Prosecutors Favor Garcetti in Plebiscite

In an outcome that was a surprise to some, Los Angeles County prosecutors, by a 6% margin, indicated in a preelection plebiscite Wednesday that they favor keeping Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti as their boss.

Garcetti garnered 303 votes of 604 cast in balloting conducted by the Assn. of Deputy District Attorneys. His challenger, John F. Lynch, got 269.

Thirty-two of those who took part indicated they were undecided whether Garcetti should remain in his job or be replaced in the Nov. 5 election by Lynch, a 19-year veteran of the department who heads the district attorney’s Norwalk branch. More than half of the 1,042 staff members eligible to vote did not.

Garcetti said he was pleased with the results.

“This vote and the support of my deputies means a great deal to me,” he said in a statement. “This vote means that the deputy district attorneys . . . recognize that I am the one who will fight on their behalf so they can do the job they are assigned with the tools they need.”

The statement called the outcome “remarkable” and said the deputy district attorneys association is “merely a tool of the Lynch campaign.”

The results, indeed, seemed to catch Lynch supporters on the association board off guard. They had hoped to tap into what they felt was deep dissatisfaction on Garcetti’s staff over his handling of the O.J. Simpson murder trial and a lack of pay raises in the last few years.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Healey, who said he thought Garcetti would lose, attributed the outcome to loyalty to Garcetti by young prosecutors he has hired during his term and fear of retaliation from Garcetti on the part of others.

However, the association’s president, Deputy Dist. Atty. James Bozajian, said his pre-plebiscite reading of the staff’s leanings indicated that they were about evenly divided.

He was disappointed, Bozajian said, because so many staffers failed to vote.

Lynch’s campaign manager, Rick Taylor, put a positive spin on the outcome.

He asserted that although Lynch was the loser in Tuesday’s plebiscite, he had gained support since the last such balloting, held before the March 5 primary. Garcetti won that balloting as well with a plurality of 232 votes out of 585 cast for what were then five challengers. Lynch was the runner-up then with 186 votes.