Rain and Storm Clouds Over the Woo Campaign

At dawn Saturday, the rain was coming down hard, each drop more bad news for Michael Woo.

Woo’s campaign workers had been planning to dispatch teams through South-Central and southwestern Los Angeles, getting out the vote in African-American households, a main source of their candidate’s support. The precinct walk was to be a decisive moment in City Councilman Woo’s battle against attorney-businessman Richard Riordan in Tuesday’s election for mayor of Los Angeles.

Before the walk was canceled, an aide told me: “I think there’s a chance for Mike, but he is probably a step behind. . . . Get out the vote is critically important.”

By 8 a.m., with the rain continuing, the precinct walk was postponed until Sunday afternoon. “The gods are not smiling on us,” a South-Central supporter said.

*

In the unlikely event the gods are watching over a political campaign, they’ve shown no mercy to Mike Woo.

Before the rain, there was the death of Riordan’s mother. Riordan flew to New York for her funeral, leaving Woo without a live target in Los Angeles just as he was in the middle of a negative campaigning attack on his foe.

Woo has assaulted Riordan’s character in personal appearances and on television commercials by citing two drunk-driving arrests, one in the 1960s and the other in the 1970s. Obviously, the Woo game plan called for the final days of the campaign to have been dominated by pictures of a harried Riordan, answering questions about the old arrests. Instead, we saw a picture of Riordan following his mother’s coffin out of the church, accompanied by his daughters, one of them holding a baby.

Riordan’s advisers told me that even before his mother’s death they believed the character attack had failed.

When the drunk-driving story broke, Riordan’s polling experts found he was slightly ahead. Subsequently, one adviser said: “I was afraid we were going to collapse.” But polling a few days later showed Riordan still ahead. “Whatever erosion that had occurred had been stabilized,” the adviser said. Since there is a margin of error of a few percentage points in all polls, the Riordan surveys don’t seem inconsistent with a Times poll taken over the Memorial Day weekend showing the candidates even among those most likely to vote.

With Woo possibly slightly behind after his negative advertising assault on Riordan, you can see the importance of Saturday’s aborted get-out-the-vote operation.

As the liberal candidate, Woo has been counting on strong support from the liberal Democratic neighborhoods south of the Santa Monica Freeway. The fact that he was the first council member to call for Police Chief Daryl F. Gates’ resignation after the Rodney G. King beating boosted his stock among African-Americans, who are the majority of voters in the area.

In past elections, they had turned out in large numbers for black candidates Tom Bradley and Jesse Jackson in mayoral and presidential elections. But in the April primary, the turnout was about 22% to 25% in black areas, below the citywide total.

“We have to get it up to 33%,” said Ken Collins, who is directing the effort. “Then we have done our job and gotten Mike elected.”

I saw the potential last Wednesday evening when I walked a South-Central precinct south of West Adams Avenue with the Rev. James Lawson, pastor of Holman United Methodist Church, and one of the late Martin Luther King Jr.’s closest associates in the civil rights movement.

Lawson is working with Coalition ‘93, a community group that is trying to build up the vote in South-Central L.A. As I watched Lawson walk up to houses and apartments, I thought of the history he represented, and of all the front doors he’s knocked on, beginning in the dangerous days of the Ku Klux Klan’s interference with voter registration in the South.

His quiet manner and smile have a warmth that pierces the steel-mesh front doors protecting most of the homes in a neighborhood where crime brings dangers of its own. He carried a list of registered voters.

“Hi, I’m Jim Lawson, I’m pastor of a church up on West Adams,” he said. Several knew who he was. All but a couple said they were voting for Woo. Those two wouldn’t say, but from the way they smiled at Lawson’s question, he figured they were Woo backers.

The greater number of these residents who vote, the better are Woo’s chances.

*

But I thought the very fact that a rainstorm could postpone the get-out-the vote drive was ominous. If it had been for Jackson, or the early Bradley, I bet no amount of rain could have kept precinct workers away.

If it’s dry this afternoon, the Woo team gets another chance. And then on Election Day, more precinct workers will hit the streets, knocking on doors, urging registered voters to the polls, trying to boost the vote up to the magic 33%. Rain or shine, other campaign workers at four phone banks are calling registered Democrats.

They will not have the streets to themselves. Their opposition hopes to field about 2,000 volunteers to visit potential Riordan voters, who tend to live in white, more conservative neighborhoods.

So Mike Woo will have trouble winning the battle of the streets, even if the sun shines on Election Day.