Inglewood Political Turf More Like a Battleground : Government: As scandalous accusations fly among top officials, even longtime residents are amazed.

Even by the rambunctious standards of Inglewood politics, this spring has been a tumultuous time for the city’s governing elite.

A city councilman held a news conference to accuse the mayor of plotting to have thugs clobber him with baseball bats.

The mayor replied that the councilman needs psychiatric help.

Two veteran police officers charged that a city councilwoman incited gang members against them as they arrested a suspected parole violator.

The councilwoman said she did no such thing and joined the minister of her church in organizing a blitz of protest marches on City Hall.

The minister called the mayor a dictator and publicly congratulated himself and his flock when the city’s top official was hospitalized with chest pains.

The mayor conceded he was pretty stressed out by his job.

Just how bad are things at Inglewood City Hall? A headline in a local newspaper summed up the situation this way: “The Operative Term in Inglewood Politics: ‘Watch Your Back.’ ”

In this gritty, blue-collar city of 114,000--where blacks make up more than half the population, and Latinos another 40%--municipal politics has long been considered good theater.

Political uproar is as familiar here as the droves of fans who troop to the city’s crown jewels--the Hollywood Park horse-race track and the Forum, home of the basketball Lakers and hockey Kings. But the latest City Hall tempest has left even longtime residents agog.

“The council and the mayor, it seems like they bicker and argue too much,” said D.E. Boone, 61, a golf instructor and former truck driver. “It looks like they are talking down to one another when they should be acting as one.

“They speak out against things,” he said. “But it is more of a selfish attitude. They should do it behind closed doors, where no one can see it except them.”

“In politics, you expect . . . a little bit of friction,” said Bahri Aliriza, an account executive. “But if you have too much friction, it blows out of proportion.”

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At the center of the turmoil are three prominent Inglewood politicians: Mayor Ed Vincent, a 13-year fixture who is the city’s first black chief executive; Councilman Garland Hardeman, a dapper former Los Angeles police officer; and Councilwoman Judy Dunlap, an ex-schoolteacher and Inglewood’s only white council member.

The three are considered rivals, although Vincent--a glad-handing retired probation officer and college football star known as Inglewood’s head cheerleader--long has dominated city politics. In a mayoral race last November, the 60-year-old incumbent trounced Dunlap and Hardeman, collecting 59% of the vote as he swept to an unprecedented fourth term.

The gregarious mayor, who has long championed Hollywood Park and other businesses, often is contrasted with Hardeman, 38, a self-styled populist who represents some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

Admirers say Hardeman, a Los Angeles Police Department patrolman for 13 years, represents a new breed of sophisticated young politician. Trim and handsome, he favors well-pressed Oxford shirts with monogrammed cuffs; at a Hollywood Hills fund-raiser last fall, he sported black leather pants as he danced with guests to rap and rhythm and blues tunes.

Dunlap, 49, styles herself a taxpayer watchdog and City Hall outsider. She is known for pressing for such detailed information on city operations that exasperated bureaucrats throw up their hands, saying her requests often are inane and eat up too much staff time.

Of the three, the fiercest antagonists are Vincent and Hardeman. Besides their November clash, the mayor is backing Hardeman’s opponent in a June 6 runoff for the councilman’s seat.

Last Monday, Hardeman counterattacked, unsheathing a stunning allegation at a City Hall news conference: that the mayor had offered to pay gang members to “crack my head open” during last fall’s campaign.

Hardeman said he was approached at an April 25 council meeting by a menacing-looking, 250-pound man with a flattop and dark sunglasses. The councilman said the man told him, “The mayor offered me some money to take your head off. I have the bat and ski mask. Do you want to see it?”

The man later was identified as Inglewood resident Lou Hollingsworth, 49. Inglewood officials in March had rejected his request for city support of an effort to raise money for AIDS.

In an interview, Hollingsworth said he has no AIDS fund-raising experience and was jailed for four months in 1988 after he was convicted of grand theft for fixing up and renting unoccupied homes he did not own.

Hollingsworth said he worked as a campaign volunteer for the mayor last fall and that Vincent promised to help secure city support for his AIDS fund-raiser.

After the mayor had a run-in with Hardeman at a campaign event, Hollingsworth said, Vincent’s campaign manager, Rodger Smith, asked Hollingsworth if he knew anyone who could be hired to beat up Hardeman. Hollingsworth said he did: two “hard-core gangbangers” he knew from a local basketball league.

Smith offered to pay the gang members $1,000 each, said Hollingsworth, who bought two bats at a Big 5 store.

Hollingsworth said Smith also asked him to play dirty tricks on four ministers who opposed Vincent. One scheme, Hollingsworth said, was to hire a prostitute to burst into one clergyman’s church during Sunday services and start shouting that he had sexually molested her.

But Hollingsworth said he never intended to attack Hardeman. He said he only wanted to string the mayor along so he would help Hollingsworth. When Vincent failed to do so, Hollingsworth said, he decided to go public with the alleged assault and dirty tricks plots, which never were carried out.

“We went out and bought bats just to make them think we were going ahead with this charade,” Hollingsworth said. “But we were never going to ambush Mr. Hardeman.”

Vincent and Smith called the allegations ludicrous. The mayor characterized Hardeman as “a wacko.”

Smith, 65, a longtime friend of Vincent, said Hollingsworth was a volunteer for the mayor’s campaign, once holding a coffee klatsch at his home. But the only thing he was asked to do for the campaign was “move some desks and furniture around,” Smith said.

Hardeman stuck with his claims, however. He said he has asked prosecutors to investigate. Asked what he thought of the credibility of Hollingsworth, who has a criminal record and may have an ax to grind against Vincent, Hardeman said:

“He’s willing to go to jail for what he believes is the truth. For a man with that kind of conviction about the truth, I think he’s very believable.”

In addition to being sniped at by Hardeman, the mayor is squarely in Dunlap’s cross hairs.

Her wrath arises from an April 5 incident in which she was touring her district with a newspaper reporter and spotted two Inglewood police officers with a handcuffed man on a street corner.

Dunlap said she told the officers the man was “a constituent and a member of my church.” Then she asked what was going on.

The officers said they had arrested him on a no-bail warrant. When Dunlap asked, “What is a no-bail warrant?” the officers said the warrant information was confidential, she said.

The officers later wrote in an arrest report that members of the man’s gang began arriving, and “Dunlap and the journalist began to incite them by continually complaining.” The reporter could not be reached for comment.

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The incident prompted Police Chief Oliver Thompson to charge in a report to city officials that Dunlap had acted in an “agitated, aggressive and demanding” manner. Her actions, he said, jeopardized his officers’ safety. The situation was spiraling out of control, the chief said, until seven backup officers arrived.

Dunlap said she did nothing improper and is tired of being criticized by the city’s political establishment for seeking answers about public business.

Also angered was her minister, the Rev. M. M. Merriweather, a sharp-tongued Baptist known for his vocal criticism of the tactics of law enforcement agencies in Los Angeles’ black community.

Dunlap, said Merriweather, “has been working for two years to bring some accountability to City Hall and has been treated like dirt by Ed Vincent and his flunkies on the council. And now the police are harassing her.”

On three consecutive Tuesdays in April and May, Merriweather led placard-waving members of his flock into City Council meetings, demanding that Vincent be dumped from office. After one noisy confrontation, Vincent left the council chambers and entered a local hospital with chest pains.

Merriweather later was quoted by a local black-oriented newspaper as boasting: “We showed up en masse and showed such support for Judy that the mayor had to put himself in the hospital. . . . “

Vincent, who was diagnosed during his hospital stay as suffering from stress, was philosophical about all the potshots taken at him.

“Whenever you’re on top, you’re always the target,” he said. But he conceded that his job has taken its toll lately. “There’s been a lot of stress. A lot of stress.”

Times staff writer Ted Johnson contributed to this story.