Mayor’s Campaign Workers Reaped $200,000 Bonus : ‘Street Money’ Paved Way for Bradley Victory

Tom Bradley’s bad luck was Aimee Barnes’ good fortune.

As the mayor’s lead in the April municipal election began to collapse about two weeks before election day, his campaign staff, sensing disaster, hired Barnes, an unemployed single mother living in a city housing project, and hundreds of others as get-out-the-vote precinct walkers, pouring more than $200,000 in “street money” into South Los Angeles to increase the size of Bradley’s black vote.

The latest campaign reports, filed Aug. 1, and interviews by Times reporters tell the story of a desperate last-minute effort by the Bradley team to save the mayor from a potentially disastrous runoff in a campaign gone bad. Recruiters hit housing projects, senior citizen centers, student groups, drug treatment centers--wherever people gather--and offered them money to persuade voters to go to the polls.

The effort boosted Bradley’s campaign expenditure to $2.6 million, much more than his advisers had originally anticipated spending. With him receiving 165,599 votes, it amounted to spending $15.87 per vote. By contrast, his main opponent, City Councilman Nate Holden, spent $226,723 in winning 89,184 votes, amounting to $2.54 a vote.

Faced with prominent news reports of Bradley’s potential personal financial conflicts and with record voter apathy, “we put as many people on the street as humanly possible,” said one campaign aide. “We threw anybody out there who would work.”

Something for the Kids

For Aimee Barnes, it meant unexpected income. “I spent it on my babies,” she said.

And for Bradley, his campaign workers said, it meant a runoff was averted because largely black South-Central and Southwest Los Angeles came through for the city’s black mayor. “A loyal base responded,” said Assemblywoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who provided staff help for the effort. It netted him 52%, enough to avoid a runoff.

While the use of paid precinct workers was not unusual--Bradley has hired them in past elections--the extent of the operation and the scramble to hire workers in the closing days of the campaign provides a revealing look at the political weakness of a mayor beset by troubles.

Street money--payments for walking precincts and getting voters to the polls--has always been the way to win in South Los Angeles, where unemployed and underemployed residents cannot afford the luxury of volunteering for political campaigns.

But Bradley has always distanced himself from such efforts, even when they were used in his behalf. And he has distanced himself from some of the most famous practitioners of street money politics, such as South-Central Los Angeles’ Democratic Rep. Mervyn Dymally. In fact, politics in the area are defined by the tough, street-smart Dymally approach and the more gentlemanly Bradley style.

But as the election day neared, and unfavorable news stories increased, the Bradley team took a poll. Deputy Mayor Mike Gage said it showed Bradley with 54%. Some staff members said the poll meant trouble.

Even without a poll, Assemblywoman Waters, one of the most capable practitioners of street politics, had the same feeling. “This thing was closer,” she said. “When you have been in politics as long as I have, you can almost smell it. What you see in the news, what you hear on the streets, it all comes together and you feel it.”

Waters passed on her fears to Chris Hammonds, the deputy campaign manager, and to Rae Cunningham, a longtime Bradley campaigner.

Ahead on Home Turf

The poll showed Bradley was far ahead in the substantially black area reaching from Watts west to Baldwin Hills, and running weaker in some other, predominantly white, areas. Bradley’s leading opponent, Holden, was black, but the survey showed that did not help him in South Los Angeles. “The fact that Nate was black just meant that he was a black guy running against an established quantity,” a campaign aide said.

A decision was made by the campaign staff to hit the streets. “It is a basic, common political thing,” said Waters. “You play to your strength, you play to your base and you want to get the people out who are most likely to vote for you.”

Offering between $5 to $10 an hour, Hammonds and assistants went into housing projects, senior citizen centers and other gathering places to recruit workers.

The hasty recruitment created unique logistical problems.

Only the young have the energy to walk precincts, but one veteran of the operation said that many of the young men were affiliated with gangs. Bloods could not walk precincts in Crips turf, for example, and “normally you would not send someone from east of the Harbor Freeway west of the Harbor Freeway,” the campaigner said. “You have to be sensitive to turf.”

Quick Earnings

Andre Henry, 28, a computer operator, said he earned $120 for working two shifts on election day, getting voters to the polls.

He said about 1,000 workers participated that day, including pre-teen youngsters.

That night, he said, there was a near riot at the Bradley campaign headquarters on Crenshaw Boulevard when there was a delay in paying the workers. Henry said he arrived at 8 p.m. and did not get his check for three hours. At one point, he said, there was a power failure and the lights went out in a room crowded with women and children banging on the door. Gang members looked on from across the street, he said.

“It was pretty dramatic to see,” he said. “People were restless, people were tired.”

Motor vehicles were hired to ferry campaign workers and get people to the polls. One campaign official said several were damaged, with total expenses approaching $20,000.

“We had heavy expenses on the vehicles,” said one worker. “That’s because it was a nightmare controlling the vehicles with all these people. We were just trying to make sure they all got back in one piece. People you don’t know getting into a car they don’t own, driving into gang territory.”

Looking for a Surplus

One reason for the haste in throwing together the get-out-the-vote effort was Bradley’s early confidence and his desire to finish the campaign with a surplus.

“They didn’t want to spend the resources,” said campaign field director James E. Acevedo. “Remember all along the mayor was really being frugal. He considered there wasn’t that much of a need. We felt we needed to have a stronger campaign, needed to have some outreach.”

The numbers provide some evidence that the late campaign effort saved Bradley. In the 8th City Council District, the turnout was 21% and election experts said that putting the vote over 20% in that low-turnout district is an accomplishment. In the 10th District, turnout was 25%, and in another predominantly black district, the 9th, it was 22%. Citywide turnout was 23%.

It is hard to separate the ingredients of a campaign and credit one for victory. But there is no arguing with campaign consultant Wright, who said “if you win, whatever you do is right and certainly if you were within a point of losing or a point of going into a runoff, virtually every dollar spent is worthwhile.”

Times staff writer Frederick M. Muir contributed to this story.