ELECTIONS LOS ANGELES CITY COUNCIL : Slow-Growth Advocate Supports Galanter’s Challenger

Slow-growth advocate Salvatore Grammatico, who ran third in the 6th District Los Angeles City Council primary race last month, has endorsed challenger Mary Lee Gray in her bid to unseat incumbent Ruth Galanter on June 4.

Grammatico announced his endorsement Wednesday night after a candidates’ forum at Venice High School sponsored by the Venice Town Council and 23 other community groups and attended by a crowd of about 190.

“It is ironic that the blue butterfly gets better service than the people,” Grammatico said. The community activist was referring to Galanter’s efforts to provide a large preserve for the butterfly and other endangered species on the dunes in Playa del Rey. Gray also supports a dunes preserve, but one that is half as large.

Grammatico’s statement capped a tense, but mostly decorous, evening that was notable because it drew Gray and Galanter to the same stage, the first time that has happened in Venice during the race. During the primary, Galanter eschewed nearly all forums, a common strategy of incumbents.

Negotiations for this and other forums have been particularly testy, with charges and countercharges of unfairness. But Town Council President Barbara Palivos stood firm on her vow that the debate would be fair or be cancelled.

A League of Women Voters moderator kept the crowd in line by cheerfully admonishing boisterous partisans who shouted out comments or barbs.

The candidates jousted too.

In one exchange, Gray charged that Galanter was superimposing her own will on that of her constituents. By contrast, Gray said, “I have always subjugated my will to the will of the public,” and would continue to do so, if elected.

Galanter immediately chided her opponent, saying that leadership requires taking a stand after listening to divergent forces in the community. “You can’t be a leader if you don’t have any ideas and judgment,” she said.

Grammatico, who was in the debate audience, had been silent since the primary, saying he would throw his support to the candidate who most closely matched his positions.

Shortly after the primary, he said his surprisingly strong third-place finish had prompted him to consider a write-in campaign. Spending next to no money, the realtor and activist won nearly 16% of the vote in the April primary--just four points behind Gray. Running on a platform that emphasized his opposition to giant development projects, he drew most of his support from neighborhoods in Westchester and Playa del Rey.

Because of his slow-growth message, Grammatico’s support could boost the fortunes of underdog Gray, who has been portrayed by Galanter as a clone of her pro-development boss, Los Angeles County Supervisor Deane Dana.

Gray is fighting an uphill battle against a better-known and better-financed incumbent who came within a hair’s breadth of winning an outright majority in April that would have made the runoff unnecessary.

Galanter’s campaign manager, Marc Litchman, dismissed the Grammatico endorsement as philosophically inconsistent. “If he’s truly a slow-growth candidate, he picked the wrong horse,” Litchman said.

Both candidates say they favor managed growth but differ on particular projects.

In one heated moment during the debate, Galanter jumped on Gray’s statement that she supported the city’s new ethics law. “Then how come your campaign reports come in late and you have lies about me in your literature?” Galanter asked.

A tardy campaign report was blamed by Gray on a staffer who erred by dropping it into a mailbox rather than sending it by express mail, as required by law.

The misstatement Galanter referred to was in a Gray campaign flyer that accused Galanter of voting to raise her own pay. Initially, Gray denied the error but later attributed it to out-of-date campaign literature. A consultant for Gray said, “We’ll definitely look at it and apologize if we were wrong.”

Gray said afterward that Galanter was conjuring up red herrings in an attempt to capture a large pool of undecided voters by diverting attention from her record.

During the forum, Gray took the offensive by hammering at her interpretation of Galanter’s record, accusing her of not providing basic services to the district. Gray repeatedly stressed her own record of public service, including 18 years as a senior deputy to three county supervisors, and vowed that if elected she would stay in touch with constituents by answering her own phone eight hours a week and taking drop-in visits.

Both sides declared victory after the forum.

Additional debates are planned this week. On Tuesday, a forum sponsored by the Friends of Ballona Wetlands and limited to environmental issues is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at the Congregational Church of the Messiah, 7300 W. Manchester Blvd., Playa del Rey. Gray said she is still negotiating the debate rules with forum sponsors because she is concerned that they may favor Galanter. Debate organizer Ruth Lansford noted, however, that the guidelines had been cleared by the League of Women Voters.

On Friday, the candidates have agreed to attend a forum sponsored by the community group Crenshaw Neighbors. The debate is scheduled for 7 p.m. at the Department of Water and Power building, 4030 Crenshaw Blvd.