Davis have drawn up a petition and hope to gather the 1,900 signatures needed by the end of the year to put their proposal on the ballot in April, Davis said.

“My own and other neighborhoods are not adequately represented on the council and the commissions,” said Davis, who owns a home in the eastern half of town.

“No council members were elected from the east end or West Hollywood West,” a neighborhood of single-family homes next to Beverly Hills, he said.

Difficult for Minorities

Michael said that under the current system, “it is very difficult, often impossible, for minority candidates to be elected. This applies not only to racial and ethnic minorities, but also to groups that form a minority for economic, geographic or other reasons.”

In West Hollywood, which has few members of ethnic minority groups, Michael is in a minority because of his political affiliation. He and other Republicans total only 4,462 of the city’s 20,909 registered voters, according to figures supplied by the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder’s office.

Although Michael and Davis argue that district voting will cut the costs of campaigning and make city government more responsive, their proposal was dismissed by the City Council’s five incumbents as futile.

“My initial reaction was something that I don’t want quoted,” said City Council Member John Heilman, recalling that West Hollywood voters rejected the idea by a 2-1 margin when the city voted to incorporate in November, 1984.

“Now the city as a whole elects five City Council members and you get to vote for five different people,” he said. “This way you could only vote for one. They’d end up pitting neighborhood against neighborhood.”

Challenge to Rent Control

Heilman and other incumbents said they saw the move as a challenge to the current City Council’s strong support for rent control.

“The only thing that he might do is try to convince people they’re voting for something they’re not voting for,” said Mayor Pro Tempore Helen Albert.

“When we run at large we’re all accountable to everybody and if we’re broken up into districts we’d each be accountable to much smaller numbers, and I don’t think it would work,” she said. “We want to keep this place unified and not divisive.”

Council Member Steve Schulte agreed, saying, “It was beneficial for me to run citywide so people in general feel they have some relationship to you.”

Aides to Mayor Alan Viterbi and Council Member Abbe Land, who were both out of town, said their bosses both felt the same way.

Schulte also said the petition drive was motivated by concern about the power of the Coalition for Economic Survival (CES), a 5,000-member group that was instrumental in the cityhood campaign and the immediate imposition of strict rent control once West Hollywood was incorporated.

But he noted that he has been elected twice without endorsement from the coalition. “It clearly can be done,” Schulte said. “I’ve done it.”

He suggested that a better change might be to number all five at-large seats, so that challengers could take on a specific incumbent. Under the current system, incumbents and challengers all run against each other.

Despite suggestions to the contrary, Michael and Davis said they are not against rent control. In any case, more than three-fourths of the city’s voters are renters, they said.

“The tenants are going to run the city, no matter how you divvy it up,” said Davis. “So it’s a red herring to bring it up.”

However, he said, “possibly the power of the CES is threatened. They seem to think so.”

Dividing Up Power

“No matter what happens, you’re going to have a City Council with a strong majority for rent control,” Michael said. “But it is in the realm of possibility that Larry Gross (director of CES) and others won’t be in a position to decide how the city spends its budget of over $20 million in other areas, and that would be an improvement.

“If anything, it’s the people of this city who need to decide, not one person who uses rent control as an issue.”

Gross, whose group includes three council members on its West Hollywood Steering Committee, said the issue is a sham, designed to win publicity for Michael’s third attempt at public office.

“Stephen Michael is a two-time loser who opposed rent control, who pushed for poker and bingo parlors and who favors more development,” Gross said.

“Obviously he sees this as a way to achieve these goals in addition to getting himself elected. We think it’s a horrendous idea.”

Gross, who has sent out mailers to CES members in opposition to the proposal, said such a change in the electoral process would mean that districts would be fighting each other over funds and city services.

He also said each voter would only get to vote for one City Council member instead of picking all five under the current system.

‘Much Less Clout’

“Thus only one City Council person would be responsible to the individual, and thus people would have much less clout about what goes on in the city,” he said.

“From our perspective, it’s a strong threat to the rent control law, because it would let special interests like landlords and developers use their big money to get people elected who are opposed to strong rent control and favoring development.”

Michael and Davis are not the only proponents of electing City Council members by district, a proposal that was defeated by a vote of 8,799 to 4,822 in 1984.

No Representation

Alan Malquin, head of West Hollywood West, a residents’ group, said he and his neighbors felt threatened because there are no homeowners on the City Council.

“We’re a small city and you’d think we could get together and represent everybody citywide,” he said. “It’s an extremely small city, but it doesn’t seem to happen that way. There’s a very powerful political group that seems to have the majority say.

“They’re willing to turn this part of town into another Century City.”

Even under the proposed change, sheer numbers dictate not much chance of a homeowners district emerging, Malquin said.

Still, he said, “I’m glad somebody is putting it in front of the public again for some thought, and I really don’t care why it is that he’s doing it.”

Favors Legislation

Tony Melia, an insurance agent who heads the West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, said he favors legislation currently making its way through the California Legislature that would mandate district elections for cities with a population of 25,000 and above. West Hollywood has 37,000 residents.

“On a statewide basis, it makes an awful lot of sense,” he said. “There are a lot of people disenfranchised because of non-district elections.”

The legislation, proposed by Assemblyman Peter Chacon (D-San Diego), will not come up again for debate in the Legislature until next year.

Ironically, the measure has won little support from Republicans in the Legislature, Chacon aide Barbara Milman said.

Despite his support for Chacon’s legislation, Melia said he was satisfied with the structure of city government in West Hollywood.

No Gerrymandering

Even if some areas of the city have a large number of homeowners and condominium owners, he said, “I don’t know how you could gerrymander 20% of the population” to make a homeowners district.

“And even if you could, what’s that going to get you? Steve (Michael) feels that will make a big change. I don’t see it and I have yet to be convinced. I think we’ve tumbled into a political format in West Hollywood that’s going to be with us for some time.”

Ruth Williams, who was the top runner-up in the April, 1986, election, said she, too, is against the proposal, because the current system makes all the members of the City Council accountable to the city as a whole.

“We’re just too small,” she said. “Our problems affect every neighborhood. We’re a small enough city that everybody knows the whole City Council. They’re just a phone call away.”