LOCAL ELECTIONS / L.A. MAYOR : County Labor Federation Splits Support Between Woo and Katz

Following an intense behind-the-scenes struggle in the Los Angeles mayor’s race, City Councilman Michael Woo grabbed part of a key labor endorsement Tuesday from a prominent rival who was expected to have it all to himself.

The political arm of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor voted to leave its member unions free to endorse either Woo or Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Panorama City) out of a field of 52 mayoral candidates.

The federation of 40 unions represents about 100,000 Los Angeles residents. It was a pillar of support for outgoing Mayor Tom Bradley, and its endorsement remains a campaign prize that Katz had been expected to capture.

The action taken by COPE, the federation’s Committee on Political Education, is subject to ratification by federation delegates Monday.

Before the vote, Katz campaign manager Peter Taylor explained the significance of the COPE action.

“It translates into bodies and money,” Taylor said. “Both will be important on April 20 (Election Day).”

For Woo, the labor endorsement is another sign of his emerging front-runner status, heralded by recent polls and a fund-raising lead.

Woo’s labor support, particularly strong among unions with high minority and immigrant memberships, helps underscore a central message put forth by his campaign--that he is the candidate most in touch with the new Los Angeles.

Woo also has strong backing among unions representing city workers, which suggests that the organizations trust him not to eliminate jobs as he goes about making good on two of his campaign proposals--to streamline the city’s bureaucracy and to cut City Hall costs.

For Katz, who has been mentioned among the top contenders along with Woo, the outcome of the vote is another indication that his campaign has started slow. Katz has raised significantly less money than Woo and lags well behind him in early polls.

Though Katz received a majority of votes, 57%, by COPE’s board members, he fell short of the two-thirds necessary to gain an exclusive endorsement. In part, it was the perception of Woo as a potential winner that brought about the joint endorsement, the councilman’s supporters contend.

“Electability matters in here,” said David Bullock, a Woo supporter and an official of the Service Employees International Union, which represents sanitation workers and other City Hall employees. “We’ve had a mayor in this city we could get along with for 20 years, and we want it to continue.”

Before the vote was taken, Bullock said, many members expressed the belief that Woo will do “very, very well with a cross-section of ethnic voters.”

In an effort to counter any bitterness after the contentious meeting, Bill Robertson, secretary treasurer of the federation, insisted that the outcome did not represent a defeat for Katz.

“They are both great candidates,” he said. “That was the dilemma for us.”

Katz was quick to note that he scored a technical victory, receiving two-thirds of the votes cast at the COPE meeting, although not two-thirds of the votes of everyone present. Several people there abstained, and that cost him the victory.

“I got two-thirds of the votes cast in there, and I think that is a significant endorsement,” he said.

Members of Katz’s campaign team maintained that they came up short because Woo had the support of self-interested public employee unions whose City Hall contracts are approved by the City Council.

“Mike Woo votes on the public employees’ contracts,” Katz said. “That’s leverage. He has their contracts in his pocket.”

Tom Sisson, the city’s chief union negotiator, said that all but a handful of more than three dozen city-union contracts are up for votes by the council this year.

Katz said he lost the support of another influential union, the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Local 11, when he spoke Tuesday against a controversial videotape that the union sent to thousands of groups planning conventions in the city. Los Angeles is portrayed in the tape as a dangerous city to be avoided. The union produced the tape in a bid to pressure city officials to back their efforts to secure better working conditions at several hotels.

“I told (union leader) Maria Elena Durazo she was wrong to send the videotapes around the country telling people not to come to L.A. at a time when the city was trying to recover from a recession,” Katz said.

However, Miguel Contreras, political director for Local 11, said Monday that the union had decided to back Woo before Katz confronted Durazo.

“He marched with us on the picket line,” Contreras said of Woo. “He hasn’t been afraid to tell Asian investors, ‘If you are going to do business in L.A., you have to make workers partners with you.’ ”