ELECTIONS : GARDENA : At-Large Voting One of Few Big Issues in City Council Race

In an election with few major issues, three candidates for the Gardena City Council have turned to a time-honored political debate: the merits of incumbency versus the need for fresh ideas in City Hall.

Both four-term incumbent Mas Fukai and two-term incumbent Gwen Duffy have run well-financed and leisurely campaigns focusing on their accessibility and ability to work with other members of the council.

The lone challenger, Steve Bradford, who is black, praised the council generally, but criticized it for not adequately representing the city’s growing black and Latino population. The current council has three whites and two Japanese-Americans.

The 30-year-old has focused his campaign on the “new ideas and new blood” he would bring to the office. To bring about black and Latino representation, he is advocating electing council members by district rather than the current at-large elections, in which the minority vote is generally diluted.

Mayor Donald L. Dear is running unopposed.

At a forum Thursday night sponsored by the League of Women Voters and the Gardena Chamber of Commerce, glaring stage and cable television lights generated more heat on stage than that achieved from discussion among the candidates for the four-year seats.

The session typified the campaigns. Fielding questions from about 70 people in the audience on subjects such as crime, development and water conservation, candidates did little to distinguish their platforms from the others.

All indicated a key issue in the future would be the pressure to replace the predominant single-family housing stock in the city with multi-unit developments. Bradford used the forum to press his anti-incumbent campaign theme.

“This was once a place of security,” he told the audience. “Unfortunately, times have changed. When law-abiding citizens are captive in their own homes, something is awfully wrong.”

Countering Bradford’s argument, both Duffy and Fukai reeled off lists of their accomplishments, including an innovative “graffiti hot line” at City Hall and an expansion of the Gardena Police Department to provide two officers for every 1,000 residents of the city.

All of the candidates emphasized their deep Gardena roots.

Bradford has lived in Gardena for 21 years, and recently resigned from his job as a marketing representative for IBM “to concentrate on the campaign.” A graduate of Gardena High School, Bradford received a degree in political science from Cal State Dominguez Hills. He currently serves on the local water board.

Duffy, 67, who is white, became in 1982 the first woman elected to the Gardena council. She has lived in the city 42 years.

Fukai’s family has lived in Gardena for four generations, and were interned along with other Japanese-Americans during World War II. The 63-year-old council member is also chief deputy to Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn. He was first elected to the Gardena council in 1972.

Both incumbents have called on voters to stay the course.

“I don’t know of any issues in this campaign,” Fukai said in an interview last week. “We are one of the most stable and financially secure cities in the nation.”

Fukai said the city cannot allow multi-unit housing to make up more than half the housing in the city, a ratio that is not too far away.

“I know we are going to have to deal with that when we revise the General Plan. I think we will probably make some zoning changes that are going to make some property owners mad,” Fukai said.

Duffy in an interview last week identified crime, multi-unit construction, and commercial development as Gardena’s primary issues but said, “This community is better than ever. I think the people will see that and stay the course.”

Bradford said he is the only candidate who can truly represent the city’s younger residents, as well as the black and Latino communities.

“It is a real tragedy that most of our problems with gangs and crime are in the black and Hispanic areas,” Bradford said in an interview. “That’s 50% of our people who don’t seem to have a voice in city government.”

Although known as a bastion of the Japanese-American community in the South Bay, black and Latino populations in Gardena have surged in recent years. They now make up about 45% of the population, with 23% black, 22% Latino, 21% Japanese-American, 26% Anglo and 8% other nationalities.

The city has never elected a black or Latino council member, although City Treasurer Lorenzo Ybarra was elected in 1988 over a Japanese-American and an Anglo.

Whether he wins or not, Bradford said he will press his campaign to elect council members by district, rather than citywide, as the only way to ensure that black and Latino candidates have an increased chance to win council seats.

Although most large cities, such as Los Angeles, elect city council members from geographically distinct districts, most small cities, including Gardena, elect at-large members to represent the entire city.

Under district elections, citizens vote only for candidates from the districts where they live, which gives minority neighborhoods a better chance to elect their own representatives. Proponents of district elections argue that votes of minority groups are diluted when spread out over an entire city.

Neither Duffy nor Fukai support district elections for Gardena.

“I think in a small city, we need the overview of at-large representation,” Duffy said. “There have been opportunities at each election for strong candidates from any ethnic group. People just end up choosing the candidate they think is best.”