2 Key Groups Endorse Block

The struggle over the increasingly political post of Los Angeles County sheriff lurched forward Tuesday, as two key labor organizations fell in step behind four-time incumbent Sherman Block.

But the endorsements by the Assn. for Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriffs and the Los Angeles Professional Peace Officers Assn.--delivered after much angst and several months of avoidance--reflect deep new divisions among the 12,000 deputies and senior officers who work for the 74-year-old sheriff.

Just 55% of active employees in the Professional Peace Officers--non-retirees who owe their management jobs to Block--returned ballots in favor of their boss, while 45% supported challenger Lee Baca. The rank-and-file deputies, in an internal vote conducted just before last June’s primary election, didn’t offer a clear majority to anyone, but gave the widest margin of support to a candidate now out of the race, Patrick L. Gomez.

Tuesday’s endorsements also included a nod from the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, and may offer Block the support that he needs to edge past Baca, a 32-year department veteran who pushed the sheriff into an unprecedented runoff.

But the race is far from over.

Unlike the barely contested coronations of years past, the quest for control over the nation’s largest sheriff’s department has come to mirror other Southern California electoral contests: It is highly political; it is likely to cost a couple million dollars; and, with the rise of Baca, a Mexican American who beat Block in several Latino communities in June, it is a barometer of the region’s shifting ethnic alliances and the maturation of the Latino political base.

“Ten years ago, it would have been very difficult for Baca to have become a viable candidate,” said state Sen. Democratic Leader Richard G. Polanco, who along with the Legislature’s Latino Caucus has endorsed Baca. “Sherm Block was in his prime. . . . And the [Latino] community was not politically mature or economically powerful.”

Today, Latinos lead majorities in both houses of the Legislature, and are well represented in the California congressional delegation. Polanco, Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles), Reps. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles) and Esteban Edward Torres (D-Pico Rivera), Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon and a key list of other active players in Latino politics have endorsed Baca.

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Baca’s sudden ascension as a serious candidate, Polanco said, “is no different than the evolution that occurred with the Irish, the Italians and other immigrant groups who have come to America and become the stakeholders.”

It even, in a way, mirrors the rise of a much younger Sherman Block, a Jewish candidate who won repeated reelections to a law enforcement post at a time when Jews were taking a more visible and assertive role in the city and county’s electoral politics.

Sixteen years later, Block is older and so are his supporters. Retirees, for example, voted 69% in favor of the incumbent in polling held by the Professional Peace Officers Assn.

And age has become an issue in the general election too. Block undergoes dialysis three times a week and has twice battled cancer.

He has said that after the election he plans to be evaluated for a possible kidney transplant.

But while ethnic politics and concerns about his age may have played a part in Baca’s viability as a candidate, such support will not necessarily push him to defeat the powerful and well-connected Block.

Both candidates must face questions about problems within the department: Block, certainly, has presided over a department racked with brutality and corruption charges, most recently those involving the death of a shackled inmate in the Twin Towers jail.

But Baca, who served more than three decades in the department and became one of its top leaders with Block as a mentor, is hardly an outsider.

In debate after debate, he has refused to condemn Block or the department. He has refused to take a stand on either the death of inmate Danny Smith, or the recent $24 million awarded to 36 people who were arrested--and some beaten--while attending a bridal shower in Cerritos in 1988.

Block, who expects to have spent about $1 million on the primary and general election when all is said and done, has an endorsement list that dwarfs his opponent’s.

He has won support not only from the three labor organizations that signed on Tuesday, but from several hundred local elected officials, including U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and more than a dozen law enforcement associations.

Despite Baca’s sharp challenge, the incumbent still came out ahead in the June primary, and it is extremely rare for voters to throw out the elected sheriff.

Still, Block concedes that this has been his toughest race. For the first time, the sheriff said, he has hired a full campaign staff, including a campaign manager, fund-raiser, public relations consultant, media buyer and pollster.

“This is the most traditionally political sheriff’s race that I can recall,” Block said. For the first time, he said, he plans to produce television advertisements along with the more traditional radio spots and direct mail.

John Shallman, Block’s campaign manager, said he expects to spend more than $700,000 on the general election, of which about $500,000 will go for television advertising.

By comparison, the sheriff said that past elections have cost at most about $350,000.

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The sheriff’s high-powered team and heavy endorsement list contrasts sharply with Baca’s smaller staff. Jorge Flores, a consultant with veteran campaign manager Parke Skelton’s S.G. & A. Campaigns, is the main operator in Baca’s campaign, along with a few fund-raisers.

Baca hopes to buy television ads if he can raise the money, Flores said. The challenger’s fund-raising goal is far smaller than the sheriff’s, about $350,000, Flores said.

And support from the Latino Caucus is likely to be more vocal than monetary: Both Polanco and Villaraigosa said they plan to devote their resources to maintaining Democratic majorities in the two chambers of the Legislature, where some incumbents face tough contests in November.

Privately, key Sacramento sources have said that while Baca is strong enough to have inspired the Latino Caucus to endorse him, he has not won the kind of support that Polanco has provided to others.

“I don’t know that [Baca] is the most inspiring guy in the world,” said a Sacramento insider close to key Latino Caucus members.

“You have to have vision and then go out there and sell the heck out of it,” the source said. “He still is punching soft.”