ELECTIONS CITY COUNCIL : Ferraro Happy to Let Record Speak for Itself : 4th District: But his opponent says councilman has become entrenched.

John Ferraro was elected to the City Council 28 years ago by beating a challenger who got just 28% of the vote.

That’s the closest anyone has come thus far to defeating the affable 4th District councilman, who became council president in 1987 and ran unopposed in 1991 to retain his seat.

Ferraro, 71, has made the council his career by focusing on constituent services and steering clear of ideology. It’s an approach that might be essential in a district that includes seemingly disparate parts of North Hollywood, Universal City, Hancock Park, Los Feliz, Silver Lake, Griffith Park and the Fairfax district.

“He’s not a global politician. He’s community-based and that’s been our campaign focus,” said Ferraro campaign manager Rick Taylor.

Ferraro’s opponent in the April 11 primary, Linda W. Lockwood, is also focusing on community-based issues. She says that serving unchallenged for nearly three decades has made Ferraro entrenched and unresponsive. “There’s an attitude that, we don’t count, that we’re in the way,” she said of Ferraro and the council, based on what residents have told her about their experiences with the councilman and his colleagues.

A nine-year resident of Hancock Park, Lockwood, 52, runs a construction company with her husband, Simon.

Lockwood does not fear confrontations. She was a leader in the fight against a Hollywood needle exchange program meant to prevent HIV infection among drug users, which she said drew drug addicts into the area after it began in September.

Lockwood personally has turned in seven people for taking bottles and cans out of household recycling bins in her neighborhood to sell at recycling centers. The centers, she says, also draw undesirables by giving those in the needle exchange program a way to earn money for drugs.

Lockwood and her husband also run seminars for neighborhood groups, teaching residents how to become self-sufficient following earthquakes and riots. They have been commended by the National Guard and City Council for providing food, water and other necessities after the 1992 riots and the 1994 Northridge quake.

Her campaign is financed primarily through $20,000 of her own money.

Ferraro has spent $150,000 on the race. His campaign mailings avoid any issues that might be controversial. They mainly tout his ability to get city services to neighborhoods and to secure earthquake aid and more police officers.

Lockwood’s challenge will be persuading the largely affluent voters in the district that that hasn’t been enough, a challenge that district observers say won’t be easy.

“There isn’t a major issue that Ferraro seems to be on the wrong side of, or a major problem he can be blamed for,” said J. Eugene Grigsby III, a UCLA urban planning professor who lives in the district.

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Council District 4: The district includes all or parts of North Hollywood, Universal City, Hancock Park, Los Feliz, Silver Lake, Griffith Park and the Fairfax District.