Political Flaws and the 13th District

The City Council election for the seat representing Hollywood is a good illustration of some of Los Angeles city government’s worst political flaws.

Start with the district’s boundaries, which make no sense.

Hollywood is the 13th’s best-known community. But the district’s dragon-shaped border extends beyond Hollywood, eastward through Silver Lake, Echo Park and Mt. Washington, and takes a weird northern jog to the middle-class, single-family-home community of Atwater Village.

Atwater Village, a peaceful leftover from ‘50s L.A., has nothing in common with the dangerous Hollywood streets around Sunset Boulevard and Western Avenue, where illegal immigrants try to survive in neighborhoods controlled by drug dealers.

Last year, after incumbent Michael Woo decided to run for mayor, City Council members cut the district up without regard to community interests. Neighboring council members grabbed choice hunks of Woo’s 13th, leaving his successor with the illogical remnant.

Not even a world-class statesman could adequately represent the needs of what remained.

In addition to the boundaries, there’s a poisonous political climate.

Hollywood’s political feuds are bloodier than a power struggle at a major studio. That was clear last week at a candidates’ forum sponsored by the United Streets of Hollywood, an organization that promotes Neighborhood Watch groups and other safe streets measures.

The candidates were seated at a long table in front of the audience in a top floor banquet room at the Hollywood Holiday Inn.

Jackie Goldberg is a former president of the Los Angeles school board. Tom LaBonge is the longtime chief field deputy to Council President John Ferraro, who represents an adjoining district. Conrado Terrazas is an entertainment industry executive. Tom Riley is a former Teamsters union organizer who recently worked in Sen. Barbara Boxer’s campaign. Michael Weinstein is executive director of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, which operates three hospices and a large clinic.

Making the mix more interesting is the fact that Terrazas, Weinstein and Goldberg are homosexuals. The prospect that a gay man or a lesbian may represent the Hollywood district seems certain to bring national attention to this race.

Right from the start, contentiousness slowed what had shaped up to be a promising debate. To the right of the candidates was a panel of three Hollywood-ites who asked questions.

This was the first debate I’ve seen in which the panelists publicly argued over what questions to ask. They held whispered, and increasingly heated, conferences before each question. When the panelists couldn’t agree, each asked a question.

Even so, the responses were somewhat revealing. They showed the candidates’ view that they alone can solve the district’s problems, which they portrayed as unconnected to those of the rest of the city. Thus they have already adopted the peculiar City Hall attitude that council members are king or queen of each district, sort of a little mayor of a little city. Interestingly, they seldom mentioned the city’s most important election--for mayor.

Finally, only a small percentage of the district’s residents will go to the polls. Of the 13th’s 250,000 residents, only 53,000 are registered to vote. That’s because of the large number of immigrants--legal and illegal--who are not citizens. These people are, for the most part, poor.

This is a condition that afflicts much of the city. The poor, especially the immigrants, are not part of the political system. The decisions are made by the minority of L.A. residents who happen to vote.

As the 13th District election shows, skillful campaign managers, rather than speaking to these voters as citizens of Los Angeles, appeal to them as members of special interest groups.

For example, in the 13th, the gay vote is crucial. So campaign managers seeking gay votes have used computer programs to find gay male and lesbian households.

The computers look for same-sex households where the residents are within 10 years of each other. They’ve found almost 30,000 people who they assume are gay. The assumption is often incorrect, but politics is no science. So the computer digs deeper. It culls from the 30,000 those who are “probable voters,” people who have gone to the polls in recent elections. The total comes to about 8,500 men and 8,000 women.

These will be targeted by the candidates looking for gay support.

This kind of campaigning is ingenious, but it narrows the debate to a series of special interest issues. Add to that gerrymandered districts, such as the l3th, and candidates who won’t look beyond the boundaries of their constituency and you get a council incapable of addressing citywide problems.