Election ’94 : 42ND ASSEMBLY DISTRICT

Democrat Wallace Knox, 47, is an attorney and has been an elected member of the Board of Trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District since 1987. A resident of Larchmont Village, Knox is married with two children. Republican Robert Davis, 49, is a swimming pool contractor who ran for the same seat two years ago. He is single and lives in West Hollywood.

The dam of political ambition on the West Side burst when state Assemblyman Burt Margolin decided to run for Insurance Commissioner rather than seek reelection. Seven Democrats, four of them elected officials, quickly filled the ring with their hats.

And their money. Altogether the Democrats spent more than $1.5 million on the June intra-party contest, making it one of the most expensive Assembly primaries in California history. Knox, an attorney who is married to Beth Garfield (also a college trustees member), spent nearly $450,000 - more than half of it his own money.

Arrayed against Knox were several youthful, entry-level politicians and statehouse wanna-be’s, including West Hollywood city councilmembers Abbe Land and Paul Koretz and Los Angeles school board member Mark Slavkin.

Knox established himself early as the tough guy on the block by favoring the death penalty, three-strikes-you’re-out for violent felons and indeterminate sentencing. This political metaphor was reinforced by mailers that told voters Knox was a Vietnam veteran (albeit, a Harvard-educated one, who entered the army a Republican but came out a leftist).

Still, Knox was not all iron and steel. The candidate also proudly talked of his authorship of an ambitious program for at-risk youths.

So, what did his half-million dollar campaign buy? Not quite 22% of the vote, but also a first place finish. And that probably is all it will take for Knox to become the next assemblyman in a district that includes Sherman Oaks, Beverly Hills and Bel-Air.

Davis, the Republican, calls himself a libertarian-conservative whose views are not all that much farther to the right than those of Knox. One big difference, however, says Davis, who is running a shoestring budget campaign, is that Knox will be beholden to all the public employee groups that contributed to his campaign and he will not.