Dymally Defends Against Rival’s Charge

Mark Dymally knew he was an easy target long before he decided to run for the 51st District Assembly seat.

Damage control began early in the campaign as he stood before supporters and owned up to an evening in 1985 when he fired a gun repeatedly into a building where his wife was staying.

But less than a week before election day, Dymally, son of former Lt. Gov. and Rep. Mervyn Dymally, says an opponent for the Democratic nomination has surprised him with charges that he is a “deadbeat dad.”

Though he condemns the accusation, Dymally acknowledges that he has fallen behind in sending child support to the mothers of his two children despite orders from the district attorney’s office.

Gaps in his employment and concerns that his former wife was misusing the money explain why his child support stands at least $2,600 in arrears, he said. Although the district attorney’s office cannot account for it, Dymally insists that he paid for his daughter’s tuition and clothing with the money he was supposed to send her mother. An office manager at the school confirmed that tuition payments for the 1995-1996 school year were made by Dymally.

“This is a matter of pride and honor with me,” he said. “I’m not a deadbeat dad. I’m a do-right dad.”

Either way, his rivals say voters cannot trust a man who skirts an obligation to support his children.

“I have felt it ought to be a campaign issue,” said Inglewood school board member Thomasina Reed, a family law attorney who nevertheless kept the accusation out of her campaign. “After all, one of the focuses in the Legislature has been vigorous enforcement of child support law.”

It was Inglewood Mayor Edward Vincent who first sought to air the child support issue Wednesday when his campaign staff sent out 44,000 mailers across the district accusing Dymally of being delinquent in child support for the past year. Although Vincent said he shuns personal attacks during a campaign, he maintains that Dymally should have been prepared to address the issue.

“If you’ve got negative stuff on your record, it’s going to come out, and he knew that when he went in,” Vincent said. “It’s not negative, it’s the truth . . . That’s his record.”

He added that Dymally initiated the mudslinging with radio and television ads that feature clips from City Council meetings when the mayor used a racially derogative term and apparently insulted members of the audience.

The candidates are engaged in a three-way race to succeed Curtis Tucker Jr., a victim of term limits who is now running for the 25th District state Senate seat. The 72% Democratic district includes Hawthorne, Inglewood, Lawndale, Lennox, parts of South Los Angeles and some unincorporated portions of Los Angeles County.

The only Republican challenger is Anthony “Tony” Clarke, a bank manager. Aside from the political liability, Dymally said he tried to keep quiet his failure to pay child support out of concern for his children, a 3-year-old son he has tried to support since a 1993 paternity lawsuit, and a 12-year-old daughter over whom he is now trying to win custody from his former wife, Donna Dymally.

At one point, Dymally says he was paying Donna $700 a month--twice her court-ordered share of child support--because a judge had awarded that amount to the mother of his other child, and he wanted both children to receive the same level of support.

However, he began missing or making partial payments to each mother starting in 1994, he said, soon after he won a seat on the West Basin Municipal Water District board. That year he lost his $63,000-a-year job at the Metropolitan Water District.

After skipping child support payments for “quite a long time,” Dymally said he eventually reimbursed both mothers for the hiatus.

Donna Dymally refused to be interviewed for this story and her attorney did not return two messages left with his office. Last year, Mark Dymally secured a $2,500-a-month job as an advocate and legislative analyst on foster care issues. But again he failed to make some child support payments, he said, despite a wage assignment administered by the district attorney’s office for his son and a more recent supervised payment system set up for his daughter.

Instead, Dymally claims that he spent his daughter’s share of support last year on her clothing as well as her tuition at a private school in Los Angeles, where he says her mother had stopped making payments.

“I took that money and applied it to the child,” Dymally said. “So if I have to be judged on that, so be it.”

Although a representative of the district attorney’s office of family support services said he could not comment on Dymally’s balance of payments, the candidate says he is current or nearly so in payments to his son’s mother. Dymally admits to a debt of at least $2,600 toward his former wife.

“When I get around to finding the resources,” Dymally said Thursday, “I will pay Mrs. Dymally the back support.”

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51st Assembly District

Mark Dymally, Thomasina Reed and Edward Vincent are engaged in a three-way race to succedd Curtis Tucker Jr. in the predomiantly Democratic district.