ELECTIONS: COMPTON MAYOR, CITY COUNCIL : Crime, Financial Problems Confront Candidates

By MICHELE FUETSCH

April 11, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

COMPTON —

Eighteen residents of this community will go before the voters on Tuesday to compete for a chance to help run a city that is plagued by crime and crippled by financial problems. The candidates want crime curbed, and they advocate luring more developers to make the “Hub City” prosper once again.

None of the candidates has offered a comprehensive plan for solving the city’s financial woes, but most of them say they are opposed to a plan, being considered by the current council, that would eliminate the city’s fire and police departments to save money.

Compton is expected to have a deficit of nearly $10 million in its $82-million budget in the 1991-92 fiscal year.

Seven people are seeking the mayor’s post, which has been vacant since the death last fall of Mayor Walter R. Tucker Jr. A special election to replace Tucker was set to coincide with the regular council elections Tuesday.

The mayoral contest is a winner-take-all event. There will be no runoff. Whoever gets the most votes wins and serves out the two years left in Tucker’s term. Except for ceremonial duties, the mayor does no more than fill the fifth seat on the City Council.

City Council seats in the 1st and 4th districts also are on the ballot. In those races, a candidate must receive more than 50% of all the votes. The terms are for four years. Most candidates and political insiders expect June runoffs.

Three of the mayoral candidates are City Council members: Maxcy D. Filer, Patricia A. Moore, and Bernice Woods. Filer and Moore are viewed as front-runners. Woods, a popular school trustee for about 12 years before being elected to the council in 1989, has not mounted a major campaign effort.

Other candidates are Walter R. Tucker III, a 33-year-old attorney trying to succeed his father as mayor; Lisa C. Weir, 26, a UCLA graduate and assistant manager of a Los Angeles restuarant; Floyd James, the former councilman defeated by Moore two years ago; and Saul Lankster, a local florist.

Three of the candidates for mayor have had criminal problems. Lankster was convicted in 1985 on three counts of selling false driving-school diplomas to undercover agents who posed as traffic violators.

James pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of election fraud after a 1985 election contest in which he defeated Moore. He sent out a last-minute mailer saying she had been disqualified from running for office.

Tucker was fired from the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office in 1988 and sentenced to three years’ probation for falsifying evidence in connection with a case he was prosecuting.

Filer, 61, has represented Council District 1. A longtime civil rights and community activist, he is a veteran political maverick who was often the lone vote against council proposals.

Moore, 42, is a former aide to Rep. Mervyn M. Dymally (D-Compton). After two unsuccessful tries, she was elected to the council in 1989 on a platform critical of redevelopment policies. She says the city loses good development prospects because council members favor certain developers over others.

She is the only candidate to say that she would vote to dismantle the fire department and contract with Los Angeles County if it would save the city money. She is opposed, however, to dissolving the police department.

Tucker and Moore have assembled campaign slates, teaming up with candidates in the council contests. In District 1, Tucker’s running mate is Omar Bradley, a 32-year-old Lynwood High School teacher making his second bid for municipal office. He ran for mayor two years ago.

Moore’s running mate in the 1st District is Walter Goodin, a Baptist minister who also runs a janitorial service and is a member of the city’s Block Club Commission. Two years ago, he helped lead the drive for a municipal ban on the sale and possession of semiautomatic weapons, the first such ban in the state. Goodin ran unsuccessfully for the council in 1989 and in 1985.

There are four other candidates in the District 1 race. John Steward, 48, a trustee of the Compton Unified School District and a Los Angeles County probation officer, has refused to reveal his position on city issues. He says he will decide which way to vote on issues once he is elected to the council.

Pedro Pallan, 57, is the only Latino running. Pallan owns San Antonio Bakery on Rosecrans Avenue and is president of the Latino Chamber of Commerce. He estimates that there are about 2,400 registered Latino voters and he hopes to get enough of them to the polls to propel him into a runoff.

Stephen Randle, a 22-year-old teacher in the Compton schools, and R.J. Gray, a Baptist minister, are the other two District 1 candidates. Gray, 58, is a retired welder and a member of the city’s Block Club Commission.

Four candidates are trying to unseat District 4 incumbent Councilwoman Jane D. Robbins. She is seeking her fourth term on the council. Robbins, 71, a retired schoolteacher and principal, is still a popular figure in the city, though her critics complain that she is not energetic enough to tackle the array of problems facing Compton.

Robbins almost lost her place on the ballot when she failed to get the necessary 20 signatures of registered voters on her nomination petition. A Superior Court judge ruled that she should be allowed another day to collect the signatures she needed because the filing deadline had fallen on a Saturday, when City Hall is not usually open.

Robbins is opposed by Richard Bonner, a 49-year-old beauty business owner, who has served on various city advisory committees; Ethel Young, a senior citizen activist; Basil Kimbrew, 37, a political consultant; and Jean Sanders, a cemetery manager who is the wife of City Treasurer Wesley Sanders Jr.

Jean Sanders, 45, is vice president and general manager of Angeles Abbey Memorial Park, a Compton cemetery. Her campaign literature promises that she and her husband “working together as a team . . . will see Compton come clean.”

Bonner is Tucker’s running mate in the 4th district race; Kimbrew is running with Moore. Kimbrew managed Moore’s successful council campaign and, until he was seriously hurt in a fall last week, he was managing the Moore-Goodin-Kimbrew campaign effort.

Kimbrew was putting up campaign signs when he fell and had to be hospitalized. He underwent surgery and was released from the hospital on Tuesday.

COMPTON ELECTIONS Here is a list of the candidates on Tuesday’s ballot for Compton mayor and City Council.

MAYOR*

Patricia A. Moore, councilwoman

Bernice Woods, councilwoman

Maxcy D. Filer, councilman

Walter R. Tucker III, attorney

Lisa C. Weir, restaurant manager

Floyd James, former councilman

Saul Lankster, florist

*Winner to serve remaining two years of unexpired term.

CITY COUNCIL