Mayor Backing 4 Candidates for School Board

After a difficult hunt for candidates to run against Los Angeles Board of Education members, Mayor Richard Riordan announced Monday that he will support three challengers and one incumbent, all of whom the mayor said “have the fire in the belly” needed to overhaul Los Angeles’ education establishment.

The three challengers are Caprice Young, an IBM executive and former Riordan aide; Genethia Hayes, executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; and Mike Lansing, a former teacher who heads the Boys and Girls Club of San Pedro. Riordan also said that after initially intending to seek the ouster of incumbent David Tokofsky, he now has decided to give Tokofsky his backing.

All four candidates will receive “whatever they want” from the mayor, Riordan said, adding that he is available to provide both advice and campaign money as needed.

Riordan’s controversial attempt to help reshape the school board got off to a rocky start this fall when he announced that he was working on behalf of a newly formed task force to find candidates.

Within hours, some members of Riordan’s group complained that they had not been consulted and were not formally affiliated with one another. They merely had discussed educational reform with Riordan over breakfast, they said. The botched announcement even took Hayes by surprise, as she only learned that she had the mayor’s backing when she read it in her morning newspaper.

In the wake of that snafu, some members of the Riordan group launched a different strategy. They are working together on a separate but related effort intended to advance school reform.

“The mayor’s task force died in its infancy,” said Virgil Roberts, who attended the initial meeting with Riordan and now is one of several former task force members working with a group of business and community leaders organized by Harold M. Williams, president emeritus of the J. Paul Getty Trust.

Other task force members who have joined Williams’ reform effort include Bill Ouchi, a UCLA management professor who once served as Riordan’s chief of staff, and Monica Lozano, associate publisher and executive editor of La Opinion.

“Many of us are now putting our energies into Williams’ group, which has the same goals--short of running candidates,” Roberts said. “We want to create a code of conduct--higher standards--under which school board members would operate.”

Riordan’s announcement that he intends to support Tokofsky was the most surprising endorsement because he earlier had said that though he respected Tokofsky, he believed it was important to oust all incumbent members. He also questioned Tokofsky’s commitment to improving accountability in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

So determined was Riordan to dump Tokofsky that he tapped Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, to help find qualified opponents willing to take on the incumbent.

That did not prove to be easy.

“Truth is, a lot of people have turned me down,” Guerra said. “Why? They say the board’s problems are tremendous and they can’t see themselves making much of a difference. They know it’s a part-time job that’s really full time. They can’t survive on $24,000 a year. And if they’re starting a political career, they know it’s a dead-end position.”

Some candidates did emerge, however. Los Angeles County Board of Education member Yolie Flores Aguilar already has announced her intention to run against Tokofsky. Riordan chose not to back her.

“Someone from the mayor’s office called me and said they definitely wanted me to meet with Riordan before Christmas. They never called back,” Aguilar said. “I’m not waiting for the call. Having the mayor’s financial support would be helpful, no doubt. But I’m running with or without him.”

Until Thanksgiving, Alberto Pimentel, owner of an executive search firm in Beverly Hills and a former Los Angeles Unified teacher, was at the top of Guerra’s list of potential candidates to run against Tokofsky.

“I did not opt to run, but I considered it very seriously,” Pimentel said. “I wanted that job more than anything. But the timing was wrong. I’m establishing a career and a business, and pulling away from that doesn’t make financial sense.

“In a telephone conversation just before Thanksgiving, the mayor said he was disappointed I was not pursuing the school board position,” he added. “I thanked him for his offer but declined his support and the opportunity to run.”

Since Pimentel backed out, Riordan has met several times with Tokofsky in recent weeks. An aide to Riordan said the mayor became convinced that the incumbent has the desire and ability to carry out education reform.

Elsewhere, Peter Taylor, a banker at Lehman Brothers in Los Angeles, turned down Riordan’s invitation to run against incumbent Jeff Horton because he is recovering from heart surgery.

“I was flattered to be considered,” Taylor said. “It’s the most important job in Los Angeles, more important than the mayor’s job, although it doesn’t come with the prestige or paycheck.”

But Lansing decided to run after considering the idea for several weeks. He declined to comment in detail Monday, but said he is committed to the campaign and will make a formal announcement in January.

Riordan already has begun to do some work on behalf of his chosen candidates. His main education assistant, Veronica Davey, has taken a partial leave of absence from the mayor’s staff to work on the campaigns; another top aide, John Lee, will be taking off in January to work on Young’s effort.

On Thursday, Young, who is a manager of strategic projects for IBM Global Services, launched her campaign to replace Horton. Riordan was on hand for that event, where he introduced Young to a group of 60 Wilshire Corridor business leaders.

“I’m making a huge sacrifice to do this--about $100,000 a year,” said Young, 33. “But we look at the school district and are frankly fearful about our future.”