Heated Supervisorial Race Takes Shape in 4th District

For Donald Knabe and Gordana Swanson, this fall’s runoff for an open seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is almost a replay of four years ago.

After a hard-hitting primary campaign in 1992, Swanson forced Knabe’s boss, Supervisor Deane Dana, into a runoff, only to lose in the fall.

This time around, Swanson, a former mayor of Rolling Hills, will take on Knabe, Dana’s chief of staff, in what promises to be a long and heated campaign.

Helped by a crowded field of candidates, Swanson again played the role of spoiler in Tuesday’s election, depriving Dana’s handpicked successor of a first-round victory.

With all precincts reporting in the sprawling 4th Supervisorial District, Knabe captured 101,293 votes, or 40.2%. Swanson came in second with 65,244 votes, or 25.9%. Long Beach Vice Mayor Douglas Drummond ran a strong third, capturing 49,112, or 19.5%.

As both Knabe and Swanson watched the agonizingly slow vote count at their election night parties, they looked ahead to the next contest, which has all the makings of an intensely personal fight for a powerful office.

At a balloon-bedecked Cerritos hotel ballroom, Knabe vowed that he will be elected the district’s next supervisor. “We’re going to take this thing over the top,” said a confident Knabe, as his family and friends and some top county officials, including Dana, looked on.

In a San Pedro hotel, Swanson was ready for “a tremendous and important race in the runoff.” She promised to sharpen her focus on Knabe’s role as an insider whom she blames for many of the county’s problems.

Although he was Dana’s top aide for the last 14 years, Knabe said he cannot be “blamed for something I never did. I was not part of the public debate, nor did I cast a vote.”

But political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe said Knabe has been “perceived as the closest one can come to being an incumbent without being elected to serve.”

After raising more than $1.4 million for the primary, Knabe will again have the advantage of being able to raise far more money than Swanson.

On the other hand, with more than seven months to campaign, Swanson will have a longer period of time to define herself to voters.

“I think this is quite interesting,” Jeffe said. “It is almost a replay, not quite a replay of 1992.”

And Jeffe would not underplay the potential role of women’s groups in the race. If Swanson were elected, she would join Yvonne Brathwaite Burke and Gloria Molina and the Board of Supervisors would be controlled by women for the first time in the county’s history.

Although 60% of the votes cast in Tuesday’s primary were for candidates other than Knabe, Swanson was barely able to go beyond the 25% of the vote she received in the primary four years ago. She will have to dramatically expand that base of support if she hopes to have any chance of winning.

The key may lie in what happens to voters who favored Drummond. With the county still facing serious fiscal problems and after Knabe’s last-minute attack mailer aimed at him, Drummond said he “very strongly doubts” that he will support Knabe.

However, he was not ready to endorse Swanson, although there is “a pretty good probability for that,” he said. “I certainly cannot condone continuing business in the manner in which it’s been done in the past.”