Corina Alarcon Ends Bid for Council Seat

In a surprising change of heart, Corina Alarcon withdrew Monday as a candidate for the Los Angeles City Council 7th District seat vacated when her husband, Richard Alarcon, won election last month to the state Senate.

Corina Alarcon cited the demands of her business, family and a newly reinvigorated domestic violence shelter she founded as factors in the decision not to run for the seat, which represents the northeast San Fernando Valley. Observers said her decision threw the race wide open.

Alarcon said she decided over the Christmas holidays to end her campaign even after securing endorsements from Mayor Richard Riordan and her husband, which many people thought made her the front-runner in an expected field of 10 or more candidates in the April primary.

The senator said he and his wife will endorse someone else--probably either former San Fernando Mayor Raul Godinez II, Assembly aide Alex Padilla or community services organization head Corinne Sanchez.

Padilla, Godinez and others said they would pursue Alarcon’s support. Corina Alarcon’s withdrawal “makes the race a little more interesting,” Godinez said.

Padilla added, “It’s still going to be a very tough race.”

Corina Alarcon said she decided not to run based on three factors, including a city ethics law requirement that she sell her insurance business to hold a council seat. (Council members are not permitted to earn business income while serving.) That process was going to take longer than the three months left before the April election, she said.

In addition, she cited the family demands involving her husband’s transition to Sacramento to serve in the Senate.

Finally, she cited the increasing demands put on her time by the charity Women Advancing the Valley Through Education, which she and her husband founded. The group operates a domestic violence shelter in the northeast Valley.

Corina Alarcon is president of the organization’s board of directors.

The shelter has a capacity for 38 families but has only been able to serve 16 because of a lack of staff.

“We don’t have enough operational funds,” Corina Alarcon said.

That changed last week when the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded a $749,000 grant to the program, which the Alarcons said will allow the group to hire eight more staffers and operate the shelter at capacity.

“I really want to focus all of my attention on maximizing services at the shelter,” Corina Alarcon said.

The Alarcons denied that the campaign was canceled out of concern about possible controversy involving Richard Alarcon’s lobbying for the group.

Richard Alarcon acknowledged Monday that he lobbied for the federal grant with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, a city-county agency that ranked the program 32nd on a list of 100 projects sent to HUD for consideration. Sixty-two received funding.

“I had met with some of the folks over there to express my support for the project,” Alarcon said, adding, “My wife doesn’t get any money for [her position]. She’s a volunteer. There is no conflict.”

Bob Stern of the Center for Governmental Studies, a nonpartisan campaign reform organization based in Los Angeles, said Corina Alarcon could benefit politically if the charity she heads receives government assistance arranged by her husband. Her candidacy had touted her presidency of the charity as one of her major accomplishments.

A source close to the Alarcons said Corina Alarcon did not have strong feelings about running for the council to begin with, and only did so at the strong urging of her husband, who wanted to keep a hold on his old council seat.

Richard Alarcon denied that he put any pressure on his wife, saying that they decided on her candidacy after Assemblyman Tony Cardenas (D-Panorama City), a close ally, decided not to run for the council seat.

“She did have some reservations,” Richard Alarcon said. “Frankly, we were thinking Cardenas was going to run.”