L.A. CITY COUNCIL ELECTIONS / 6TH DISTRICT : Galanter Challenged on Issue of Growth

Four years ago, Ruth Galanter was an outsider. Running on a shoestring budget, with the backing of friends and other volunteers, the obscure urban planner from Venice forced from office one of the city’s most powerful politicians--L.A. City Council President Pat Russell.

But now Galanter is on the inside--a council member with a solid campaign treasury, bankrolled in part by developers--and facing six challengers in Tuesday’s municipal primary election.

Galanter’s opponents are trying to turn the tables on her by using the same issue that she used so successfully in ousting Russell--development.

But the determined incumbent--who won from her hospital bed in 1987 after a burglar nearly killed her in a stabbing attack in her home--has raised a spirited defense of her policies.

Galanter argues that she cannot eliminate construction, but can lessen its impact. She is particularly proud of requiring developers to build low-income housing and helping expand a protected coastal wetlands.

“If they can’t mitigate it, they can’t build it,” Galanter said. “I’m proud of my record.”

In the 6th District, which stretches from Venice and Westchester to the Crenshaw District, the mantle of slow-growth champion is coveted by all six of Galanter’s opponents--Tavis Smiley, once an aide to Mayor Tom Bradley and, before that, Russell; Mary Lee Gray, who has worked in much of the Westside as a senior deputy to county Supervisor Deane Dana; Salvatore Grammatico, a Realtor and community activist; J. Wilson Bowman, a college administrator; Mervin Evans, a business consultant, and Charles A. Mattison, a dentist and minister.

Community activists disappointed with Galanter, who ran on a slow-growth platform, said they expected her to be a brawler who would thwart new construction at every turn.

But Galanter, 50, has taken a more conciliatory approach. “There is something called the Constitution,” Galanter said in an interview. “I mean, these (builders) do have property rights.”

The Channel Gateway project on Lincoln Boulevard typifies the 6th District debate. Galanter points proudly to the 109 apartments that will be built for low-income families, and to changes that will produce 65% less traffic than an earlier proposal. But critics in Venice say that--with a total of 1,000 apartments and condominiums and 300,000 square feet of offices--the project is still too large.

The competition is unique for the 6th District in that all the challengers except Grammatico are African-Americans in a district that is just one-third black. While the district’s Westside has traditionally supplied the bulk of candidates, this year half are from the Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw area.

Gray, who lives in Mar Vista, and Smiley, of the Crenshaw District, have been Galanter’s most active and best-financed opponents. Both left their government jobs in September to campaign full time. Gray had raised $54,868 in contributions through March 23, compared with $44,598 for Smiley. Galanter was comfortably ahead, raising more than $157,581 during the same period, in addition to more than $84,000 she had in the bank.

Galanter, who had collected slightly more than $30,000 at this point in her first run for office, now receives significant support from the City Hall Establishment.

In January, for example, a group of lobbyists sponsored a $500-per-person Galanter “Max-Out Party,” a reference to the city’s campaign contribution limit. Two lobbyists who frequently represent developers--former Councilman Arthur K. Snyder and Steve Afriat--have collected $15,000 for Galanter since last year.

Developers, real estate interests, and lobbyists and lawyers who frequently work for them, have given at least $45,425 to Galanter since last July, records show.

Galanter’s campaign staff has attempted to throw Gray’s and Smiley’s slow-growth positions into doubt, noting that they served Dana and Russell, politicians viewed as development supporters.

But Gray, 50, has tried to downplay her link with Dana, saying she will not follow the example of the pro-development supervisor she has served for the last decade.

Gray prefers to discuss her constituent service that spans 18 years in much of the district.

She has pledged to reduce by at least 30% the density of Playa Vista, the mini-city of 11,750 housing units and 5-million square feet of offices that a builder wants to put between Marina del Rey and the Westchester bluffs.

Smiley, 26, has focused his campaign on the east part of the district, charging that Galanter has failed to bring economic revitalization to the Crenshaw District. He criticized her for rejecting a proposal to bring an outlet of the giant furniture chain Ikea to the area.

Galanter said she did not want to increase traffic or uproot local businesses. Critics would have hit her even harder, Galanter said, if she had supported removal of black-owned businesses in favor of the Scandinavian firm.

Grammatico, 38, has the longest record of opposition to development. The president of the Coalition of Concerned Communities, an alliance of 14 homeowners groups, Grammatico said he would reduce the Playa Vista project to as few as 200 acres, instead of the planned 670 acres.

He has fought to reduce several developments and filed a lawsuit last year in an effort to halt the construction of 86 UCLA faculty homes on the Westchester bluffs.