Lynch Takes Narrow Lead Over Garcetti

Challenger John Lynch, who used the failed prosecution of O.J. Simpson to make a case against his boss, Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, jumped to a narrow lead in early returns Tuesday night in the race to become the top prosecutor in Los Angeles County.

But the tally of votes actually cast on election day was slow in coming and neither candidate in the bitterly fought contest was willing to draw any conclusion from mostly absentee ballots.

Although overshadowed by the district attorney’s race, Don Knabe, chief of staff to retiring Supervisor Deane Dana, opened a commanding lead over Gordana Swanson in the race for the only open seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

County voters also were backing a measure to modestly increase property taxes to pay for parks improvements and acquiring open space, but a more costly parks measure was failing in the city of Los Angeles.

A $2.4-billion bond measure to repair and upgrade schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District was failing to win the two-thirds margin needed for passage.

And a reform measure to impose the first-ever limits on campaign contributions in races for supervisor, district attorney, sheriff and assessor was winning in a landslide.

At his election night headquarters in the downtown Biltmore Hotel, Lynch was elated at his early lead in absentee ballots, but stopped short of reading too much into the sketchy returns. “I’m not declaring victory,” Lynch said. “It’s better than being behind.”

At Garcetti’s election night party in Westwood, the district attorney remained confident despite the negative sign of the early returns. “We knew exactly where we’d be at the beginning of the night,” Garcetti said. “You will see things changing very rapidly.” Nevertheless, some supporters were surprised.

“We all knew there was a built-in anti-Garcetti vote,” said Steve Zand, an Encino lawyer who ran against Garcetti in the primary but later endorsed him. “But . . . it is stunning for all of us.”

The district attorney race pitted Garcetti, 55, a first-term incumbent, against Lynch, 50, a political newcomer who heads the district attorney’s Norwalk branch office.

Garcetti was forced into a runoff with Lynch after he drew just 37% of the vote in the March primary to 21% for Lynch.

During the fall campaign, Lynch sought to capitalize on the Simpson double-murder case. He staged several campaign events outside the Santa Monica courthouse where the civil wrongful death trial against Simpson is underway.

Over and over, Lynch said Garcetti seemed more interested during the criminal case in promoting himself by appearing on TV to discuss the case than in winning a conviction.

Garcetti used much the same strategy when he defeated Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner in 1992 in the wake of several failed prosecutions, among them the state case of four Los Angeles police officers accused of beating motorist Rodney G. King.

This time, Garcetti urged voters to look beyond “one case” and to judge him by his entire record. He touted a 93% overall conviction rate and emphasized his commitment to crime prevention, including initiatives to combat gang activity and domestic violence.

Garcetti sought to persuade voters that the elected district attorney must be an activist in the area of crime prevention. Lynch said he did not believe the job calls for such activism.

During the campaign, Garcetti amassed an enormous campaign war chest--funds that enabled him to launch a searing TV ad blitz during the last two weeks of the campaign.

Voters in the south and east portions of the county had the choice of Knabe, an entrenched insider, or Swanson, an outspoken outsider, as their next supervisor.

Knabe, a former Cerritos mayor and veteran chief of staff to Dana, ran an aggressive campaign for more than a year fueled by $2.6 million, mostly in special interest contributions.

Surrounded by campaign supporters and county officials at his election night headquarters in Cerritos, Knabe said he made a decision to get his message on television because voters were being bombarded by mail in legislative and congressional campaigns.

Knabe downplayed the importance of his huge campaign bankroll. “People made a lot of how much money we had, but what people underestimated was the community base I had,” he said.

In the final weeks, Knabe dominated the race with TV ads, freeway billboards and mailers sent to voters across the 4th District, while Swanson struggled to get her message out.

“I’ve been so focused on trying to win an election, I don’t know if I could tell you what the first thing is I want to do,” Knabe admitted Tuesday night. “The first thing I have to do is step out of the role of staff member and prove myself to the other supervisors.”

By the time election day dawned, Knabe had outspent Swanson by more than 5 to 1.

As she did in an ill-fated bid to drive Dana from office four years ago, Swanson hammered away at mismanagement of county government. She was sharply critical of salary and pension hikes and the county’s early release of prisoners while the new high-security Twin Towers jail stood empty.

Arriving at a Torrance hotel as a three-piece band played “Isn’t She Lovely,” Swanson refused to concede the race or congratulate her opponent. “His ethics are suspect,” she said of Knabe. “He may win his election today, but in the end I don’t think that means anything. We need somebody with a good backbone.”

For the second time in four years, county voters were faced with a megabucks parks program. Measure A would modestly boost property taxes to pay for $319 million to upgrade and expand parks and acquire and preserve open space.

In the city of Los Angeles, Measure K would provide $776 million for an even bigger parks program. It would increase property taxes for the average homeowner almost three times more than the county measure.

Concerned about the presence of so much special interest money, voters had the chance to end the wide-open system of financing county election campaigns.

Measure B would impose the first-ever limits on contributions in races for supervisor, district attorney, sheriff and assessor. It would ban fund-raising in certain nonelection periods, outlaw contributions from lobbyists, and would encourage candidates to agree to voluntary spending limits.

County voters also considered measure C to grant the Board of Supervisors the power to dramatically expand the number of high-level county jobs that they can fill outside the Civil Service system.

Measures G, I and J on the Los Angeles city ballot were all designed to help the Department of Water and Power compete with other utilities when the industry is deregulated beginning in 1998.

Measure G would give the DWP permission to negotiate individual contracts for electricity rates and sell electricity outside the city limits.

Measure I would relax rules for issuing bonds for the DWP as well as the city’s quasi-independent airport and harbor departments, but would require audits of all three agencies every five years.

Under Measure J, city officials would have more flexibility in hiring employees outside the Civil Service system.

Another proposition, Measure D, would allow widows of Los Angeles police officers to continue collecting pension benefits even if they remarry.

Measure E would restructure the appointment process to the city Ethics Commission, giving one of the mayor’s two nominations to the president pro tempore of the City Council, and have the five-member commission select its own president instead of giving that power to the mayor.