In 11th District, Foregone Conclusions Fade

The parking lot outside the community center on Balboa Boulevard is clogged, but the cars keep coming.

Inside, chairs are hastily set up and just as quickly taken, as a crowd approaching 200 streams into the auditorium. The draw this particular evening is a candidates forum, an event that usually might attract 50 people.

But for the 11th District City Council candidates forum, it’s standing room only.

“This is a historic election,” says panel moderator Rob Glushon. And indeed it is.

For the first time in 34 years, the 11th District council seat is open because Councilman Marvin Braude is retiring.

The presumptive front-runners are Georgia Mercer of Tarzana and Cindy Miscikowski of Brentwood, who have the money and endorsements to press their case to voters. Also contending are Mark Isler of Van Nuys and Doug Friedman of Brentwood, who are running “grass-roots” campaigns.

The 73-square-mile district includes Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Woodland Hills and Tarzana, plus parts of Van Nuys and West Los Angeles. Issues involving quality of life and feelings of alienation and disenfranchisement dominate the debates.

Miscikowski and Mercer hold strikingly similar views on many of the core issues. In addition to vowing to be responsive and accessible, they support charter reform, back secession bills--as long as they call for a citywide vote--and say they will work to curb air and ground traffic at Van Nuys Airport.

The central difference between the two is background: Miscikowski is an experienced, nuts-and-bolts City Hall staffer; Mercer is a community activist with many ties within the district.

At the outset, conventional wisdom held that the race was Miscikowski’s to lose. A former chief of staff for Braude, she had money and the support of the councilman plus a handful of other council members and three county supervisors.

But the Miscikowski campaign has had a few missteps--or bad breaks--and Mercer, who most recently served as Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan’s liaison to the west San Fernando Valley, women’s groups and the Jewish community, has capitalized on them.

So, with two weeks to go, the primary looks more competitive than some had predicted.

The first critical juncture of the campaign involved spending limits. Although city law does not require candidates to adhere to new limits, the Mercer campaign challenged Miscikowski to join her in abiding by them. She accepted, though she enjoys access to major contributors out of Mercer’s reach. That means both candidates are limited to spending $300,000, an amount both are expected to have, thanks in part to city matching funds.

In the rush for endorsements, Mercer surprised some by grabbing key support from the county Democratic Central Committee, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, the Firefighters Union and United Teachers-Los Angeles.

Miscikowski tried hard for the Democratic Central Committee’s support, bringing in county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky to help--with no avail. Mercer won the union endorsements--which bring additional campaign money and volunteers--when she brandished a Miscikowski campaign mailer that did not carry the union logo, meaning nonunion printers were used.

Miscikowski consultant Rick Taylor insists it did not cost his client the union endorsement. Instead, Taylor said, Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, a Mercer backer, was instrumental in delivering the union support.

Mercer consultant Larry Levine is most happy with the union backing, especially that of United Teachers-Los Angeles. He said 6,000 of its members live in the 11th District, and the union is focusing attention there to elect favored candidate Valerie Fields to the Los Angeles Unified School District Board. The union’s focus on the district should help Mercer, Levine says.

From the outset, the Miscikowski campaign has been most worried about what her opponents would make of her husband, influential land-use attorney and former lobbyist Doug Ring.

Taylor says often and loudly that it is sexist to portray Miscikowski as a captive of her husband, whose family’s name is synonymous with Los Angeles’ ebullient development in the 1950s and ‘60s.

Although Levine insists that he won’t suggest Ring controls his wife, he views one instance of pro bono lobbying by Ring as fair game. It involved a council ruling that helped increase the value of the couple’s Brentwood home.

According to a mailer that landed last weekend, the couple live in a now-gated community north of Sunset Boulevard because of Ring’s influence while his wife was chief of staff for Braude, who spearheaded the effort.

It was the only time the council agreed to close an already-developed area to the public.

To gain neighbors’ acquiescence to their project, the developers of the proposed Getty Museum had promised to pay for the gates in the early 1980s. Ring and Miscikowski did not own a home in the area then.

As the Getty neared final approval some years later, the promise appeared to have been forgotten until Ring, who by then lived in the area with Miscikowski, volunteered to act as attorney-lobbyist for the Brentwood Circle Homeowners Assn.

The gates were approved and installed last year, which the Mercer mailer suggests is symptomatic of a classic insider deal.

Counters Taylor, “It is not an issue.”

Taylor bristles at the suggestion that Mercer should be viewed as having momentum just because she is doing better than many expected.

“Georgia is a very formidable candidate,” Taylor said.

In a council race, the winning candidate must receive more than 50% of the vote.

But Taylor believes “there is a runoff no matter what we do.”

That is by no means a foregone conclusion. Levine, for one, thinks the race could be won April 8. He’s just not sure by whom.