COVER STORY : Which Way Long Beach? : Mayor’s Race Is a Study in Contrasts

When Long Beach voters pull the curtain shut and confront their mayoral choices next Tuesday, their decisions could hinge on a matter of style. Unquestionably, the two candidates offer a distinct contrast.

Beverly O’Neill is the genteel academic, a former community college president known for employing a personal touch to win over critics and forge coalitions.

City Councilman Ray Grabinski is the blunt, blue-collar politician praised by supporters for his straight talk and unflagging energy.

Both claim to be exactly what Long Beach needs as it weaves through an urban minefield of racial tension, shrinking revenues and a changing self-image.

At forums across town, each candidate has returned time and again to the issues raised by voters: crime and the city’s troubled economy, which has been hit hard by shrinking defense and aerospace industries.

O’Neill promises to add 150 police officers over three years, saying they are necessary to quell crime and residents’ fears. Grabinski focuses instead on the need for gang prevention programs and after-school recreation.

Grabinski says existing businesses are his first concern; O’Neill talks of wooing out-of-state corporations to town.

*

Although they have positioned themselves differently on the issues, they do agree on one thing: Long Beach government needs a fresh approach.

The 63-year-old O’Neill, who is making her first bid for elected office and garnered the highest number of votes among 13 candidates in the April primary, talks of breaking away from “policies mired in the past.” She paints Grabinski as part of a sleepy government that has failed to address the city’s pressing crime problems.

“My opponent has been a member of the City Council for eight years,” she said during a recent forum. “Crime has increased in the last eight years. And there haven’t been substantial recommendations forwarded to deter this violence. We need a direction, new leadership. We need new answers.”

Grabinski, 50, brushes aside suggestions that eight years on the City Council have made him an insider, and he attempts to portray himself as the true outside candidate.

“I am one of the merchants of change. I think the Old Guard sees me as a threat,” he said. “(O’Neill) is more of an insider than I am.”

*

To bolster his argument, Grabinski points to his political origins. He came to elective office from the California Heights Action Group, which he co-founded 14 years ago to fight a proposed oil refinery about a mile west of Long Beach Municipal Airport. He says his grass-roots work made him independent of the elite insider power structure.

“My independence can look like stubbornness or something else, but I don’t have to call anyone to find out how to vote,” he said.

It’s a delicate dance that Grabinski does, presenting himself as both an outsider and a well-connected man of experience. His contacts on county and state levels--gained mostly through his seven years on the now-defunct Los Angeles County Transportation Commission--are necessary for a mayor, he says.

But raising his ties to the transportation commission also has political risks.

Grabinski points to the Long Beach-to-Los Angeles Blue Line as a gleaming success. Yet during his tenure, the commission also faced turmoil surrounding the Norwalk-to-El Segundo Green Line. The light rail project suffered costly delays and has yet to open because the transportation board waffled when choosing a contractor to build the cars.

Responding to criticisms of the commission, Grabinski contends that problems with the Green Line project were caused by traditional insider politics--the result of officials from Los Angeles, the county and state pressuring the board to choose different contractors.

*

Grabinski’s supporters hail his unflagging energy on the city’s most pressing issues. For example, during last summer’s effort to save the Long Beach Naval Shipyard from closing, Grabinski was a vocal presence at almost every community meeting.

Grabinski also counts himself at front of the effort to solve the city’s violent gang problem and says he was the first city official, in 1986, to call for a citywide response. While on the council, he also pressed for more police and helped organize new Neighborhood Watch groups.

“He sees what needs to be done and goes out and does it,” said Dave Denevan, who co-founded the California Heights group with Grabinski in 1980. “He takes on a lot, but he’s got big shoulders.”

Although O’Neill does not have any connection to elective politics, she has no shortage of connections to civic leaders.

During her 31 years at Long Beach City College--where she went from music instructor to college president--she helped establish a fund-raising foundation that taps prominent citizens for scholarships and grants. Over the past 16 years, the foundation has raised more than $14 million. She also instituted monthly meetings and campus tours for business executives, Navy officials and top city leaders.

“Whether she meant to or not, Beverly O’Neill has laid the groundwork for political office,” said Paul Schmidt, a political science professor at Cal State Long Beach. “She is well-known among people in Long Beach.”

*

It is unclear whether O’Neill’s lack of experience in city government will hurt her. Supporters say she comes to the job well-prepared, with polished administrative skills earned while overseeing a $62-million budget, 30,000 students and 1,300 employees.

“My service to the community has been my entire career,” she said. “There isn’t anything that prepares for mayor as well as the position I have just held.”

It is on this point--her experience--that Grabinski and his supporters level their most frequent attacks against O’Neill. Describing City Hall as a labyrinth of intrigues and competing political interests, they question whether a newcomer could effectively deal with nine council members, a budget of almost $400 million, redevelopment, crime and the harbor.

“It’s not easy to come down here without any background and step into the role of a leader,” said Councilman Thomas J. Clark, who has endorsed Grabinski. “It does take a while to fill in that void.”

Despite their differences, O’Neill and Grabinski come from similarly modest beginnings.

Grabinski was raised on Chicago’s South Side and in Oakland, Compton and North Long Beach. He started working early, with his own pool-cleaning business at age 14.

O’Neill grew up not far from her current campaign headquarters on East Anaheim Street. Injuries to her father during World War I left her mother as the family breadwinner, and O’Neill worked her way through high school as a department store clerk.

But here their histories diverge. Grabinski never finished college, instead becoming an Army sergeant; O’Neill studied music and art in Vienna. She earned a master’s degree in counseling and a doctorate in education. She is married to a retired professor and has one grown daughter.

*

Grabinski, who sometimes still refers to himself as “the pizza man,” owned three Long Beach restaurants (one pizza parlor, two delicatessens) over 17 years. The last deli was closed four years after he was elected to the council in 1986--two years after his wife died of cancer. He has four adult sons.

From community activist to councilman, Grabinski developed a reputation as a man of the people, a street fighter on the issues he cares about. On the council, he is known for having a firm grasp of the issues and for a tendency, which he readily admits, to lengthy speechmaking.

“I think I’m pretty simple,” Grabinski said. “I’m not any kind of intellectual. I’m goal-oriented and a hard worker. I don’t usually take no for an answer.”

O’Neill, on the other hand, is described by many former employees as an administrator with a velvet touch.

O’Neill calls herself a coalition builder and says her strength lies in her ability to bring competing factions together. Several administrators and teachers at Long Beach City College say O’Neill helped usher in an era of unity on campus when she took over as president in 1988--especially after expanding a council that brought together leaders of the school’s employee unions, students and administrators to discuss problems.

Perhaps most important, she was a visible president, often showing up at student plays and concerts--a dramatic change from her predecessors, who were often accused of being aloof. O’Neill was known to attend faculty baby showers and to send flowers to those who had suffered a loss.

“She was revered at this school,” said Bob Kariger, a former vice president of academic affairs. “She was about as close as a president could be to being on a pedestal.”

*

Some political observers say the O’Neill-Grabinski race could come down to an east side versus west side contest.

O’Neill, who lives on the Alamitos Bay peninsula, captured east side districts in the primary, whereas Grabinski, a central Long Beach resident, won over the western and northern parts of the city. If the same holds true on Tuesday, O’Neill might have the advantage because there are more registered voters in the city’s wealthier east side districts.

The two were the top vote-getters in the April primary. O’Neill captured 23% of the vote while Grabinski garnered 21%. The winner will replace Ernie Kell, who has been the only mayor since Long Beach voters made the job a full-time elected position in 1988. Kell finished fifth in April. He has not endorsed a candidate.

Former candidate Frank Colonna, a Belmont Shore businessman who placed a close third in the primary, has backed O’Neill. For his part, Grabinski has the support of the police officers union.

Some political insiders predict that O’Neill may have an edge because voters are weary of incumbents. But most observers say the race is still too close to call, and that it could remain that way into election night.