Crowded Palmdale Council Race Takes Urban Turn

Even in past years, when Palmdale was not much more than a dusty dot on the high desert road map, the city’s elections tended toward being nasty little affairs, full of small-town sniping and intrigues.

Heading into this month’s election, there are signs that the nastiness still lives. But the explosive development that has made Palmdale the state’s fastest-growing city also appears to have brought a new political sophistication and urban activism to the campaign.

Thirteen candidates--the most in more than a decade--are vying for three seats on the five-member City Council. The campaign has focused on challengers’ charges that the city’s quality of life is slipping because the incumbents have allowed runaway growth.

Voters will also decide on the City Council-backed Measure A, which would lengthen the term of mayor from two to four years. The two-year term was decided by voters in 1986. But city officials now want the mayor to have the same four-year term as council members. The ballot measure, if passed, would not take effect until 1992.

Palmdale Mayor William (Pete) Knight faces two opponents in the election and is favored in polls to win another two-year term. But first-term Councilmen Tom Smith and Daniel Becker face eight challengers, four of whom have run active campaigns.

Those opponents are Patricia (Patty) Alfred, president of a homeowners association; Celeste Eckley, head of another homeowners group; city Planning Commissioner James Ledford Jr., and James Root, a director of a citywide homeowners coalition.

In a first for Palmdale, all three incumbents’ campaigns are being guided by well-known Los Angeles-based Republican political consultants. And the races are being watched closely by developers looking to build in a city that has grown from just 12,000 people in 1980 to an estimated 55,000 in 1989.

Palmdale voters have been a fickle lot in past years. Not since 1980 has the city had an election in which the council has been kept intact. This year, candidate polls have shown Knight well ahead, but Smith and Becker are in closer contests, with many voters undecided, campaign staffs said.

But Ledford, who owns a bar, suffered a blow when a group linked to Becker’s campaign sent out a mailer disclosing Ledford’s nearly 7-year-old arrest and conviction on a drunk-driving charge. It led to his serving time in County Jail, records showed.

Alfred had problems of her own when she inadvertently disclosed that $4,000 she had reported on a campaign finance statement as a personal loan to her campaign committee actually was money that came the day before from four relatives.

She denied misreporting the money, but the state Fair Political Practices Commission is reviewing the issue because of a prior complaint lodged by Eckley. A commission spokeswoman declined comment Friday, but state law requires candidates to report the true source of their funds.

In the campaign, the four main council challengers and some other hopefuls have argued that unchecked growth will worsen the city’s traffic congestion and shortages of parks and schools. But all have avoided pushing, as one local newspaper put it, that “dreaded phrase, ‘slow growth.’ ”

In contrast, Knight and the other incumbents contend that only continued development, such as new shopping and auto malls set to open this year, will generate the money necessary to allow city services to catch up with the city’s needs. “We look at growth as a challenge, not a problem,” Knight said recently.

The focus of the April 10 election reflects the city’s continuing transition from an aerospace outpost to a more broad-based community of homeowners. All three incumbents have aerospace backgrounds, but their strongest challengers are aligned with homeowner groups.

The campaigns of Knight and Smith are being supervised by Ron Smith, best known for engineering Supervisor Deane Dana’s 1980 election and guiding former Rep. Ed Zschau from relative obscurity to a near-upset over Democratic Sen. Alan Cranston in California’s 1986 U. S. Senate race.

Becker is getting help from Tim Carey, a consultant who heads the pro-development Southern California Caucus and who is associated politically with Supervisor Pete Schabarum. Carey made headlines in 1987 when his group aided developers fighting cityhood for Santa Clarita.

As a result, Palmdale voters have been seeing a series of glossy mailers--three thus far from Becker and at least one apiece from Knight and Smith--that would be well-received even in Los Angeles’ high-stakes political game. And if local tradition holds, more will be forthcoming by Election Day.

To finance the mailers, the three incumbents have relied mostly on developers and local business contributions, outspending most of their opponents. As of last week, Knight had reported raising $18,367; Smith $14,496, including nearly $5,300 of his own money, and Becker $10,974. Of the challengers, only Alfred was in the same league, having raised $12,655, including the $4,000 she reported as a loan.

The other challengers are on tighter budgets. They have gone door-to-door and met with groups to garner support. Ledford and Root did a joint mailer to voters last week and may do more. Alfred has paid for billboards, mailers and fliers. And Eckley had signs up throughout the city early on.

Knight, 60, is an ex-test pilot and former vice commander of the flight test center at Edwards Air Force Base. He is being opposed by Kamal Chalabi, 63, a professor at Cal State Long Beach, and Brian Spencer, 28, an aerospace engineer and former Olympic field hockey athlete.

Chalabi, who narrowly missed winning a council seat in 1988, has called for “socially responsible growth” and accused the council of being overly influenced by developers. Spencer, who is a reserve officer with the Pasadena Police Department, has also cited growth concerns in a quiet campaign.

Smith, 55, the city’s mayor pro tem, is a former Air Force lieutenant colonel and SR-71 test pilot who now owns a travel agency. Becker, 49, is a quality control manager for SST Aerospace in Palmdale and a former city planning commissioner.

Alfred, 50, is president of the Joshua Hills Homeowners Assn. and owns a paralegal-bookkeeping service. Eckley, 26, is president of the Inco Neighborhood Assn. and a mechanical engineer with the Bechtel Corp. in Norwalk.

Ledford, 36, has been active in city planning issues and owns the Generations bar and restaurant in Palmdale. Root, 37, is a director of the Palmdale Community Assn., a city-sponsored coalition of homeowner groups, and a math teacher at Highland High School.

The other council candidates have had little visibility in the campaign. They are Durwood (Tex) Bland Jr., 57; Neal O’Brian Emelio, 29; Geoffrey Mika, 46, and Chris Nejako, who did not list her age.

Bland had worked for Rockwell International Corp. in the 1970s before retiring for health reasons. Emelio is a production planner at a Chatsworth electronics company. Mika is a self-described management consultant. And Nejako is a county welfare department eligibility supervisor.