3 Candidates Ally in Unusual Bid to Force Svorinich Into Runoff

More than 30 years ago, in an alliance that would one day transform Los Angeles politics, a group of black ministers and Jewish activists joined forces to help a little-known lawyer and former police officer become the first African American elected to the City Council.

Today, decades after Tom Bradley made history with his election to the council and again as the city’s first black mayor, a new coalition--this time led by labor groups and community activists--has assembled in one of Los Angeles’ true political outposts with the aim of again turning City Hall on its ear.

The unprecedented alliance has united behind not one but three candidates challenging the reelection of 15th District Councilman Rudy Svorinich Jr., whose district covers the southern tip of Los Angeles.

The candidates, each coming from a different community in the ethnically diverse district, share a platform advanced by the 15th District Coalition, a politically progressive pro-union organization aligned with the countywide Coalition L.A.

The goal of the district coalition, candidates and organizers say, is to not only unseat Svorinich but to champion a legislative agenda of reform--including more funding for affordable housing, public transportation, environmental cleanup and after-school programs--that can be applied in coming years to other districts in the sprawling city of Los Angeles.

“We see our future as trying to develop . . . a permanent multicultural coalition that can move [its] agenda through an array of tactics, including running its own candidates for council,” said Steve Cancian, campaign coordinator for the 15th District Coalition.

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San Pedro’s Dennis Kortheuer, a university instructor making his first run for office, added: “I am not the candidate. The platform is the candidate.”

If the strategy is successful, Kortheuer, co-candidate Diana Contreras of Wilmington and write-in candidate Mujahid Abdul-Karim of Watts will capture enough support from each of their communities to prevent incumbent Svorinich from receiving more than 50% in the April 8 primary election. And if no one reaches that threshold, the top two vote-getters in the primary will compete in a June runoff election.

“I think it’s a great strategy,” said longtime Los Angeles political consultant Rick Taylor. “You are peeling away from every portion of the district votes that potentially could go to the incumbent, making him run a campaign not just in his base [area of support] but in virtually every part of his district because he has to.”

Although the district coalition began only last year, organizers say it has taken its lead from Coalition L.A., a voter education organization founded in 1984. By compiling voter registration lists, Coalition L.A. has helped organize support or opposition to a variety of ballot measures--on immigration, police reform or health care--in nine federal, state and citywide elections.

But even if Coalition L.A. and its thousands of voters have proved to be one of California’s more successful precinct networks, organizers concluded that they were not as effective as they wanted to be--because of sheer numbers--in influencing statewide elections. So they decided to focus their efforts in a way in which 30,000 or so votes could prove decisive.

Enter the 15th District race.

Four years ago, former paint store owner Svorinich became only the fourth council member to represent the district in more than half a century--a testament to the power of incumbency and the district’s peculiar configuration.

Stretching from Watts to San Pedro and encompassing the communities of Wilmington and Harbor City, the district mirrors Los Angeles. Ethnically diverse, it includes large swaths of black and Latino neighborhoods and a mix of Eastern Europeans and other nationalities along the San Pedro waterfront. It includes poor neighborhoods in the flatlands and some of Los Angeles’ most picturesque cul-de-sacs on bluffs overlooking the Pacific.

“I think it is . . . a microcosm of the city of Los Angeles because it does have distinct communities [and] because those communities all have deep histories,” Cancian said. “San Pedro is home to many of the city’s most tried and true unions; Wilmington has the second-oldest church in the city of Los Angeles. And Watts has its own history of organizing and challenges that have sometimes been met and many times, have not.”

Against that backdrop, Cancian said, the 15th District seemed the perfect place for those who have been involved in Coalition L.A. to try their luck at a local election.

“We were looking for the opportunity to organize long-term. To build coalitions on the community level. To sustain political involvement over time,” he said. “And the greatest opportunity appeared to be at the L.A. City Council, where districts [have] 240,000 residents but often the elections are decided by a few thousand, or even a few hundred, votes.”

The 15th District, in particular, seemed tailor-made for the coalition’s efforts because of its diversity, demographics and political history.

“Demographically, it is a Democratic district and has a majority of people of color,” Cancian said. And even if 15th District voters elected two Republicans--Svorinich and his predecessor Joan Milke Flores--as their most recent representatives on the council, the district has hardly been a GOP stronghold. In the last mayor’s race, coalition organizers note, former Councilman Mike Woo, an unabashed liberal, fared better in this district than he did citywide. And in the last governor’s contest, Kathleen Brown outpolled Gov. Pete Wilson.

“If you look at the city, the 15th District has historically, and presently, been represented by somebody more conservative than the district,” said coalition spokeswoman Andrea Adelman.

The coalition began a year ago to search out local candidates that would reflect the district’s diversity. And the only way to accomplish that was to allow organizers within each community to develop their own criteria for candidates.

“There was not a search to find a person to run but rather to find an effective spokesperson for the platform,” Adelman said. “The goal of the coalition is not just to elect someone to office; it’s to implement the community’s plan of action.”

As such, organizers in each community within the 15th District began last year to draw up lists of candidates, interview them and decide which ones should receive support. Those deliberations resulted in three candidates from three distinct areas of the district:

* In San Pedro, traditionally the community of highest voter turnout in council races and home to each of the district’s last three council members, the coalition endorsed Kortheuer, a 44-year-old history instructor at Cal State Long Beach. A former actor, Kortheuer is a 20-year member of the Screen Actors Guild and a longtime labor supporter.

* In Wilmington, a largely blue-collar community where concern about pollution and crime have prompted calls to secede from Los Angeles, the coalition candidate is Contreras. The 42-year-old single mother of three is a longtime union backer and activist who recently left her secretarial job at Compton Community College to run for council.

* In Watts, the district’s northernmost link with Los Angeles and long seen as its most neglected community, the coalition is supporting minister Abdul-Karim, a 52-year-old Muslim minister credited for his assistance in the ground-breaking truce between the Bloods and Crips street gangs. Abdul-Karim failed last week to submit enough signatures to appear on the ballot, but will run as a write-in candidate for the office.

Also challenging Svorinich’s bid for a second term is Desiderio “D.C.” Chavez, a 36-year-old community activist from Wilmington who is not affiliated with the coalition.

Although the coalition’s support of several candidates could force Svorinich into a runoff, coalition officials maintain that their real aim is to organize the district’s diverse communities, not just replace an incumbent with a new officeholder.

“Because people are used to politics equaling campaigns, sometimes people’s first impression is to say that this is just a new tactic to win a campaign . . . [but] that is not what this is,” Cancian said. “What this is is a way to bridge communities that have long been divided and permanently organize them around a common agenda.

“In our mind, it is a good thing that there are multiple candidates. It is only when a community feels like they can organize around one of their own [that] they get involved,” he said. “So we would say that the coalition of candidates is not a transitory strategy [for winning a council seat]. It is a new way of elections for communities to get involved and elect someone who they see as their own.”

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Just as Bradley’s early supporters rewrote city politics in the 1960s and grabbed the reins of power, Cancian said, coalition officials see the possibility of a new type of grass-roots organizing that can elevate people to office based on a cause, not just a candidate.

“The district is a real reflection of the city,” Cancian said. “So building a coalition in the district is a reflection of building coalition citywide. That is why we look at the experience of building the Bradley coalition.

“[It] was instructional first in how coalitions . . . can be formed on issues,” Cancian said. “And importantly, [it] shows that the way to try to build a citywide coalition is to first build it at the local level.”