Private Eye, Nude Club Add Intrigue, Spice to Compton Mayor Race

Compton Mayor Walter R. Tucker’s son arranged for a private detective to follow the mayor’s political opponent and the detective’s findings were mailed to the voters a week before the upcoming municipal election on Tuesday.

Campaign mailers show a photograph of Chuck (E. Boyd) Esters Jr., the 37-year-old, bespectacled son of a prominent Compton clergyman, outside a nightclub known for about 20 years for its nude dancers.

Esters admits he has been to the club, the Golden Garter, at least twice recently to campaign. But in an interview this week, he shot back, “If it was so bad, why did the mayor vote for the entertainment license?”

Such is the world of eleventh-hour politics in Compton, a city that typically takes a no-holds-barred approach to election-eve campaigning and where racy, last-minute mailings and retorts often result.

Trading Votes

This is, after all, the city where the 1985 municipal election left one victorious councilman indicted on a felony charge of trading votes for recordings of a Jesse Jackson speech. The councilman pleaded no contest to a lesser charge of sending mock ballots through the mail that falsely informed voters his opponent had been disqualified.

Raised Eyebrows

Election-eve tradition aside, the nature and the timing of the latest mailer has raised some eyebrows in Compton. Esters, for one, characterizes the hiring of a private detective to follow him the “lowest” and “sleaziest” tactic yet.

At the heart of the controversy is the Golden Garter, a small establishment on North Long Beach Avenue that lost its liquor license in 1981 because of numerous violations of state law.

Two years after state authorities revoked the license, Tucker voted along with the Compton City Council to restore the club’s entertainment license.

Private detective Craig K. James of Super Safe Investigations in Lynwood said he tailed Esters to the club after he was asked by the mayor’s son, attorney Walter R. Tucker III, to follow the mayoral candidate. According to James, the mayor’s son said he represented a group called Concerned Citizens of Compton.

“They didn’t have any information about the man,” James said, “so they just wanted me to do a general surveillance.”

James said he followed Esters mostly on weekends for three weeks. James said the surveillance ended May 20, the night he photographed Esters outside the Golden Garter.

Mayor Tucker did not respond to requests for an interview, but his son acknowledged arranging the surveillance.

The younger Tucker said the organization decided to hire the detective after Esters’ supporters began circulating campaign material that outlined the sentencing last year of the mayor’s wife, Martha, on three counts of grand theft in connection with real estate deals.

Felony Charges

She pleaded no contest in a plea-bargain arrangement in which other felony charges, including forgery and embezzlement, were dropped. Martha Tucker was put on probation and ordered to begin repaying eight victims about $300,000.

The private detective said he was hired about April 26, a week after the April 18 primary election in which Esters forced Tucker, a 64-year-old dentist and two-term mayor, into a runoff.

“They started it,” the younger Tucker charged.

He insisted, however, that the resultant mailer was not authorized by his father’s campaign, although the mailing permit number on the campaign material is the same as that which is used by the Tucker campaign.

The mailer describes Esters as a “diligent political candidate” by day and a “pornographic playboy” by night. It goes on to describe the Golden Garter as “a breeding ground” for illicit activities.

The younger Tucker defended his father’s vote to license the club, saying that the business has a right to operate. The real issue, he said, is that a mayoral candidate visited the club.

“I think Mr. Esters as an individual can go to any nude joint,” the younger Tucker said. “I just think it’s deplorable that if the man is planning to be the official representative of the city . . . at the same time (he) would be frequenting clearly a pornographic place like that.”

Obtained Loan

Esters insisted it was not his campaign that published the material about Martha Tucker’s criminal case. Nevertheless, he said, it was relevant to the campaign because the mayor owned the real estate business his wife worked for and got a loan for it from the federal Small Business Administration.

However, Esters’ campaign manager, political consultant Basil Kimbrewtant, said a political action committee of which he is president published at least one of the campaign pieces about Martha Tucker.