2 Challenge 2 Incumbents in Low-Budget Downey Council Campaign

Two incumbents and two challengers are vying for seats Tuesday on the Downey City Council in a low-volume, low-budget campaign.

The challengers have scraped together about $1,000 each, and the incumbents are spending fractions of what they poured into previous campaigns.

In District 4, Robert S. Brazelton, a 64-year-old local business attorney, is seeking a second term against challenger Robert Feliciano, 53, a law enforcement consultant who ran unsuccessfully for Los Angeles County Sheriff in 1982.

In District 2, incumbent Barbara J. Riley, 62, a substitute schoolteacher, faces Patrick McDermott, 68, a retired elementary school custodian who lost a 1991 bid for a seat on the Downey school board.

“This time it’s a lot more do-it-yourself type stuff,” said Brazelton, who collected $6,700 through May 21. Brazelton was considered a big spender four years ago when he raised $17,500. He and Riley used political consultants in previous elections but are managing their own campaigns in this race.

Riley has raised $2,500. She had collected $3,800 in 1992, when she was elected to complete the term of a council member who resigned. Feliciano collected $900 through May 21, though he said he expected to spend about $3,000 by Election Day. McDermott said Tuesday he had not formed a campaign committee and that he would spend less than $1,000 on the election.

The low budgets have contributed to what Brazelton called a “lower-key” race, but the restrained tone of the election also reflects the personalities of the candidates.

Both incumbents said they don’t like to campaign. Challenger McDermott also has run a quiet campaign, partly because of unanticipated obligations--he missed a debate while attending a funeral in New Jersey--and partly by design. He refuses, for example, to take the podium at council meetings, where candidates routinely grandstand in front of cable-television cameras.

Feliciano declined even to pay $400 to have a campaign statement placed on the ballot. Still, Feliciano has emerged as perhaps the most energetic and outspoken candidate, and has been the source of the few sparks in the campaign.

In several debates, Feliciano has argued that the city has hired only five new police officers, 11 short of the number city officials promised when a 3% tax on telephone, gas and electric bills was implemented in October 1990. Further, Feliciano has said he would seek to reorganize the force, and increase the number of officers patrolling the streets by eliminating all three captain positions in the department.

Brazelton has insisted the city did hire 16 new officers and chastised Feliciano for suggesting the council should meddle with the city’s police force. “I don’t want anybody trying to micro-manage the department,” Brazelton said in an interview. “We have a very good police chief.”

City Manager Gerald M. Caton said the city has added 19 new officers and now employs 121. Caton said Feliciano was comparing the current size of the force with the number of positions budgeted--116--in 1990. The city was unable to fill 14 of those positions because of budget cuts, Caton said.

All four candidates agree the city needs to attract new businesses, and the challengers have criticized the incumbents for allowing a movie-theater development to be defeated in a citywide vote in May, 1993. Feliciano and McDermott have suggested that their opponents could have made better use of their positions as city leaders to sell the theater project to voters. “If (the council) had done a proper selling job, we would have a theater now,” McDermott said in a recent debate.

“I don’t know how we could have marketed it differently,” said Riley, adding that the city is still searching for ways to bring a theater to the city.