L.A. CITY COUNCIL ELECTIONS / 9TH DISTRICT : Lindsay’s Legacy Remains a Campaign Issue

The candidates rarely mention his name, but three months after his death Gilbert W. Lindsay remains a central figure in the campaign for the Los Angeles City Council seat that he occupied for 27 years as the “emperor of the Great 9th District.”

Ten candidates are vying for the spot and most are trying to distance themselves from Lindsay’s policies, which helped bring about dramatic commercial revitalization downtown but did little to improve life in the run-down South-Central area of his district.

Lindsay’s longtime aide, Bob Gay, and school board member Rita Walters are considered front-runners, but each has been put on the defensive. Gay frequently finds himself explaining why he should not be held accountable for conditions in South-Central, and Walters is attacked as a “carpetbagger” who moved into the district after Lindsay’s death and needed a court order to win a place on the April 9 ballot.

Brad Pye Jr., an aide to county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, and Woody Fleming, a labor organizer, also have name recognition in the black community and have raised enough money to run substantial campaigns.

Crime, drugs, unemployment and homelessness remain the standard themes of the candidates, but the campaign took an unexpected turn several weeks ago with the airing of the now infamous videotaped beating of Rodney G. King by Los Angeles police. All the major candidates have called for the resignation of Police Chief Daryl F. Gates and routinely exchange accusations about who has taken the toughest stand on the matter.

Perhaps more than any other council district, the 9th is home to the extremes of urban life. Whoever succeeds Lindsay is likely to play a key role in determining the course of development in the gleaming new downtown, as well as long-awaited improvements in some of the city’s most intractable slums.

Gay, 38, worked for Lindsay for 15 years and has been patiently laying the groundwork for a run at Lindsay’s seat. Gay said he told Lindsay not long before his death that “his legacy would be downtown and mine would be South-Central.”

Gay has promised an array of programs to help revitalize the area and argues that he is the only candidate to come up with specific proposals. Among them are a low-interest loan program to promote home ownership; a housing program for the “working poor;” an increase in the number of single-room occupancy projects in the district, with some targeted for young people; a $1-per-square-foot fee on large developments that would fund a program for the hard-core unemployed, and a Central Avenue Development Corp. to revitalize one of the district’s main thoroughfares.

Walters, 60, an outspoken liberal, has been a forceful voice for the black community since she was elected to the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education in 1979. She has frequently been at odds with her colleagues on the seven-member board. When anti-busing proponents held a majority on the panel, Walters was a staunch advocate of court-ordered busing to achieve racial desegregation.

Her decision to run for the City Council was made, sources said, at the urging of Mayor Tom Bradley, who is said to dislike Gay. The mayor denies that there is any animosity toward Gay; he has publicly endorsed Walters.

Walters has said she will be a strong voice for the neglected areas of the 9th District and promises to beef up city services that she says are insufficient, including street cleaning, posting of traffic signs and enforcement of health and safety codes. She also said she will advocate affordable housing and employment programs, but has not yet developed specific proposals.

Pye, 59, is on leave as assistant chief deputy to Hahn, a liberal supervisor who is popular in the black community. Pye is a former managing editor of the Sentinel, a black community newspaper, and several years ago was a sports commentator for several radio stations.

Hahn’s endorsement, Pye hopes, will get him enough votes to win a place in a runoff election. “Kenny Hahn is like God in this community,” Pye said, adding that he plans to be a “Kenny Hahn clone.”

Pye also promises better services for the neglected parts of the district. “South-Central Los Angeles looks like a Third World area,” Pye said. “If Bob Gay is going to take credit for the all the good things Gil Lindsay did, then he is going to have to take credit for all the dirty alleys . . . and all the graffiti-laden buildings.”

Pye has raised $56,183 in campaign funds since January, according to a report filed Friday with the city clerk’s office. He hopes to collect another $40,000 by April 9.

Fleming, 44, is political director of the California State Council of the Service Employees International Union, which represents about 300,000 government, hospital, home care and janitorial workers. He also has made an issue of Gay’s association with Lindsay. “I hold Bob Gay accountable because he was there for 15 years,” he said. “. . . The deterioration of South-Central is horrible.”

Fleming’s campaign is largely funded by labor interests, from which he said he hopes to collect about $50,000.

The other candidates are: Joe Hubbard Jr., a community activist; C. David Henry, also a community activist; Theodore Bey, a businessman; Lang J. Stanley, a college counselor and professor; Barbara Ratliff, an attorney, and Michael Schaefer, a lawyer and former San Diego city councilman. Schaefer, the only white candidate, is a former slumlord who in 1986 was assessed $1.83 million in damages by a Los Angeles jury in what is believed to be the largest award in a landlord-tenant suit in California.

The candidates hesitate to directly criticize Lindsay, who had the support of downtown businessmen and easily won reelection every time he was challenged. He was the first black city councilman and had such control over his district that he was known as the “emperor,” a title he did not reject.

Downtown interests are watching closely but have not thrown their support behind one candidate. Instead, the Central City Assn., whose 250 members include large and small downtown businesses, has endorsed both Walters and Gay.

“We didn’t see enough of a distinction,” said Jim Hunter, association president. In the likely event that a runoff is held, Hunter said, the association probably will back only one candidate.

“This is a cry for us to hear more substance about the issues,” Hunter said. “Right now it appears to us to be largely a war of endorsements.”

While Walters has Bradley’s backing, he has done little for her publicly since he called a news conference to endorse her last month. Gay countered with news conferences in which U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) and several dozen ministers endorsed him.

Gay describes himself as a “born-again” Christian and serves as a deacon in a small fundamentalist church. He has campaigned hard on religious themes and bought a two-page advertisement last month in NFTA, a fundamentalist magazine that is distributed widely in churches throughout the black community.

Gay’s picture appears on the cover next to a photograph of conservative Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton), who is an outspoken opponent of homosexuality. The magazine carries a cartoon that ridicules gay men and an editorial that suggests that homosexuals are taking jobs from blacks.

Chris Hammond, Gay’s campaign manager, said he had placed a large order for the magazine and was planning to distribute copies to potential voters, but threw them all away. Hammond said he was “shocked” by the cover and finds Dannemeyer’s views “repugnant.”

Gay has expended considerable effort over the years seeking the support of ministers in the district, a move that apparently has paid off in the campaign.

He locked up the endorsement of the Baptist Ministers Conference months ago and also won the endorsement of Dr. Frank J. Higgins, the organization’s president, who said Gay has done much to help churches with city problems.

“The churches have had zoning problems, building permit problems, problems with parking lots,” Higgins said. “He’s (Gay) been the one that has been involved and has done the legwork for whatever is necessary.”

Walters said she was unsuccessful in many winning religious endorsements.

“Religion is important to African-American people,” she said, “but I don’t think you pander to that. I think you treat it with respect and understand that in our system of government it has to be kept separate.”

Walters has been surpassed by Gay in campaign fund raising. A report filed with the city clerk on Friday shows that Gay has collected $235,921 since Jan. 1., from a range of interests, including downtown Los Angeles developers and investment bankers in New York, all contacts he made while working for Lindsay.

Walters’ report shows that she has collected $96,952 since Jan. 1, much of it from educators and some from Bradley supporters.