Odd Man Out : Controversial Councilman Often Votes on Losing Side

Councilman Warren Harwood glowered. After arguing fiercely, Harwood was on the losing end of a 5-to-1 vote, the latest in a string of defeats.

“I’d like to have more (council members) understanding and supporting my positions, but if that isn’t the case, then so be it,” Harwood said.

Smart, well-informed and dedicated--or misdirected, bull-headed and self-aggrandizing, as some say--Harwood has become the odd man out on the Long Beach City Council.

Some of Harwood’s council colleagues roll their eyes, smirk, read papers or simply walk away from the dais when he begins to hammer home a point--again.

Harwood can be relentless--like a pit bull, more than one city official has said. If Harwood does not get satisfaction during a council meeting, he often shoots off a fax to the press.

“That tactic is my only choice in some circumstances,” Harwood said.

The 53-year-old councilman likes to take on big issues. For example, he has called unsuccessfully for a full audit to determine who is responsible for allowing the city-owned Queen Mary to fall into a state of disrepair that will require $27 million to fix.

But he also is not above debating the mundane. Once, Harwood argued about whether to open or close the curtains in the council chamber, a decision that would affect the cable broadcast of meetings.

But Harwood’s near-legendary battles with Mayor Ernie Kell have contributed most to making him one of the most controversial council members of the past 25 years.

Harwood has accused Kell, his onetime buddy and political ally, of being a “captive of special interests.”

“I don’t want to battle, but I’m there to make sure things go straight,” said Harwood, who considers himself a government watchdog.

Kell, who has grown weary of Harwood’s attacks, has denied the allegation. He is curt with Harwood during council meetings and at times cuts off the councilman in mid-sentence.

“We have different political views,” the mayor said. “That’s about it.”

Part of the problem is that Harwood and Kell differ on how to improve Long Beach.

Kell, a businessman, has put his efforts into developing downtown, including the on-going expansion of the convention center. He also supports a proposal to turn Shoreline Aquatic Park into a harbor that would be surrounded by restaurants and tourist shops.

“We have an opportunity to create thousands and thousands of jobs,” Kell said.

But Harwood argues that more city resources should be funneled to neighborhoods. He bristles at the suggestion that a city park should become the home of a tourist attraction that some residents could not afford to visit.

“I believe the neighborhoods require our first-priority attention,” Harwood said. “We’ve been so swept up in the grand plans that we let the neighborhoods go to pot.”

In Harwood’s 9th District, the northern part of Long Beach made up of modest working-class homes and small businesses, supporters and opponents are equally fervent.

“They always treated us like stepchildren until Warren got in,” said Martha Croft, an activist in the North Long Beach Neighborhood Assn. and a member of the city’s Senior Citizen Advisory Commission. “He’s fought for us up here.”

But Gladys A. Gutierrez, a 9th District resident and member of the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission, said she is considering running against Harwood in 1994. She accuses him of being unable to work with his colleagues on the City Council.

“He seems to try to go against everyone else so his name can be in the paper,” she said.

Harwood has been most controversial lately, but the councilman has a history of going against the grain.

He grew up in Long Beach and graduated in 1957 from Wilson High School. Former classmate Allan E. Tebbetts, a Long Beach lawyer, described Harwood as a good student and a nonconformist.

“He always had his own ideas and was never bound in by what everyone else was doing,” Tebbetts said.

After graduating from UCLA business school, Harwood worked first in the Los Angeles Engineering Department and then in South El Monte. At age 24, he became city manager of San Jacinto.

“I was very ambitious,” said Harwood, who took night classes to earn a master’s degree in public administration in 1964.

Harwood was quickly initiated to the volatile world of municipal politics. A council majority fired Harwood in 1965. Among the things that angered the council was that Harwood allowed a parking lot to be resurfaced with the wrong material, according to press accounts.

Former San Jacinto Councilman William M. Stewart, 85, said in a recent interview that Harwood’s attitude contributed to his dismissal.

“He wanted to be the big shot,” said Stewart, a retired farmer who voted to fire Harwood. “He pulled some boners and wouldn’t listen to anybody in the know.”

But Harwood said he defied the council majority in the interests of good government.

After holding several other managerial positions, he took a job in 1978 with Los Angeles County as an administrative worker and is in a similar position now.

Before 1980, Harwood changed political affiliations almost as often as he changed jobs.

He was a Democrat, but in 1967 switched to the Republican Party. He returned in 1979 to the Democratic Party. Harwood describes himself as a moderate.

The councilman’s early political career was marked by failure. He ran poorly financed campaigns for state Assembly in 1974 and 1976, and was defeated in the primaries. He lost his first campaign for a Long Beach City Council seat in 1978, when incumbent Russell Rubley won by 69 votes.

Harwood then failed to win a school board seat in Long Beach in 1979.

“I had a very impressive losing streak going there before I finally won an election,” he said.

That came in 1980, when Harwood was elected a director of an obscure water district.

Harwood seized his seat on the City Council in 1982 in a tough rematch with Rubley.

The underdog waged a low-budget campaign criticizing Rubley for a rat infestation in North Long Beach, for a lack of law enforcement in the district and insufficient housing for senior citizens.

But by 1986, Harwood had become the adopted son of the political establishment. He won reelection with the support of Kell, the firefighter and police unions, major developers and the Long Beach Board of Realtors.

As an incumbent, Harwood said, he naturally drew establishment support. But the councilman maintains that he never lost sight of his goal to improve the 9th District.

“I’ve preserved the single-family neighborhoods and improved the parks,” he said. “If I forget the residents, they’ll throw me out.”

He ran unopposed in April, 1990. Later that year he ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary for a seat on the State Board of Equalization. The councilman said he has no plans to run again outside Long Beach.

“Unless you’re a monied person or have heavy support from monied people you can’t get elected,” he said.

Harwood takes pride in his accomplishments as a councilman.

He, along with former Councilman Edd Tuttle, championed a police substation that was built in 1985 in North Long Beach. And he was one of the councilmen who called for sheriff’s deputies to replace the Long Beach Police Department in north and northeast Long Beach.

Harwood pushed for the senior citizens center in Houghton Park. And most recently, he worked to obtain freeway sound walls, which are being built along the Artesia Freeway in his district.

The councilman also has worked for years to limit the number of liquor stores in his area. And he has fought hard against other businesses that create, or could create, a nuisance.

But sometimes Harwood goes too far, critics say. Gutierrez pointed out that Harwood kept a tire business from setting up shop on Cherry Avenue.

That’s wrong, especially during a recession, Gutierrez said.

“You can’t tell me that we can’t use new business,” she said.

Harwood said he opposed the tire business because it would have been too close to homes.

“It would have destroyed the livability of the adjacent neighborhood,” Harwood said.

Harwood also draws criticism from local advocates of gay and lesbian rights. He opposed the annual Lesbian and Gay Pride Parade and Festival and was a reluctant supporter of a 1987 ordinance that prohibits employers from discriminating against gay and lesbian workers.

“We can always count on him to be a negative factor,” said Dave Newell, a member of the city Human Relations Commission.

Harwood said he is not against homosexuals and that he tries to look out for the best interests of all city residents. He said he objected to the festival because it did not have broad community support.

“I don’t think we should force people to subsidize other people’s activities.”

Harwood credits his late father, a government auditor, for developing in him a sense of indignation at misuses of public funds or assets.

Ironically in 1988, he reimbursed the city nearly $1,000 after The Times reported that the councilman had made personal calls from a city-paid telephone in his home.

Harwood contended that most of the calls were city-related but could not prove they were not personal calls.

“When in doubt, I reimburse,” he said.

It was at about the same time that Harwood’s relations with Kell began to sour.

The two became good friends after Harwood joined the council in 1982. Kell and his wife, Jackie, are the godparents of two of Harwood’s three children--Allison, 5, and Daniel, 4.

Kell and Harwood often were part of a council majority on key issues.

But Harwood said things changed after 1988, when Kell became the city’s first full-time mayor. Harwood maintains that Kell no longer works with him to fashion compromises.

“I was a good team player when everyone was listening to me,” Harwood said.

Harwood said the flash point in the relationship came in 1990, when he criticized as too costly a cable television program on which Kell was host.

The city paid for the show’s $192,000-a-year production costs with cable franchise fees, money that also could have been used for other purposes, such as hiring more police.

“He told me ‘Go . . . yourself,’ ” Harwood said. “He didn’t care about my views.”

Kell said the falling out came earlier, but he declined to elaborate.

“I just found him difficult to work with, too demanding,” Kell said.

Political observers say the two sometimes take public stances to spite one another.

Harwood accused Kell of doing just that when Kell used his veto power for the first time to stop the city from spending $236,000 for construction of new restrooms at Houghton Park in Harwood’s district. The council overrode the veto and the facility is under construction.

Kell contended that it was a reasonable budget cut.

Generally, Kell said, he still considers Harwood to be a friend. But he acknowledged that their families no longer socialize.

“I don’t have any bad feelings toward the councilman,” Kell said. “But we’re not as close as we once were.”

Harwood, who is considering running for mayor in 1994, said he does not act to spite Kell.

“There’s no profit political or otherwise from a feud,” Harwood said. “I differ with the mayor on substantive issues.”

But council members and civic leaders said the two men’s animosity had affected city business.

And many place the blame on Harwood. Even Harwood’s supporters say that his approach sometimes may not be constructive.

Harwood, who has been married three times, acknowledges that he has had his share of conflict.

“I’m self-assured and run a definite course,” Harwood said. “I’m not equivocating, and that sometimes brings me into conflict.”

The City Council recently attended a retreat at Cal Poly Pomona to learn how to get along. Afterward, some council members extracted a pledge from Kell to try to get along with Harwood.

Harwood has made no such pledge. That exasperated Councilman Douglas S. Drummond, who organized the retreat.

“I think the seminar was a great boost to eight members of the council,” Drummond said. “I really believe we’re gong to have to leave Harwood behind.” But Harwood, adamant as ever, said he sees no reason to alter his course.

“As my father used to say, ‘They don’t pay me enough to do a bad job.’ ”

Times staff writer Tina Griego and community correspondent Kirsten Lee Swartz contributed to this story. window in lieu of caption for harwood 1 on J1: