Baca Leads Block in Fund-Raising

Sometimes, the story is in the numbers.

In the race to head the nation’s largest law enforcement agency, Lee Baca has from the beginning been an undisputed underdog.

The retired former Sheriff’s Department chief started 1998 bereft of endorsements and more than $200,000 behind incumbent Sheriff Sherman Block, who had been consistently raising money since the end of the last campaign in 1994.

But since the beginning of the year, Baca--a Mexican American whose endorsement list is short on public figures and fund-raisers but heavy on Latino leaders and community activists--has out-raised the sheriff by more than $130,000.

According to campaign finance reports made public Tuesday, Baca raised $140,000 in the quarter that ended Sept. 30, bringing his total for the year to $465,000.

Block took in $126,000, for a total since Jan. 1 of $333,098. These figures do not include Block’s contributions prior to 1998, which total about $236,000.

The two finance reports reflect the race so far, and hint at the demographic and cultural factors that have propelled the county’s powerful sheriff into the political fight of his life.

Block’s supporters are members of the Los Angeles power base: Developer John Cushman and his wife, Jeanine, who each gave $1,000; Hollywood luminaries such as former Universal Studios chief Lew Wasserman and his wife, Edie, who each gave $1,000; judges and lawyers and others generally associated with the campaigns of moderate politicians with a Westside base.

“Sinatra, Barbara,” reads an entry for the singer’s widow, who gave the sheriff $1,000. “Occupation: homemaker.”

“Charles, Ray,” reads another. “Occupation: entertainer.”

Even Lance Ito, the judge in the O.J. Simpson criminal trial, made a donation to Block.

But unlike Block’s donors, whose roster included several groups of family members who each gave $1,000, the legal maximum, Baca’s contributors mostly gave $100 or $250.

Many of them are political newcomers: the owners of a Mexican restaurant who put in $1,000, a social worker who gave $100 and a teacher who gave $250.

Baca’s campaign finance report, the legal document in which candidates disclose their contributors and expenditures, was 71 pages long--nearly twice as long as Block’s--mostly because of all the small donations.

“There’s a very wide and extremely broad coalition of people who can’t afford to give $1,000 checks, but who can afford to give $100 and $250,” said Jorge Flores, Baca’s campaign manager. “A hundred dollars here and a hundred dollars there adds up.”

But Block’s campaign manager, John Shallman, said the campaign hopes to raise $400,000 in the four weeks remaining before the November election.

The events are in keeping with the sheriff’s base of support along the region’s long-established moderate political power lines.

They include a party hosted by Mayor Richard Riordan and featuring county Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Don Knabe, another with City Councilwoman Laura Chick and Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, and a third with Supervisor Mike Antonovich, Shallman said.

The sheriff has won the endorsement of nearly every major law enforcement association in the county, along with the area labor council and unions representing deputy sheriffs and officers in the department.

That, Shallman said, is worth more than a few thousand dollars in extra fund-raising.

“What they do, frankly, as far as we’re concerned is irrelevant,” Shallman said. “What they raise, what they spend, what they spend it on is not important to us. We know that we have every endorsement. We know that we have the money to communicate with the voters.”

The two campaigns also are distinguished by their expenditures. Block, for example, decided not to pay to place a statement on the November ballot, but spent about $77,000 on consultants.

Baca spent about $40,000 on consultants and other advisors, about $20,000 on slate mailers and $23,000 on a ballot statement.

Flores, Baca’s advisor, said the report shows that his candidate was doing more to reach out to voters.

Block’s consultants, he said “are just sucking money out of him.”

But Shallman said the sheriff doesn’t need to buy slate mailers, direct mail brochures that suggest the candidate has the support of a particular group, when in fact the candidate has paid to be included.