D.A. Reiner Calls It a Day : Turbulent tenure is ending on honorable note

Ira Reiner has chosen to end, for now, a career in public office that spans 17 sometimes controversy-shadowed years. After two terms as Los Angeles County district attorney, and in the midst of a campaign for a third term, Reiner has announced that he is withdrawing from the race.

That decision may well have represented a realistic acceptance of what probably lay ahead. Opinion surveys indicated that Reiner was running significantly behind his opponent, former chief deputy district attorney Gilbert L. Garcetti, who outpolled Reiner in the June primary.

In an interview with The Times, Reiner indicated that perhaps his only hope for a come-from-behind victory would have been in mounting “a highly personal negative campaign” against his challenger. Reiner, to his credit, says he’s unwilling to do that. The man who has often been accused by critics of being motivated by political opportunism has thus chosen to leave the arena through an honorable exit. This rejection of negativism is welcome--even if Reiner’s motives were not entirely selfless.

Like most officeholders, Reiner has a public record containing achievements to be proud of as well as mistakes and failures to be regretted and even deplored.

Elected Los Angeles city controller in 1977, he turned the bright light of publicity on inappropriate spending by city officials, illuminating some cozy but ethically unacceptable practices that had for too long been ignored. The attention these efforts won him resulted in a landslide electoral victory in his 1981 race for city attorney. Two years later he defeated incumbent Robert H. Philibosian to become the county’s 38th district attorney.

He proved to be a tough and in many ways capable prosecutor. But the office he administered stumbled badly in some high-profile cases that drew national attention. In what would prove to be the final months of his tenure the district attorney looked ineffective in a number of racially charged areas. Most notably, his office could not win even a single conviction against the four Los Angeles police officers accused in the Rodney G. King beating. His subsequent challenge of Superior Court Judge Roosevelt Dorn, a black, in the Reginald O. Denny attempted murder case was handled with notable ineptitude and insensitivity.

In choosing to drop out of the race now, Reiner assures victory for Garcetti on Nov. 3. But in opting to drop out now he is also acting to make the transition smoother and certainly freer of the bitterness and divisiveness that desperate campaigning would have produced.

There are various ways to end--or suspend--a political career. Reiner’s way will not be found lacking in class.