Campaign Creates Co-Worker Rivalry

On most days, prosecutors Tom Falls and Larry Larson sit a short distance apart in the cramped second-floor district attorney’s branch office in Pomona.

For six years, the deputy district attorneys have been working side by side in this far-flung prosecutor’s outpost where they fight to keep criminals off the streets.

They have shared the occasional joke, talked cases, argued politics and even socialized with each other’s families, playing Trivial Pursuit.

But now the co-workers are among the seven candidates pursuing an open seat on West Covina’s Citrus Municipal Court bench in the Tuesday primary.

They aren’t pulling any punches--in the Jeffersonian tradition of “enemies in war, in peace friends.”

On the Pomona office’s coffee room door is a Far Side cartoon altered by one of their colleagues. The picture shows a rifle shop with a small counter. The sign on the counter was altered to read: “Larry’s Maps to Tom’s House.”

“Betrayed” is how Larson described his feelings after Falls entered the race in January for the court district that includes most of the east San Gabriel Valley.

As Larson, 59, describes it, Falls is an insider, a candidate beholden to special interests and a Johnny-come-lately opportunist who unlike him entered the race after Judge Michael Rutberg announced he would not seek reelection. “He is well-known for all the wrong reasons,” Larson said of his colleague, who garnered national coverage three years ago as part of a Covina City Council majority that voted for a controversial local utility tax.

Falls said: “I’m sure when all is said and done there might be some hurt feelings. But we’re both professionals.”

He added that he understands Larson’s initial anger. But he said that just because a person is first in the ring does not mean he is necessarily entitled to the championship. He said Larson is a good prosecutor, but is less experienced than he--a view, he said, that is supported by a committee of the Los Angeles County Bar. Assn., which rated him “well-qualified” to be a judge and Larson just “qualified.”

During his nine years as a deputy district attorney, Falls, 35, has gotten convictions in all of his more than 20 murder trials that went before a jury. The prosecutor, who is endorsed by judges, Republican lawmakers and most of the area’s police chiefs, also helped write a state sexual predator law last year.

Larson, a Walnut resident, spent two decades as a federal postal inspector and six years as a deputy district attorney, handling a variety of cases ranging from white-collar crimes to murder.

Neither Falls nor Larson expects to get the 50% of the vote plus one vote needed to avoid a runoff in November. But both predict they will be in the showdown with West Covina attorney Nida Brinkis Alex, 55, who wants to be the first female judge on the Citrus bench and has put more than $60,000 into her campaign.

Others in the race include Azusa Mayor Stephen J. Alexander, 40; Richard Espinoza, 53, a veteran Baldwin Park attorney; Allen Annis, 56, a Covina attorney, and Mark Peters, 41, a La Verne attorney.

On the campaign trail, Falls talks tough on crime, emphasizing his record as a successful prosecutor of gang members, his anti-graffiti program and a list of supporters that is virtually a Who’s Who of law and order in the east San Gabriel Valley.

Larson downplays such endorsements as coming from a local legal establishment that wants to stop a slate of reform candidates. “Falls is saying, ‘Elect me because the system supports me,’ ” Larson said.

Falls is better known than his colleague because he was part of a trio that rode an anti-tax wave to seats on the Covina City Council. The election followed an astonishing recall of the entire council--after it approved a controversial 6% utility tax.

Once in office, Falls and two others said they were wrong about city finances. Unable to balance the budget without closing the library and a fire station and laying off police officers, they approved a new and larger tax.

Larson predicts it will be Falls’ Achilles’ heel. “There are 5,000 voters in Covina that are not going to vote for Tom Falls,” he said.

Falls said his opponents seem to forget that Covina voters approved the tax hike by a 54% to 46% margin because, like him, they want parks, police and a library.

The candidates are also as different as chalk and cheese when it comes to campaign fund-raising. Larson has raised $2,100 from himself and small donations, while Falls has $15,500, including $2,000 from a Covina trash collector. “If we were raising money from special interests like Mr. Falls . . . we’d have a lot more money,” Larson said.

Despite the jabs at one another, the two still talk in the office hallway, although Larson did recently move his desk down the hall from Falls in what they said was an unrelated reassignment.

But the office is not neutral territory. Letters critical of Falls, for instance, have appeared on the office’s notice board in recent months.

Falls said: “There was even a blown-up copy of a newspaper reader’s letter that portrays me as antichrist [that was] stuck on Larson’s door.”