Ferraro, Wachs Keep Key Posts

A move to diversify the leadership of the Los Angeles City Council was rebuffed Tuesday as lawmakers reelected as their president and second-in-command two white men who were first elected to the council more than a quarter-century ago.

Council members unanimously and exuberantly cast voice votes for John Ferraro, giving the 73-year-old lawmaker his eighth two-year term at the helm. But they split badly over the question of president pro tempore, a largely ceremonial post whose occupant heads meetings in the president’s absence and gets a seat on the Executive Employee Relations Committee.

Nine members backed San Fernando Valley Councilman Joel Wachs, who joined the council in 1971 and served as president for two years and will now start his fifth stint as president pro tem. Six lawmakers cast votes for Mike Hernandez, a liberal Latino who was first elected in 1991.

The vote mirrored one taken two years ago, when Wachs entered the pro tem contest after the council repeatedly deadlocked, with no candidate receiving a majority.

Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, a leading Hernandez backer, said the vote shows that the council is out of step with an ever-diversifying Los Angeles.

“They are all white. They are all men. They are all from another era,” Galanter said of the people who have served in the two top posts during the decade she has sat on the council. “The city is different now.”

The council’s three Latino members were joined by Galanter and Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg--who are both white--and African American Councilman Nate Holden in supporting Hernandez.

“We were talking about a little bit of diversity,” said a clearly disappointed Hernandez after the election. “The current leadership, those two people, they’ve been in those positions awhile now. I don’t have a problem with President Ferraro. Joel, I do have a problem with.”

Goldberg, who was rumored to be interested in the presidency but staunchly denied any intent of challenging Ferraro, said the term limits now imposed on City Council members make a frequent changing of the guard more important.

“The notion that everybody gets to stay in the same leadership forever makes more sense when there’s no time limits,” she said. “In a time-limited situation, people ought to be willing to say, simply, ‘I’ve done it x amount of time, and I’ll step aside.”

She added that “both women and people of color have been underrepresented” in the top echelons.

Billy Mills, an African American, was the last nonwhite to occupy a leadership post, City Hall veterans said. Joan Milke Flores was president pro tem, and Pat Russell served several years as president.

Wachs said that his ethnicity is irrelevant, and pointed out the diversity in the lawmakers who elected him: Ferraro, the longest-serving member, and Cindy Miscikowski, who joined the panel Tuesday; Rudy Svorinich Jr. and Hal Bernson, the group’s only two Republicans, along with Mark Ridley-Thomas and Rita Walters, two black members who are among the council’s most liberal.

“It’s a very broad range of people,” Wachs said. “I try very hard to be really fair to everyone. In the end, the leadership has to include everyone and not try to narrow it down. You can’t divide into groups like that.”

Several members said they had backed Wachs because he asked for their support as much as two months ago--long before they knew Hernandez would challenge the incumbent.

“If I had not made the commitment to Joel, I would have been there for Mike,” said Councilwoman Laura Chick. “I think Mike would have done a fine job.”