Dana’s Top Aide Seeks the Political Spotlight

There are two distinctly different sides of Donald Knabe.

One is the tough-talking, fund-raising, behind-the-scenes player long accustomed to being one step from the pinnacle of power in Los Angeles County government. A politician who is adept at using the advantages of near incumbency to tap special interests to finance his bid for an open seat on the nation’s most powerful Board of Supervisors.

The other is a softer, more private person. A dedicated family man who has long been active in his church and community of Cerritos. A person who was deeply affected by the experience of being mayor of that small city at a time of tragedy.

A ghastly midair collision almost a decade ago brought an Aeromexico jetliner down on a quiet Cerritos neighborhood, killing 82, including a family friend. The pain is felt by Knabe even today.

He said that the experience more than anything else taught him the vital importance of the county’s law enforcement, fire and mental health services. “When something like that hits, people expect public services and government to be there.”

A week before the March 26 election, it is not clear which Knabe the public would see if he beats his five rivals in the crowded race to replace his retiring boss, Supervisor Deane Dana.

Knabe is the focal point of the 4th District contest because he is Dana’s handpicked successor. He has raised by far the most money--almost six times more than his nearest rival--and has locked up endorsements from county labor unions, Sheriff Sherman Block, Board Chairman Mike Antonovich and a broad array of local officials.

As the campaign enters its crucial final days and Knabe struggles to avoid a runoff this fall, it is the sharp-edged political Knabe that voters are most likely to see.

If Knabe is in the room when a reporter interviews Dana, he often will jump in and answer a question before the supervisor has a chance.

But after 14 years as the aggressive chief of staff to the soft-spoken Dana, Knabe is struggling to step out of Dana’s public shadow in the Board of Supervisors’ chambers.

“I want to step up to the plate. I’ve been in the background,” he said. “Your role as chief of staff is different from that of an elected official. I want to offer my insight and be a part of the change that is going to be taking place in county government.”

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His encyclopedic knowledge of the myriad programs of county government bespeaks his role as the consummate insider. He has a penchant for detail, and his campaign talks reflect a knowledge of bureaucratic minutiae.

But Knabe is having trouble escaping the legacy of the salary hikes and pension increases that helped propel the county to its worst fiscal crisis. He--more than anyone else on Dana’s staff--has been involved in key decisions. Generally, he is a defender of the process, rather than a reformer.

Knabe tries to disassociate himself from past county decisions by promising to “address issues from this point forward, knowing full well that I’m trying to deal with the mistakes of the past.”

Whether he can overcome his long connection with a troubled county government and capture Dana’s chair in the board room is in the hands of the voters.

The record shows that Knabe has been well connected to those with a special interest in the actions of county government: the unions, the developers, the lobbyists and the companies that do business with the county.

In the year and a half since Dana announced that he would not seek reelection and endorsed his chief deputy, Knabe has raised more than $1.4 million for the campaign.

The biggest donors are the county probation officers union, which sent checks totaling $40,000 and paid for a campaign mailer, and the firefighters union, which gave $35,000.

His campaign contribution records show that others with an interest in the county long have had an interest in Knabe.

When he ran successfully for a second term on the Cerritos City Council in 1984, some of his biggest campaign contributions came not from that small landlocked city tucked into a corner of southeast L.A. County, but from influential developers who lease prime waterfront property in county-owned Marina del Rey.

“Granted, there is no marina in Cerritos,” Knabe said in an interview. “They were given to me because they know me. If I didn’t know them and I was running for the City Council in Cerritos, I wouldn’t send them an invitation. I got to meet them through my relationship with Deane Dana, so they supported me.”

Some of the same leaseholders provided the earliest seed money for Republican Knabe’s bitterly fought but unsuccessful run for the state Senate in 1988 against former Sen. Cecil Green (D-Norwalk).

When he announced his candidacy for supervisor in late 1994, the marina developers were there with their checkbooks open to help launch Knabe’s campaign. During the period, the county was engaged in protracted rent renegotiations with the leaseholders and planning for future high-rise development in the marina.

The campaign checks from a handful of marina developers to a candidate who has been a key player with their landlord, the Board of Supervisors, is one example of the relationship between money and politics during Knabe’s career.

As Dana’s alternate on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, Knabe and another aide voted 29 times in 1991-92 to approve contract hikes of more than $45 million on Metro Rail subway construction contracts with Tutor-Saliba Corp.

Tutor-Saliba provided $28,000 in campaign contributions and a $25,000 loan to Dana’s last reelection campaign during the period that his aides cast their votes. “What are you going to do?” Knabe said. “Stop the project?”

In the wake of Times stories about the votes, a state law was passed prohibiting aides from voting on noncompetitive transportation contract bids involving contributors who have given more than $250 in the year preceding the vote.

If elected, Knabe automatically would join the rest of the Board of Supervisors on the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees the subway, light-rail lines and bus system.

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Metro Rail contractors are well represented on the contributor list to Knabe’s campaign.

But he returned a $1,000 check last year from Tutor-Saliba. “Hey, it’s not worth the hassle,” he said. “All I could see was it didn’t do them any good. It didn’t do me any good.”

Knabe said he has to engage in extensive fund-raising because of the sheer size of the district, which follows the coast from Marina del Rey to Long Beach before cutting an eastward swath through Lakewood, Cerritos, Downey, Norwalk and Whittier as far as Diamond Bar.

“I’m trying to win an election,” Knabe said. “So my job is to raise the money necessary to get the message out to 2 million people and to 840,000 registered voters.”

He adamantly insisted that “no one is trying to compromise me. No one expects anything more or less based on their contribution. I’ve never had that problem,” Knabe said. “People don’t call and hammer you and say I contributed ‘X’ number of dollars to you or your boss. None of that goes on. You don’t get arm-twisting phone calls.”

He is in no hurry to change the wide-open system of financing county elections, saying he will study the question of setting a limit on the maximum contribution to the county’s elected officials.

He is sharply critical of one of his rivals, former Rolling Hills Mayor Gordana Swanson. It was Swanson whose insurgent campaign in 1992 forced Dana into a runoff. And Knabe managed Dana’s hard-hitting runoff campaign.

In this race, Swanson has been financed primarily by loans from Swanson’s husband. “I cannot underwrite my own campaign,” Knabe said. “I have to raise the money necessary. . . . You tell me a better way.”

How can he assure voters that he will act in their interest rather than the interest of those financing his campaign? “It’s easy,” Knabe said. “You watch my votes.”

As election day approaches, he promises an aggressive get-out-the-vote effort prompted in part by concern that the all-but-over Republican presidential contest will dampen turnout in Tuesday’s balloting.

On the campaign trail, Knabe emphasizes one issue above all else: crime.

He tells audiences that public safety will be his top priority and he will work with Sheriff Block to find the money to open more jail cells. He has been a strong supporter of the county’s probation camps for juveniles.

Knabe said he believes that there is “plenty of waste to be uncovered” in the county’s $12-billion budget. He flatly rules out more taxes to deal with the county’s continuing fiscal problems and said he opposes any more mortgaging of public property.

He does not mention in his standard stump speech the personal experience he had when the Aeromexico DC-9 crashed in a Cerritos subdivision. The immediate response of county firefighters and sheriff’s deputies taught him “how important the public safety portion of government is,” he said.

As the community struggled to deal with its shock and grief, Knabe recognized the importance of social programs, such as county mental health services, to the well-being of citizens.

The 52-year-old Knabe laughs when he recalls his first campaign in high school back in Illinois.

He ran for class president but lost after “the guy I was running against caught a touchdown pass with no time left on the clock and won the ballgame.” After that, “I never thought I would run for public office.”

While successful in Cerritos, where he and his wife have raised two sons, Knabe is looking for a win on a larger scale. After losing contests for Congress and the Legislature, he is determined to fill Dana’s shoes.

Tomorrow: A look at Knabe’s chief rivals.