Wife of Trustee Seeks Seat on Same Community College Board

Move over Bill and Hillary: There is another couple out there that hopes to expand a marital partnership into a political one.

Attorney Elizabeth Garfield has filed papers to run for a seat on the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees, where she hopes to join her husband, Trustee Wallace Knox. In filing for Office No. 2, one of three at-large seats to be decided in this spring’s elections, Garfield joined a large field of potential challengers to Trustee Patrick Owens. Owens, who won election four years ago against a union-backed candidate, has often been at odds with the majority on the college district’s seven-member board.

Garfield, a labor relations specialist who teaches at the nine-campus district’s Trade-Technical College and at UCLA, is a founding partner in the law firm later joined by her husband. She expects her marriage to Knox, reelected to a four-year term in 1991 and now president of the board, to be “a non-issue.”

Joe Giles, head of the city’s elections division, said he cannot recall another instance of someone seeking election to a local board while a spouse was a member.