The Pendulum Swings in Favor of Braude

For 23 years now, Marvin Braude has been the Los Angeles City Council’s version of Grumpy--and nothing makes him grumpier than the notion of Occidental Petroleum Co. drilling for oil on the Pacific Palisades coast.

But one memorable day last summer, Braude couldn’t help but smile. It happened when Councilman Nate Holden, self-styled champion of the downtrodden, described the beach as a “country club” for the poor.

To Braude, who is accused by Occidental of elitism in his anti-drilling crusade, Holden’s words had the ring of vindication.

“That’s obviously the truth of it,” Braude said recently, recalling the moment. “I mean, if you’re a high-income person and you’ve got a swimming pool, you don’t worry about the beach so much. But if you’re a poor boy, that’s the place you want to go.

“And I don’t care how much money you have. The beach is really for everyone.”

Throughout his political career, Braude has endured criticism that he is a wealthy elitist who does the bidding of a wealthy, elite constituency. Indeed, Braude is wealthy; indeed, his 11th District encompasses such affluent areas as the Palisades, Brentwood and Encino; indeed, a great many of his constituents oppose the drilling plan, sited on two-acres across the Pacific Coast Highway from Will Rogers State Beach.

As for elitism, Braude responds with his usual grimace. He asserts that his agenda of environmental protection, like the beach, is really for everyone.

That assertion, for better or worse, is now truer than ever. With the rise of the slow-growth movement, Braude is, after lo these many years, at the peak of his influence. In the last two years, the 67-year-old councilman has put together a striking series of political and legislative coups, radically downshifting Los Angeles’ historic pro-growth policies.

Braude’s hot streak is all the more remarkable because, despite some notable achievements, he has long been regarded in some political circles as an eccentric. Only four years ago, the late Councilman Howard Finn summed up Braude as someone who “deals more with issues in vitro, in a test tube, than in vivo, in life.”

Today, all of Los Angeles is Braude’s test tube.

Even so, Braude may not have the clout to defeat Occidental, which recently secured court approval to sink exploratory wells. Braude has lined up eight of the 15 council members to vote for repealing the Occidental drilling ordinances, but needs 10 votes to force Mayor Tom Bradley to reconsider his 1985 approval of the company’s plan. (Holden, incidentally, has not taken a stand.)

A stronger gambit, perhaps, is an initiative campaign that would both repeal Occidental’s permits and outlaw drilling within 1,000 yards inland of the mean high tide throughout the city. Braude has teamed up with Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky on the initiative.

Braude and Yaroslavsky are hoping for a repeat of their success with Proposition U. Approved by a 69%-31% margin in April, 1986, the growth-limit initiative cut in half allowable commercial development in many city areas. The overwhelming victory energized the slow-growth movement and gave a jolt to the city’s power structure.

Braude and Yaroslavsky have proven a formidable team--but Yaroslavsky’s name is usually mentioned first. The ambitious, mediagenic Yaroslavsky, 39, hopes to ride the movement into the mayor’s office. But Braude, averring no interest in higher office, has taken more risks in advancing the agenda. And while Yaroslavsky’s actions are always judged against his ambitions, Braude’s credentials as an environmentalist, dating back a quarter of a century, are unquestioned.

He is “literally the sage” of the slow-growth movement, said Cindy Miscikowski, Braude’s chief deputy.

“His time has finally come. There is a real sense that he isn’t tilting at windmills anymore,” Miscikowski said. Above her desk is a framed political cartoon depicting a tiny developer on a tiny bulldozer encountering a gargantuan snail marked “slow-growth movement.”

“Marvin’s had a lot of victories lately,” mused Council President John Ferraro, with eyebrows raised, at an appropriate moment last August.

Ferraro’s comment came the day he was elected council president and Braude was elected president pro tempore. They got those posts by cutting a political deal that broke a deadlock between two other candidates. As part of the bargain, Braude also made sure that slow-growthers would have a majority on two key committees: planning and environment, and transportation and traffic. “I just could not ignore Proposition U,” Ferraro explained.

Some council members dismiss the post of president pro tempore as largely ceremonial, but Braude proudly put the title on his office door and his stationery. For Braude, never the most popular member of this club, it is not merely a matter of prestige, but also a measure of hard-earned respect.

If Braude has more council allies now than ever before, it is no accident. In 1985, Braude and Yaroslavsky flouted City Hall protocol by backing Michael Woo in his successful challenge to incumbent Peggy Stevenson.

And last year, Braude (but not Yaroslavsky) campaigned for Ruth Galanter in her successful challenge against then-Councilwoman Pat Russell. Woo and Galanter helped form a tenuous slow-growth bloc on the council.

Ever the environmentalist, Braude’s legislative victories in the last year include an ordinance requiring restaurants to reserve at least half their seating as no-smoking areas; a law requiring major employers to develop car-pooling plans; billboard and sign controls along Ventura Boulevard, and a zoning measure to protect hillsides by lowering the density of development allowed on steep terrain.

Proposition U ushered in more growth controls. The initiative’s success with voters, Braude said, made it “respectable and politically comfortable” to advocate strong growth limits. Before its passage, he said, “you were always looked at as those people who wanted to reform things and take away people’s property rights.”

Braude has also become a more skillful politician, associates say.

“I wouldn’t want to play poker with Marvin,” Yaroslavsky said. “He’s a very shrewd negotiator, and very tough. If there’s any give in his position, he won’t telegraph it until the very last minute.”

Former Eastside Councilman Arthur K. Snyder clashed often with Braude and is now a lobbyist for developers and business interests. He describes Braude as a “very intelligent, able member of the council.” Voicing a popular argument, Snyder said that what are triumphs for Braude’s

affluent constituents could be setbacks for Los Angeles’ poorer residents.

Growth limits, he said, chiefly benefit people such as Braude’s constituents, who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Clamps on new construction drive up housing costs and limit economic opportunity for the poor, he said. A widening chasm between rich and poor could exacerbate class tensions.

Braude’s response brims with characteristic self-righteousness:

“That’s a rhetorical attempt to create emotionalism and divisiveness without merit at all. That’s a lot of nonsense. . . . You can argue the other way. If you want a vibrant, economically viable city, you’ve got to have these kinds of things we’re talking about--uncrowded streets, attractive residential communities, unclogged sewers, good services.

“The question is . . . whether Proposition U has gone far enough.”

Snyder said many politicians who share his view have been conspicuously silent, fearing a “pro-growth” label. “They are panicked by the swing of the pendulum,” he said. “The worst thing to do when you see a very heavy pendulum is to get in front of it.”

Some politicians and business people say the slow-growth movement is a fad. Braude calls it “a major revolution.”

The chief question, Braude said, is “who should make decisions about what kind of city Los Angeles shall become? I think it should be the people of the city, through their elected officials, rather than the banks and the developers.

“If you ask me how I see the future of this city, I think this trend is inevitable and it will continue. I’ve seen no diminution in our standards. Every time we improve our standards, those standards become permanent.”

Braude seems an unlikely revolutionary. His values are grounded in academics, business and a life-long love affair with the outdoors. He and his psychiatrist wife, Marjorie, both Chicago natives, were honeymooning at Yosemite when they decided to make California their home.

His resume is eclectic. As a young man, Braude taught social sciences at the University of Chicago and did a stint as an official with the New York City Housing Authority, relocating the poor. Later, he became an entrepreneur. One of his early ventures involved military surplus radar tubes. He bought them, smashed them and salvaged the platinum filament. Eventually, Braude would help establish Scientific Data Systems, which would become the computer division of Xerox Corp. He is “very, very wealthy,” an associate said--and a notorious skinflint.

He also became active in his neighborhood homeowners’ group, the Crestwood Hills Assn. in Brentwood, serving a term as its president.

Then one summer day in 1963--when Sam Yorty was a first-term mayor, Tom Bradley the newest councilman and Zev Yaroslavsky was 14 years old--the Braudes and their two young daughters were idling away a day at the beach when they made a decision that would propel Marvin into politics. A major highway was being planned through the rugged Santa Monica Mountains along Mulholland Drive.

Braude had an idea: a petition drive to stop the highway and create a regional park.

“Within 10 days,” Braude recalled, “we had 10,000 signatures.”

It was, perhaps, the genesis of the slow-growth movement. Braude became the first chairman of the Santa Monica Mountains Regional Park Assn., promoting a 12,000-acre park. Today, more than 50,000 acres have been acquired as public parkland, with plans for more than 100,000. “If that was the only accomplishment of Marvin Braude’s political career,” his wife said, “it was worth it.”

But in the early 1960s, the city’s power structure had a cool response. Braude’s own development-minded councilman, Karl L. Rundberg, spurned the park campaign. Braude challenged Rundberg for his council seat and beat him by 3,000 votes. (A few years later, Rundberg was convicted of accepting a bribe in awarding a harbor lease while he was on the council.)

From his earliest days on the council, Braude was an outsider. He alienated colleagues with speeches that sounded like lectures. Not only does he eschew the schmoozing that occurs on the sidelines of council meetings, he often neglects simple social graces, such as a greeting or a handshake. Braude did not make friends when he harangued colleagues for the junkets they went on, or when he pushed through the first spending limits for council offices.

“Nobody slapped me on the back and said, ‘Good job, Marv,’ ” he recalled.

“Marvin was kind of a loner,” Ferraro recalled. “There was a tendency to gang up on Marvin because he was so dogmatic. Politics is the art of compromise, and that doesn’t fit for Marvin.”

Over the years, Ferraro said, “I’ve learned to have great respect for Marvin. He is very sincere in his thinking. He may be alone in his beliefs, but he doesn’t back down.”

To this day, one ally said, some council members consider Braude “haughty” and “arrogant.” Braude, in turn, has been “almost ridiculed” for his eccentricities, an associate said.

His taste in clothes, for example. Despite his wealth and concern for the environment, there are moments of sartorial wonder--the polyester plaid sport coat, the electric green slacks, the mauve sweats that, a bemused admirer said, “are to die for.” (His favorite place to shop, his wife reported, is the Sears Roebuck catalogue. “That’s an area where we have had some disagreement,” she said.)

Braude has long proven more popular outside City Hall than inside. Weekend bicycle jaunts with his wife along the beach are often interrupted, they said, by fellow cyclists who want to say thank you. The beach bike path, after all, was one of Braude’s ideas.

He has been reelected five times, never encountering a strong challenge. His only defeat came when he ran for supervisor in 1972. He lost to former Assemblyman James Hayes, a Republican who had been appointed to the supervisor’s seat by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan shortly before the election. (Hayes abruptly resigned in 1979.)

Even critics such as Gerald Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino, who in the early 1980s complained that Braude was drifting away from neighborhood concerns and still hectors him on many issues, now credits the councilman for responding.

“He clearly was the first councilman to recognize the level of homeowner dissatisfaction and the concerns of environmentalists,” Silver said. “He read the public correctly.”

Betsy Laties, president of the Crestwood Hills Assn., has known Braude for more than 30 years. “He is steadfast in his principles, unpurchaseable and absolutely honest,” Laties said. “I’ve never known him to give up something he dearly wanted (in order) to win friends and influence people.”

“I guess you could say there’s no forked tongue,” agreed Gordon Murley, president of Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization. “Overall, he’s as trustworthy a politician as I’ve run into.”

One person who vehemently disagrees is attorney Arthur Groman, an Occidental director and chief spokesman on the Palisades oil-drilling project. Braude, Groman said, gave Occidental a dirty deal.

In 1969, Braude was instrumental in a land swap in which the city acquired a four-acre patch of Portrero Canyon from Occidental, and Occidental received the two acres in the Palisades, just inland of Pacific Coast Highway. The city dedicated the Portrero Canyon property as parkland; Occidental figured it had its drill site.

The deed of conveyance specifies that the Palisades land could only be used for oil drilling, Groman said.

“You can hardly say that he (Braude) didn’t know what he was doing,” Groman said. “But almost immediately he started to oppose us and make it impossible for us to do what he authorized us to do. . . . I don’t like dishonesty and I don’t like false statements.”

Braude dismisses Groman’s charges as rhetoric--and accuses Groman and Occidental Chairman Armand Hammer of “arrogance” in presuming Occidental in acquiring the land also acquired the right to drill. Braude said he supported the land swap only because he knew Occidental’s plans would be subject to the normal environmental reviews.

Braude tells a revealing story about how Hammer once approached him, suggesting that if former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat could work out their differences, why couldn’t they?

They couldn’t. “This is war,” declared Braude.

From the beginning, Braude the environmentalist has voiced suspicion of laissez faire policies and prescribed strong controls.

“I always envisioned it citywide,” he said. “I never had any thoughts I would have to be parochial. But I was forced into that.”

In 1970, Braude and Councilman Ernani Bernardi were assailing “growth-is-good” policies. Urban sprawl is outpacing city services, they argued, and thus taxpayers were subsidizing developers. Though there had been citywide height limits--repealed in 1957--Braude introduced the concept of height-limit zoning as a way to protect neighborhoods from congestion. Some commercial areas were limited to six-story buildings, others to three-story buildings.

There were also many defeats.

In the early 1970s, for example, Braude persuaded the council to provide $350,000 to study an ordinance to ban billboards citywide. No new ones would be permitted and existing ones would have been taken down. “I was so excited about it,” Braude recalled.

The study was conducted. Braude’s proposal won the support of both the Planning Department and the Planning Commission. Then it came before the council.

“I got three votes,” he said. “That was devastating to me. Devastating.”

Now, it sometimes seems easy. Last year, as a follow-up to Proposition U, Braude and Yaroslavsky urged that environmental reviews be required for every project of more than 50,000 square feet.

Braude said he expected the debate to last two years. But the Bradley Administration one-upped them, advocating reviews for every project of more than 25,000 feet.

For a bicyclist such as Braude, it must feel like the high-speed downhill rush after a long climb in low-gear.

So why isn’t this man smiling?

“I have a problem with feeling good about what I’ve done,” he said in a moment of introspection. “I don’t stop and think, gee, that was a great thing I accomplished . . . and go out and have a good time and celebrate.

“I tend to go on to the next problem.”

He allowed himself a grin.

“I’m trying to overcome that.”

A 25-YEAR ENVIRONMENTAL TRACK RECORD

1963 Initiated petition drive to create a regional park in the Santa Monica Mountains. First major dedication of land occurred in 1967; more than 50,000 acres have now been assembled.

1965 Won City Council seat on a platform of hillside preservation and development limits.

1971 Secured approval for first increment of beach bike path, which now extends 19 miles from Pacific Palisades to Redondo Beach.

1972 Won approval for 6-story height-limit zones.

1973 Won approval for 3-story height-limit zones.

1973 Mulholland Scenic Parkway ordinance approved, foreclosing plans for a major highway along present Mulholland Drive.

1975 Authored city’s first anti-smoking ordinance, starting with a smoking ban in public elevators. (Subsequent anti-smoking ordinances included, in 1977, limits in grocery stores, medical care facilities, theaters; in 1983, limits in the workplace; in 1988, limits in restaurants.)

1976 Blocked plans for a major cross-mountain road from Reseda to Pacific Palisades.

1977 Secured first hillside construction zoning in Brentwood and Pacific Palisades, prescribing lower density for steeper slopes. (Citywide slope-density zoning adopted in 1987.)

1978 First billboard and sign control limits, starting on San Vicente Boulevard in Brentwood.

1983 Established curbside trash separation and recycling program in his district (after blocking plans to reopen Mission Canyon landfill in 1977 and 1981.)

1985 Authored first citywide controls on commercial advertising signs.

1986 Co-authored growth-limit initiative Proposition U, approved by voters by a 69% to 31% margin.

1988 Co-sponsored initiative drive to block oil drilling along coast, including Pacific Palisades. Remains to qualify for ballot.