Hearing Bitter Echoes of a Vicious Race for Prosecutor

Although this election is pallid by comparison, the battle for district attorney reminds me of the most vicious campaign I’ve ever covered.

That contest was also for D.A. It was 1972, when I was fairly new in town and only dimly aware of the complicated, mean politics of L.A. County. I had high hopes that year to be on the presidential coverage team. My then-boss, Bill Thomas, had other plans. He explained that he hired me to cover L.A. politics, not run around the country chasing presidential candidates.

In that year’s D.A. race, Vince Bugliosi, the famed Manson case prosecutor, was running against his boss, Dist. Atty. Joe Busch. Bugliosi was fiery and incredibly intense. The county’s legal establishment and many prosecutors, fearing what Bugliosi might do as D.A., united behind Busch, who won a close election after unrestrained smears on both sides.

I was in the middle of it, reporting and analyzing dirty campaign tactics while I, myself, was attacked by both sides. Caught in the cross-fire, I ended up being subpoenaed. Afterward, I wondered why this local race had turned so much nastier than any of the state or national campaigns I’d covered in my years with Associated Press.

As I got to know L.A. better, I understood. No office in Los Angeles County is more important than D.A. to two powerful forces in L.A.--business and the influential attorneys who practice in the criminal courts.

There’s none of 1972’s madness in this year’s contest between Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti and his challengers, private attorneys Harold Greenberg and Steve Zand and Deputy Dist. Attys. Malcolm Jordan, John Lynch and Sterling “Ernie” Norris.

None of them have Bugliosi’s fire or his flair for publicity. And the interest in consumer issues, so important to all 1970s elections, has faded, replaced with voters’ concerns about crime, the criminal justice system and personal safety.

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What we have is a campaign between six conventional men in suits. Bless the tape recorder. If it weren’t for this wonderful instrument, we reporters might miss something when we nod off during the candidates’ speeches.

Not only is their style dull, but their discussions about the criminal justice system are vague and unsatisfying.

The challengers promise a quick fix for a problem that any honest person would admit is insoluble, at least in our lifetimes. That sad fact was evident last week when challengers and Garcetti met in a debate on KCRW-FM radio’s “Which Way L.A.?”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Norris, like the other challengers, blamed Garcetti for the office’s famous losses--O.J. Simpson, the “Twilight Zone” trial, Menendez I and McMartin, for which Garcetti was either D.A. or chief deputy under Ira Reiner. He promised to be a playing manager, using his own considerable trial experience to rack up some wins.

But Garcetti zinged him on that point. “We all lose cases,” he said. “Ernie [Norris] just lost a case, and not because of Ernie. He did, I think, a good job there. But the jury came back not guilty in a murder case everyone expected to win.”

Norris replied it was “the only case I lost in 10 years. I admit I made some mistakes and that’s where the crucial difference is. He has never admitted the mistakes.”

Jordan promised more efficient administration. The others were equally vague. Greenberg tried to ride the anti-affirmative action wave by criticizing Garcetti’s selection of Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden, who is African American, as lead prosecutors in the Simpson trial. “I have no problem with hiring and promoting females,” he said. But he said in “high-publicity cases,” he would select attorneys “by merit. . . . It is clear he did not pick attorneys by merit. I think he was playing out there for his audience.”

We didn’t hear much about the “three strikes” law or its ramifications, the biggest recent change in the criminal justice system. Nor did any of the candidates touch on the demands generated by the Simpson trial for massive change, such as less-than-unanimous verdicts in non-death-penalty criminal trials.

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No one brought up money and politics, the vehicles through which business and lawyers have traditionally exercised influence on the D.A.’s office.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lynch, who has accused Garcetti of favoritism toward political contributors, was asked if he would pledge never to take a call from a contributor.

Amazingly, since it was his campaign that leaked a particularly damaging allegation of favoritism, Lynch declined. “You will speak to people who have been donors but as soon as the subject comes up that there is a pending prosecution in your office that conversation has to end,” he said.

He’d have the accused’s lawyer talk to the deputy in charge of the case. “And if my office isn’t doing the right thing, there is a mechanism in place that you can appeal continually till you get to me but you don’t start at the top and work backward.”

So much for change. Start at the top, or start at the bottom, a big contributor still has more clout than anyone else.

In this election, the criminal defense bar and business are betting on Garcetti. If he is forced into a runoff next Tuesday, the lawyers and business people will no doubt hedge their bets with contributions to his opponent.

Just as in the riotous campaign of 1972, these unsentimental interests once again are the driving forces behind the election for Los Angeles County district attorney.