Personalities Are the Issue in Carson : Will Election Start New Soap Opera Season?

By GEORGE STEIN

April 8, 1988 12 AM PT

<i> Times Staff Writer</i>

Will Mike keep his job? Can Vera lay a scandal to rest? Will Tom ever get well? Is Sylvia in love? Can Gaddis or Leon come up with the cash? Where is Kay?

In the long-running soap opera that is Carson politics, these are the questions--along with the issues of crime, the city’s image, mobile home park closures, City Hall reorganization, affirmative action, overdevelopment and hazardous waste disposal--that are on stage as the city turns to the municipal election Tuesday.

The candidates include a banker, a doctor, a maintenance man, an engineer, an electrician, an office temporary, a real estate investor, a building inspector, an electrical inspector and a carpet layer.

All of them are seeking a job that pays $740.17 a month, provides an additional $300 monthly allowance for expenses and requires wading through stacks of paper, sitting still for hours of night meetings and smiling for the city photographer as civic groups pose for proclamations.

“I don’t know that there are any great issues in Carson except who wants to be in office,” said Assemblyman Richard E. Floyd (D-Hawthorne), who lives in Carson and whose 53rd Assembly District includes the city.

All of the candidates say they want the city to do more to combat crime. They all support the rights of mobile home owners--a potent political force in the city. All of them pledge support for affirmative action and strong measures to control hazardous wastes at the city’s many industrial sites.

More than any specific issue, however, the election will determine who will control Carson, where dominance at City Hall has shifted back and forth for years between two bitterly opposed groups.

Three seats on the five-member council are up, and the three incumbents seeking reelection--Mayor Kay Calas, Vera Robles DeWitt and Michael Mitoma--are the majority faction that has held sway since Mitoma was elected last March in a special election.

Over the objections of the minority faction, they ousted the incumbent city administrator, who had been accused of steering city insurance business to a friend and business associate. They hired a new administrator, who brought in new department heads and subsequently obtained council agreement for a sweeping realignment of staff responsibilities. In addition, they are claiming credit for pushing through a hotel and office redevelopment project.

The three incumbents appear to have won over the city employees union, which has endorsed them.

If all are reelected, the group--which has raised about $60,000 in contributions and loans this year, far more than the seven other candidates combined--will hold office for four years and be in a position to further mold City Hall and city policies.

Sylvia Muise, leader of the two-member minority faction that includes the ailing Tom Mills--who has not been able to attend a council meeting since early January--targeted all the incumbents for defeat.

“I don’t think they have the best interests of the city at heart,” she said, accusing them of a lack of creativity as well.

If any of the incumbents falter, and if any of candidates Muise is backing--Aaron M. Carter, Leon H. Cornell and Al Blanco--are elected, power will shift to her side.

Carter lost the last election to Mitoma by 259 votes out of about 7,000 cast. Muise said: “We certainly feel that we learned a lesson from that and we intend to overcome that minor loss.” She declined to elaborate.

The Muise slate, which is also endorsed by Carson’s Mobile Home Action Committee, is positioned to attract support beyond the well-off black areas and mobile home parks in north Carson, where Carter, who is black, did well last year. Blanco is a Filipino in a city with a strong Asian community, and Cornell, who is white, has long been active in Carson politics and is known for his decade as a parks maintenance supervisor. Campaign finance reports show the three have raised about $6,000 altogether, with Carter accounting for about $3,900.

Given Walking Papers

The immediate effect of a victory for any of Muise’s candidates is that many, if not most, of the top-level appointees of the last 10 months are likely to be given walking papers.

“They know who they are,” Muise said.

City Administrator Dick Gunnarson, who was appointed last May over the objections of Muise and Mills, acknowledged in an interview that he will be the first to go.

“If Carter is elected, I’m dead meat,” he said.

Carter said in an interview that the council should not extend Gunnarson’s one-year contract when it expires in May, but should search for an administrator. He added that Gunnarson would be free to reapply for the job.

In a third scenario, Gaddis Farmer, who says he is independent of either faction, might edge out one of the incumbents. As of March 31, the deadline for the latest campaign finance reports, he had raised more money--$4,000--than any of the other challengers.

If Farmer wins, he could be a pivot on a council seesaw of evenly balanced factions. The last one to take that role was Walter J. (Jake) Egan, who would sometimes play the groups against each other.

Convicted of Extortion

Egan ultimately ran afoul of federal investigators and was convicted of extortion and mail fraud in connection with convicted political corrupter W. Patrick Moriarty’s effort to build a mobile home park on a former landfill in Carson. Egan served nine months in federal prison. It was Egan’s departure from the council after the conviction that led to the special election in 1987 in which Mitoma won the narrow victory over Carter.

Egan said this week that although he still lives in Carson, he steers clear of the city’s politics, concentrating instead on appealing his conviction and running his muffler shop in Torrance.

“I’m a happier man now,” he said. “I’m glad I’m out. I am the invisible man. I don’t get involved.”

Farmer says he would be able to bring the two factions together.

“We have to get away from factions and who is to reap the benefit of what was accomplished. People I encounter as I walk are definitely disgusted and in the mood for a change,” he said. “I want to work with both factions.”

Three other candidates have spent little or no money on the campaign and appear to have little organized support. They are Elwood (Red) Hathaway, who wants to strengthen the ordinance aimed at protecting mobile home residents; Dr. Robert Delaplaine, a write-in candidate who favors boosting employment in the city, and Gary Hoppenrath, who favors restricting development.

In interviews, all three have acknowledged that they see little chance of winning.

As the election nears, no hit pieces of the sort that have sullied Carson politics in the past have appeared, prompting some to comment on campaign civility that is unusual for Carson.

“It’s quiet,” Cornell said. “It’s the strangest election I’ve ever seen in Carson. There is no mudslinging. I haven’t even seen signs torn down.”

Enmity goes deep, nevertheless.

Mitoma has filed a libel suit against Muise, Mills, Carter, Cornell and political consultant Jim Hayes over a 1986 campaign brochure that Carter helped put out. The suit is pending, and the defendants have denied wrongdoing.

In turn, Carter says the lawsuit is harassment by Mitoma. As for the brochure, “I would do it again,” he said.

Carter said DeWitt’s role in the Moriarty scandal remains an issue in the city. Moriarty testified at Egan’s trial that at Egan’s request, he provided money for one of DeWitt’s first campaigns.

DeWitt, who has never been charged with any offense connected with the Moriarty scandal, has said she was unaware that the contributions came from Moriarty. She submitted extensive revisions to her campaign finance statements after the role of the Moriarty money became public.

In response to Carter’s comments on the Moriarty issue, DeWitt brought up the Mitoma lawsuit. “I think Aaron should look at his own back yard,” she said.

‘Clean Bill of Health’

“I underwent some of the closest scrutiny by investigative agencies from all areas and I had a clean bill of health because there was nothing there to begin with,” she said. “In essence, I was a victim.”

About a more recent matter, Carter criticized the incumbents when their pictures appeared on the front page of the March issue of the city’s newsletter--against the advice of City Atty. Glenn Watson, who had told council members that a picture might violate a new state law intended to prevent local incumbents from reaping unfair political advantage.

“Self-serving and blatantly political,” Carter said of the newsletter.

He was also critical of Calas. “She doesn’t come out enough to the different functions. . . . If it gets to the point where you are unwilling to come out into the community, you have to change your style or let someone else do it. She gets away with that quite well.”

Calas said she generally avoids campaigning at candidates’ forum because of heckling.

The mobile home vote in Carson is always a key factor in elections because mobile home owners have tended to vote as a bloc. Carter, Cornell and Blanco, endorsed by the Mobile Home Action Committee, are banking on it.

Since the beginning of this year, rumors of park closings have swept the city, backed up by a recent announcement by the owners of the Avalon Carson park near City Hall that they intend to close. The council voted recently to affirm its support of the city’s mobile home rental control ordinance and publicized its action in the city newsletter--a move that Carter and Muise have criticized as political--although Muise voted for the reaffirmation.

The endorsement of Blanco by the Mobile Home Action Committee--which claims wide support among the city’s 2,500 mobile-home owners--is something of a mystery. He learned of the endorsement this week from a reporter.

Demonstrated Familiarity

Although Carter received the group’s endorsement last year and Cornell has demonstrated a familiarity with mobile home issues, Blanco told a candidates’ forum at the Colony Cove mobile home park in early March: “I don’t know all the facts concerning rent control in Carson. If you put me in, I will know it.”

Chuck Massman, chairman of the mobile home activist group, acknowledged that Blanco was not well versed in mobile home issues but said the organization decided to endorse him after talking to him. He declined to elaborate.

Blanco said he also is counting on the Filipino community for votes.

Cornell, who is in charge of the city’s anti-graffiti program, is counting on dissatisfaction with the incumbents as well as his familiarity with voters, which he established during more than 10 years as a city employee. He said he would resign as a city employee if elected and would make improving the city’s image a major goal.

“One thing they haven’t done, at least to my satisfaction, is bring up the image of Carson to where it belongs,” he said.

Winning campaigns in Carson typically have budgets of more than $10,000, but none of the challengers have come close to raising that amount.

Weekend Fund-Raiser

Carter said that he expects to boost his campaign coffers by about $2,000 this weekend--to about $7,000 to $8,000--with a fund-raising dinner. Farmer said he now expects to raise about $5,000 altogether. So does Blanco.

Mitoma said Carter’s campaign, which had been aided in 1987 by Muise, Mills and former Carson Mayor Gil Smith, is suffering this year because “Tom is ill, Sylvia is in love and Gil is running for (Los Angeles County) supervisor.”

Expanding on his remark about Muise, Mitoma said he had seen the councilwoman bring a “doctor boyfriend” to the city’s 20th anniversary ball and added: “She has been running around City Hall telling people, ‘I feel like an 18-year-old girl.’

“You should see her at council meetings. She wants to get out of there. She says, ‘Move this on, move this on.’ She doesn’t have the zest for making a big deal out of things.”

Muise icily responded: “Isn’t it astonishing that Mr. Mitoma knows what is going on with Sylvia Muise? That is typical of Mr. Mitoma. I have given up smoking. I’m working out. I am feeling better physically. That may be why I am feeling younger.”

Muise, whose husband Leonard died of cancer in 1986, said she was not going to respond to Mitoma’s comments about her personal life, except to say it is not affecting her campaigning for Carter.

She acknowledged that she has been eager to get council meetings over quickly because of discomfort caused by bruising her ribs in a back-yard fall.

Carter, whose campaign contributions are running about half of what they were at the same point in the last election, conceded that Muise, Mills and Smith have been less involved in his campaign this year because of other concerns.

But he said 1987 was different. “I had to lean heavily on people in office just to get the attention of voters,” he said. “The emphasis is not as heavy as it was last year because it (is) not as necessary.”

Assemblyman Floyd, who backed Carter in 1987, at first said he is doing nothing this year. Reminded of his endorsement of Calas, he replied: “Yeah, I guess I did. I signed her letter some time ago. . . . I have to recognize that Mrs. Calas has supported me from my very first election.”

DeWitt said she is banking on a competitive voter registration in the south part of the city where many Latinos live.

A factor that some say may boost the Muise slate is a fall and winter voter registration campaign in the area sponsored by Floyd and the state Democratic Caucus. Voter registration in Carson as of March 24 was 38,013. One year ago, it was 36,971.

City Clerk Helen Kawagoe said she expects a turnout between 24% and 25%.

Kay A. Calas

Age: 64

Occupation: real estate investor, Carson

Resident: 41 years

Civic experience: in office 12 years, currently mayor

Michael Mitoma

Age: 44

Occupation: president of Pacific Business Bank, Carson

Resident: 2 years

Civic experience: ran for council in 1986 and lost; elected to council in 1987

Gaddis Farmer

Age: 44

Occupation: senior building engineering inspector for Los Angeles County, assigned to Lawndale

Resident: 20 years

Civic experience: planning commissioner; ran for council and lost in 1984 and 1986

Vera Robles DeWitt

Age: 39

Occupation: office temporary; also office manager for Rudy’s Bail Bonds, the family business, Carson

Resident: 26 years

Civic experience: ran for city treasurer in 1978 and lost; won a council seat in June, 1980, served 10 months and lost in 1981; elected again to council in 1984

Robert Delaplaine

Age: 67

Occupation: physician, Carson

Resident: 28 years

Civic experience: ran for the council and lost in 1968 and 1974.

Aaron M. Carter

Age: 55

Occupation: satellite engineer, Hughes Aircraft Co., El Segundo

Resident: 24 years

Civic experience: ran for council and lost in 1987

Leon H. Cornell

Age: 59