Candidates in Compton Speed Up Campaigns

About 2,500 absentee ballot requests--an unprecedented number for a city election--flooded the city clerk’s office last week as campaigners in the mayoral and City Council contests stepped up their efforts to collect votes in Tuesday’s runoff election.

City Clerk Charles Davis declined to predict how many of the city’s 40,000 voters will go to the polls, but he said the mountain of requests for absentee ballots gathered by paid workers in the various political camps indicates that voter turnout will probably be higher than the 19% turnout in the April primary.

Davis had to put his staff on overtime last week and paid workers in the Los Angeles County Registrar’s Office to help mail out the absentee ballots requested by voters.

“That’s the most we’ve ever had. It’s a record,” he said.

Incumbent Mayor Walter R. Tucker is seeking a third term. He was forced into a runoff by E. Boyd (Chuck) Esters Jr., son of a prominent Compton minister. In the April election, Tucker fell just short of 50% of the vote, receiving 49.1% to Esters’ 20.6%.

Write-In Campaign

The runoff race for the City Council seat in District 3 became a free-for-all when Floyd A. James, who lost his council seat in another district in April, decided to wage a write-in campaign against incumbent Robert L. Adams and challenger Bernice Woods.

Adams emerged at the top of a field of eight candidates in the District 3 council race, but was forced into a runoff against Woods, a Compton School District trustee. Adams won 30.4% of the votes to Woods’ 19%

James decided to enter the race as a write-in candidate after losing his District 2 council seat to Patricia Moore in April. He changed his voter registration from the 2nd District to the 3rd District and announced that he was resigning from his unexpired term.

Challengers Woods and Esters are not officially running as a team, but their names and pictures appear together on campaign materials mailed to voters last week. They are emphasizing the same issues, discontent with redevelopment and the city’s high crime rate.

The same issues were raised by all the challengers in the April election: that the incumbents failed to curb violent crime and drug trafficking, that spending and redevelopment have been mismanaged and that developers have too much influence over the mayor and City Council.

‘Small Group of Friends’

“They are captive to a small group of developers,” Esters said in a recent interview. “They have been satisfied with a small group of their friends and they don’t want anybody else.”

Proof of this, said Esters, is in the political contributions the mayor and council members receive. Most of the contributions, Esters said, come from the developers and people who get work from the city.

Because the council is a “captive” of the developers, Esters said, it has made some unwise decisions, such as building a hotel by the Artesia Freeway before establishing a large business base to draw guests.

Esters has also called for firing City Manager James Goins and Police Chief Ivory Webb, saying they are poor managers. The city government under Goins is “rudderless” and Webb has failed to reduce crime, Esters said. Both the manager and the chief have declined to comment on Esters’ remarks.

Woods said at a recent campaign forum that the city government would have more credibility if it stopped loaning money to developers and businesses that eventually fail and never repay the city. Two dealerships in the Compton Auto Plaza closed their doors this year without having repaid such loans.

Tucker, James and Adams have vigorously defended redevelopment, arguing that under their leadership the city has made great strides in revitalizing its economic base.

“I’m very proud of the progress we’ve made in the city,” Adams said at a recent candidates’ forum. “When I came aboard the City Council in 1977, we had over 1,000 homes boarded up in this city. Now, it’s difficult to even purchase a home in the city. . . . We had a boarded up downtown when I came on the City Council. Now, we have a lucrative business district.”

The incumbents and challengers agree that Compton’s high crime rate is uppermost in the minds of voters. Woods wants more police hired. Esters says the Police Department is top-heavy with administrators and needs to put more officers on patrol.

James said that as head of the city’s Crime Task Force, a committee of residents and city officials that was created by the council to explore ways of combating crime, he helped get more than 50 crack houses closed.

Adams and Tucker point out that last year the council provided funding for seven new police officers and has bought three police helicopters. Tucker also points out that Compton’s City Council was the first in the state to ban semiautomatic assault weapons such as the AK-47 and the Uzi.

Tucker, 64, a dentist who was a school trustee and a councilman before being elected mayor eight years ago, charges that Esters only recently returned to Compton because he needed a job.

At the political forum, after Esters finished talking about the need to create employment opportunities for young people, the mayor said his opponent ought to worry more about getting a job himself.

Outlines Career

Esters said he sold a Santa Ana-based mini-van service at the start of the campaign to devote all his time to the mayor’s race. He said he left Compton to attend Ripon College in Wisconsin, but withdrew in 1972 to work on the presidential campaign of George McGovern. He worked in other campaigns and in Washington, D.C., for the National Democratic Committee, he said, and for a time was a partner in a political consulting firm in Washington. He returned to Compton in 1985, he said, and in 1986 managed the unsuccessful Assembly campaign of former mayor Doris Davis.

“Other communities strive to have their children do the same, to go away and come home and share what they have found with the people who nurtured them,” Esters said. “I guess the mayor is saying he doesn’t want the best and the brightest that Compton raised to come back.”

Campaign material published by Tucker supporters also accuses Esters of being a puppet of U.S. Rep. Mervyn Dymally (D-Compton). Esters acknowledged that Dymally has endorsed him, but said that doesn’t mean the congressman controls him.

In the council race, the James-Adams feud has further complicated what was expected to be a close race between Adams and Woods. James says he decided to become a write-in candidate because Adams, 57, a three-term councilman, has not been able to concentrate on city business since his son Laurence was fired in October as redevelopment director.

“When,” Adams quipped, “did (James) start serving as a psychoanalyst for the citizens of Compton?”

‘Didn’t Carry Him’

James claims that Adams worked against him in the April election because James refused to help Laurence Adams get back his job. Adams says James is angry because “I didn’t carry him in this election. I carried him once before.”

Adams accuses Woods of “abandoning” children in city schools by spending the past two years of her trustee term running for City Council. He did not elaborate.

On the campaign trail Wood has claimed that Adams, who owns funeral homes in Compton and Pomona, does not know what is going on in Compton because he spends his time in Pomona. Adams says that he lives in Compton and does not own a house or rent an apartment in Pomona.

Woods has acknowledged that her campaign’s financial resources are not as great as those of other candidates but says that voter dissatisfaction with the incumbents, not money, is going to determine the outcome.