L.A. Voters Have Chance to Make Sweeping Changes : Election: Mayoral, council races and ballot issues give electorate unusual opportunity to set course for the city.

In a year in which change has been the byword of American politics, voters in Los Angeles today have an unusual opportunity to make sweeping changes in the way their city is governed. With the pending retirement of Mayor Tom Bradley after 20 years in office, voters will begin charting a new course at City Hall. Not since 1929 has there been an election for mayor without an incumbent on the ballot.

The record-breaking field of 24 candidates offers voters a wide range of choices across the political spectrum. Moreover, the mayoral field includes candidates from each of the city’s four largest ethnic groups: African-American, Anglo, Asian-American and Latino.

The voters also have the opportunity to alter the course of government in a way that would prevent a new mayor or any other elected official from serving anywhere near as long as Bradley. Two competing ballot measures would limit elected city officials to two four-year terms. The term-limit initiatives are part of a nationwide backlash against career politicians, but they also express a high level of dissatisfaction with the quality of local leadership during the past few years.

In addition, eight City Council seats are at stake--two in districts without an incumbent. And, for the second time in the past six months, there will be a proposal on the ballot to pay for 1,000 more police officers by raising property taxes.

The council races will change the face of politics in Los Angeles, perhaps dramatically. With two City Council members stepping down and three others fighting well-funded competitors, the stage is set for the largest council turnover in recent history.

And the ballot measures could make significant institutional changes. In addition to the term limits and police tax measures, voters will decide whether to increase civilian oversight of the Department of Animal Regulation and increase police staffing through the rehiring of retired officers.

Voters also will be casting ballots in races for three Los Angeles school board seats and three posts on the Los Angeles Community College District board.

Taking place almost one year after Los Angeles experienced the worst urban rioting of the century, the election follows a period of profound civic pessimism, a mood brightened only recently by the calm that followed the verdicts Saturday in the Rodney G. King civil rights trial.

If this election has one thing to prove, it is that City Hall is not powerless in the face of social and economic forces that at times have seemed to propel Los Angeles to the brink of ungovernability. Aware of the challenges, the candidates for mayor have been waging campaigns that often veered far afield from matters over which a mayor has direct authority. As the candidates offered their views on such issues as immigration, education and abortion rights, they have struggled to demonstrate leadership skills equal to the task of running a city that often seems out of control.

Mayoral Issues

When the race started there were more than 50 candidates for mayor. Of those who are left, fewer than a dozen have the name recognition or campaign financing to be regarded as serious contenders.

Almost from the start, four issues--crime, the economy, race relations and education--have dominated the race. At the same time, many of the candidates have agreed with one another on solutions for city’s major problems.

They have called for more police but disagreed on how to pay for them. They have said that small- and medium-sized businesses will lead the city out of recession and they have recommended a variety of incentives to help the process along. Several have argued that a bureaucratic hostility to business has helped undermine the city’s economy and they promised to streamline the City Hall bureaucracy in ways that would make it more helpful to business.

Most of the candidates have said that City Hall must take bolder steps to resolve ethnic tensions and have proposed a variety of steps, including offering preferences in contracts to minority-owned businesses, depositing city funds only in banks that make loans to minority communities and chartering community development banks that provide capital for new businesses in inner-city neighborhoods.

Ironically, the issue of education, over which the mayor has very little control, has proved to be one of the most contentious, with some candidates favoring a breakup of the Los Angeles Unified School District and others arguing that the dismantling would “ghettoize” minority children.

City Councilman Michael Woo, 41, was the first candidate to enter the race. The heir apparent to the Bradley coalition of black and white liberal voters, Woo has campaigned heavily in South-Central Los Angeles, where he has promised a host of economic incentives and a prominent role in reshaping city policy to prominent black leaders. Woo has cast himself as the candidate best able to unite the city’s ethnic factions. Woo’s appeal to the African-American community is rooted in his reputation as the first member of the council to call for the resignation of former Police Chief Daryl F. Gates after the King beating.

Woo is a champion of Proposition 1, the ballot measure that would raise property taxes to hire more police officers.

Campaigning at the other end of the political spectrum is lawyer-businessman Richard Riordan, 62, who has invested $3 million of his own considerable fortune. Running on the slogan “Tough enough to turn L.A. around,” Riordan has focused on making the city safer and City Hall more hospitable to business. To offset the city’s budget deficit and pay for more police, he would lease Los Angeles International Airport and allow private contractors to bid for the city’s trash collection contracts.

Besides Woo, three other members of the City Council are running.

Joel Wachs, with 22 years representing portions of the San Fernando Valley on the council, offers a mosaic of a platform designed to appeal to Valley residents who agree with Wachs’ call for breaking up the school district, to community activists who applaud his proposal for establishing more than 100 neighborhood councils, to elderly residents who have benefited from his advocacy of rent control measures and gays who respond to his push for laws banning discrimination against people with AIDS.

Councilman Nate Holden, 63, and one of two African-Americans among the leading candidates, contends that a quarter-century of experience in government and politics make him the most qualified candidate. A former state senator who ran a surprisingly strong race against Bradley for mayor in 1989, Holden has spent six years on the council as an advocate of law and order who sought to establish foot patrols around the city and get assault rifles off the street through a high-profile campaign in which he offered to buy up the weapons himself.

Ernani Bernardi, the 81-year-old dean of the council, is a single-issue candidate campaigning ferociously against his old nemesis--the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency. Bernardi says the agency, which oversaw the rebuilding of downtown Los Angeles during the 1970s, is responsible for much of the city’s financial woes by siphoning off property tax money and using it to subsidize private developers.

State Assemblyman Richard Katz, 42, is the only other elected official in the race. A moderate Democrat who has represented the north San Fernando Valley in the Legislature for 12 years, Katz has found himself squeezed on the right by Riordan and on the left by Woo. Katz has run on a mixed message, accusing the “City Hall crowd” of failing to deal effectively with crime and recession, and, in the next breath, touting his accomplishments as a member of a legislative body which, according to opinion polls, the public holds in equally low esteem.

The top candidates also include Linda Griego, one of two prominent Latinos in the race. Griego, 45, is a former deputy mayor for economic development under Bradley. She has made her mark in the campaign largely as a result of a series of TV commercials which highlight her status as the only woman among the leading contenders.

Lawyer Stan Sanders, 50, is the only other African-American candidate among the leaders. He and Holden are challenging Woo for support among the city’s African-American voters.

A native of Watts who went on to a Rhodes scholarship, Sanders has had a career on the edge of public life, serving on commissions and philanthropic boards, but never before running for public office. Despite high profile financial help from entertainer Bill Cosby, Sanders has not been able to push his way into the forefront of the race. His platform mixes a strong law and order message with a call for economic assistance for poor neighborhoods.

Three other candidates, lawyer and former Deputy Mayor Tom Houston, 47; college professor and former Ambassador to Mexico Julian Nava, 65, and businessman and Transportation Commissioner Nick Patsaouras, 49, have struggled of late for visibility in the race after drawing attention to themselves in the early going.

A running debate over the rights of illegal immigrants between Nava and Houston gave an early edge to the campaign, and Patsaouras’ detailed plan to use state and federal transit funds to rebuild Los Angeles won him praise from architects and intellectuals. But immigration never caught on as major issue and Patsaouras has not been able to imbue his plan with populist appeal.

For a while, all of the candidates struggled to make themselves known during a series of bland candidates’ forums in which the sheer size of the field made it impossible for most to distinguish themselves. But when the campaign took to the airwaves and the mail during the final few weeks, it gained a nasty edge as well-funded candidates went at each other.

By the end of last week, the candidates with the most money to spend, Woo and Riordan, were well ahead in the polls. They devoted much of their efforts to attacking one another in an expensive and ugly media war.

Council Races

If the polls are right, and Woo and Riordan are destined to meet each other in the runoff, the only election night suspense may be provided by the eight City Council contests and five ballot measures.

Change is assured in two City Council districts: the San Fernando Valley’s 7th, where Bernardi is retiring after eight terms and making a run for mayor, and the Hollywood-area 13th, where Woo also is running for mayor.

Both districts could expand minority representation on the council.

In the 7th District, which is 70% Latino, three Latinos are among seven contenders. But the election of the council’s third Latino is far from assured--in part because the ethnic group ranks only second in number of registered voters, behind Anglos.

In the 13th District, former school board member Jackie Goldberg, entertainment executive Conrado Terrazas and AIDS health care administrator Michael Weinstein all battled doggedly for endorsements in the gay and lesbian community, in which they long have been active. While all three criticized city government, longtime City Council aide Tom La Bonge has boasted of his City Hall insider status, saying it will help him get streets paved, graffiti removed and street lights fixed.

After a 16-year run in which only two council members have gone down to defeat, several incumbents have been unpleasantly surprised to encounter powerful challengers this year.

In the 3rd District, Councilwoman Joy Picus has said she feels betrayed by the candidacy of her former chief field deputy, Laura Chick. Along with four others, she is expected to keep Picus below 50% of the vote and force a runoff.

In the 9th District, Rita Walters must again try to repel Bob Gay, a former council aide who she defeated by just 76 votes in 1991. And a newcomer, businessman Don Lumpkin, has been able to spread his name widely by dumping much of his own money in the campaign.

And in the 15th District, Joan Milke Flores has had to fight not only big-name and well-financed challengers, but charges that she is more interested in higher office than serving a district that reaches from Watts to San Pedro. She ran in 1990 for secretary of state and last November for the U.S. Congress. Advertising consultant Janice Hahn and school board member Warren Furutani bring big name identification to the campaign.

Three other council members have engaged in more traditional reelection campaigns. Zev Yaroslavsky and Marvin Braude, representing Westside/Valley districts, were attacked as longtime insiders who allowed the city to deteriorate. But their opponents did not have high enough profiles or sufficient funds to pump up that message. Councilman Mike Hernandez, faces two little-known and poorly-funded challengers in his district near downtown.

The status quo is also expected to prevail in two other races--where city Controller Rick Tuttle and City Atty. James Kenneth Hahn have badly overmatched their opponents with fund raising and endorsements.

In the Los Angeles school board races, two incumbents are up for reelection in the San Fernando Valley and the Westside, and the board’s second Latino member will probably be elected to a new seat representing the Eastside and several southeast-area cities.

In the Valley, incumbent Julie Korenstein, who has the backing of the teachers union, is facing strong opposition from Eli Brent, head of the administrators union. Board member Mark Slavkin is being challenged by business agent Judy Solkovits and teacher Douglas Lasken.

In the new 2nd District, which runs from South Gate to Pico-Union, the highest-profile candidates are Belvedere Junior High School Principal Victoria Castro and former Los Angeles school board member Larry Gonzalez, both of whom have promised to make campus safety and parent empowerment top priorities. Community activist Willene Cooper is also seeking the office.

In the Los Angeles Community College District, three incumbents--Lindsay Conner, Althea Baker and Patrick Owens--are fielding challenges.

L.A. Primary Election Today

The city of Los Angeles today holds a primary election for mayor, City Council, controller and city attorney. Also on the ballot are three school board seats, three positions on the community college board and five ballot measures. Polls are open from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. Voters with questions about the location of their polling place or other matters may call the office of the Los Angeles city clerk, election division, at (213) 485-3581.