Elections Could Shake Up City Council : Politics: With at least three seats changing hands, the April 9 campaigning is expected to be vigorous. Results in black districts may dramatically change the dynamics.

Left behind in the economic boom that has transformed much of the city, two South-Central Los Angeles districts are emerging in the April 9 election as centers of the most vigorous black political debate seen in nearly two decades.

Nineteen candidates, most of them black, have entered the free-for-all contests in the 8th and 9th City Council districts, where no incumbents are running. The late Gilbert W. Lindsay, the council’s first black member, represented the 9th District for 27 years until his death last December. In the 8th District, Councilman Robert Farrell has decided to step down after 17 years, citing personal reasons.

The vacant seats are among eight to be decided in the April election--accounting for more than half of the 15-member council.

At least three City Council seats will change hands this year. In addition to Lindsay and Farrell, Councilwoman Gloria Molina, who was elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, will be replaced. A special election has been scheduled for June 4.

Council battles also are shaping up in the 12th District in the northern San Fernando Valley, where incumbent Hal Bernson faces five challengers, and in the 6th District, surrounding Los Angeles International Airport, where Ruth Galanter faces six challengers.

In both races, the incumbents have come under attack by anti-development groups. Galanter also has been criticized for not seizing an opportunity to revitalize a run-down shopping area.

Also running for reelection in April are Councilman Joel Wachs in the 2nd District in the eastern and central San Fernando Valley; Council President John Ferraro in the 4th District, which includes Hancock Park, Toluca Lake and part of Los Feliz; Nate Holden, whose 10th District includes areas west of downtown, and Richard Alatorre, whose 14th District is on the eastern edge of the city.

If no candidate wins a majority of votes in the council races, the top two vote-getters will face each other in a runoff June 4.

Some at City Hall see the potential arrival of two new and energetic black members as a landmark in the council’s history, comparable to the election of Tom Bradley as the city’s first black mayor 18 years ago.

“I don’t think there’s any question that the election of the representatives from the 8th and 9th will strongly change the dynamics of the council,” said Councilwoman Joy Picus, who has been on the council for 14 years. “I think virtually anybody (can) win.”

The changeover from Lindsay, who was 90, and Farrell, 53, to younger and “higher energy” people could bring better city services for the largely black districts, or at least more emphasis on the matter, Picus said.

Indeed, service to the economically depressed areas is a theme being pounded hard by nearly all candidates. “People are talking about access more than anything else down here,” said Kerman Maddox, a former Bradley aide who is running in the 8th District.

Mark Ridley-Thomas, executive director of the Los Angeles Southern Christian Leadership Conference, is also running in the 8th District. He goes door to door daily with his message about “making city government responsive” to problems ranging from abandoned cars to child care.

Overall, the council races are expected to generate little voter interest, as they traditionally do in off-year elections. Council members and candidates interviewed last week said they see few local issues that mobilize voters in Los Angeles and cut across district lines.

Anti-development fervor appears to ebb and flow, many said, and concern over the drought and water rationing does not translate into a political movement.

Crime is the one issue that voters throughout the city complain about, many candidates said, but tough stands by most candidates generally dilute crime as an effective campaign issue.

“There’s always the crime issue,” Molina said. “But I don’t know that there’s a whole lot to say, because it isn’t just the crime issue that has to be resolved. It’s a whole lot of other things . . . like jobs and housing.”

In many cases, reelection may hinge on whether the incumbent’s staff responded politely and quickly to calls and complaints about such mundane matters as garbage collection and broken street lights, several council members said.

“If there’s a common thread, it’s that people either are or are not pleased with the kind of response they get--or they feel that they’re getting,” said Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores.

The council has changed dramatically--if slowly--over the past two decades, from a nearly all-white male, conservative body to a more diverse group that includes women and more Latinos and blacks.

The election in April of two new black members, Wachs said, will continue the trend.

While Lindsay helped break ground for black Angelenos 27 years ago, some leaders in the black community have for several years been awaiting an opportunity to replace him in the troubled 9th District. His stroke last fall and his death in December set the stage for a long-anticipated power struggle.

Lindsay has been credited with presiding over the dramatic rebirth of the city’s downtown area, but the common theme of nearly all the campaigns for his seat this year is what candidates call his longstanding neglect of the impoverished areas of the 9th District.

Longtime Lindsay aide Bob Gay, who helped Lindsay carry out many of the development policies, has pledged to turn his attention in the coming decade to the problems of homelessness, poor schools, unemployment and inadequate social services.

Rita Walters, an outspoken member of the Los Angeles Board of Education, moved into the 9th District in January to run for the council seat with Bradley’s backing. She, too, has pledged to be an advocate for neglected areas.

Similar themes are sounded by candidates Brad Pye Jr., an aide to County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, and Woody Fleming, a labor executive.

In the 6th District, Galanter rode a slow-growth platform to an unexpected victory four years ago, but she has come under criticism recently from constituents--and now candidates--on both sides of the development issue.

Constituents in the Crenshaw district are eager for redevelopment of the depressed Santa Barbara shopping plaza and were angered by Galanter’s lukewarm response to a developer’s proposal to establish a huge Ikea furniture store there. Instead, the store was opened in Burbank and has generated millions of dollars in sales.

Residents of the crowded Venice area crusade against growth. Some say Galanter has gone back on her anti-growth promises and complain that she has been conciliatory, rather than combative, with developers.

Development interests, including some who actively opposed Galanter four years ago, are now praising her “moderate” positions and raising money for her campaign. The large field of challengers on the April ballot could put Galanter in a difficult runoff.

The challengers include Mary Lee Gray, an aide to County Supervisor Deane Dana, and Tavis Smiley, a former aide to Bradley. Gray has campaigned on a controlled-growth platform and charged that Galanter has sold out to development interests. Smiley, who lives in the Crenshaw district, has criticized Galanter’s handling of the Ikea matter.

In the San Fernando Valley, Bernson is campaigning hard to avoid a runoff against his main challengers, school board member Julie Korenstein, who has made the huge Porter Ranch development her key issue, and Northridge businessman Walter Prince, who has vowed to shut down the project.

Bernson strongly backed the development, which the City Council approved last year, and has accepted more than $50,000 from its developer and the developer’s business associates.

In the 2nd District, Wachs is running for his sixth term and faces two lesser-known opponents, Tom Paterson, president of a homeowners association, and Peter A. Lynch, who describes himself as a “legislative advocate.”

Council President Ferraro, in his 25th year on the council, is running unopposed in the 4th District and observers attribute his popularity to the lack of a major controversy on which a challenger could mount a campaign.

In the 10th District, Holden, who ran a strong race for mayor against Bradley two years ago, has one challenger, Esther M. Lofton, an educator.

Alatorre faces three challengers in the 14th District: John Lucero, who launched an unsuccessful recall campaign against him last year; Martin GutieRuiz, a community organizer who has worked for Molina and may attract some of her supporters, and David R. Diaz, an environmental planner.