High-Powered Backers Put Spotlight on a Bitter Race

The campaign for the Los Angeles Board of Education district stretching from Silver Lake to North Hollywood has emerged as a bitter contest between two candidates divided sharply by ideas as well as alliances.

The incumbent, two-term board member Jeff Horton, is the protege of Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg and has the support of three other council members.

The challenger, Caprice Young, was groomed and financed by Mayor Richard Riordan, her former boss.

The combined political muscle of the two camps has made the District 3 race the most expensive among four to be decided Tuesday, with Young enjoying a better than 3-1 advantage, thanks to more than $550,000 raised for her campaign by Riordan.

And, just as Goldberg and Riordan have often been openly contentious with one another, an edge of hostility has spilled into the campaign of their political offspring.

Horton has tried to taint Young, a former Metropolitan Transportation Authority budget analyst, with the financial crises of the $2.5-billion agency.

Young has portrayed Horton as an apologist for a $6.6-billion school system that can’t teach children how to read.

Beyond the scripted messages, the candidates offer sharp differences in background and perspective.

Horton, who broke into politics in the school desegregation movement of the 1970s, worries over the district’s daunting questions of equity and fairness.

Young, a graduate of the buttoned-down Coro Foundation, which prepares young candidates for public service, is more inclined to let the fittest survive.

She wants magnet schools to multiply because they have a record of high student achievement. Horton has supported only incremental expansion, partly out of a concern that magnets drain talent and money from other schools. Magnet schools build enrollment by offering specialized, high-quality programs.

At a recent candidates forum, Young told a group of parents from Ivanhoe Elementary School that she would let them buy anything they want with money collected through private fund-raisers. Horton defended a district policy that prevented the parents from hiring a teacher to reduce fourth-grade class size. He said the basic instructional program needs to be equal at all schools.

The two candidates hold drastically differing views of the state of Los Angeles public schools.

Like Riordan, Young has characterized the school district as an institution in crisis that can only be repaired with radical surgery.

“The bureaucracy has proven itself to be completely incompetent,” she asserts.

Horton argues that last year’s upward blip in test scores and steady improvements in other measures such as the dropout rate and school safety show that the reforms he has championed are working.

“The problem is very bad,” he said. “Does that constitute a crisis? Does it mean the system is totally dysfunctional? No. Does it mean nobody is learning anything? No.”

Horton’s record as an advocate of several reforms produced a surprising split in the Riordan camp last month when longtime Riordan ally Mike Roos endorsed him. Roos, president of the privately funded reform movement LEARN, praised Horton’s unbending support of LEARN and his pursuit of initiatives such as linking employee pay to student performance.

The chairman of LEARN, UCLA Vice Dean William Ouchi, has endorsed Young.

At this point in the race, however, the most significant factor appears to be the unprecedented infusion of cash, which has allowed Young to overcome the challenger’s disadvantage in name recognition while freeing her from the burden of fund-raising. Only about 8% of her funds came through her own campaign.

Riordan’s political action committee, the Coalition for Kids, has sent out mailings and bought cable television time.

Horton has responded with a strong fund-raising effort, collecting nearly $170,000 from individuals and unions for a vigorous mail campaign.

At a phone bank at the Service International Employees Union Local 99, Horton volunteers have been making strides on a goal of contacting 70,000 voters--more than a quarter of those registered.

“This is the way the campaign is being fought out,” Horton consultant Parke Skelton said. “It’s not being fought on cable TV.”

Other than a Yale education, Horton and Young share little in background.

Horton, 51, taught English at Crenshaw High School for 15 years before his 1993 election to the board.

He formed a close association with Goldberg, his predecessor on the board, in the late 1970s as Los Angeles was being torn apart by a court decision requiring mandatory busing to achieve desegregation.

Horton worked with Goldberg on the Integration Project, a grass-roots organization formed to build public support for the court order, then became her chief of staff when she won election to the board of education. She supported Horton to replace her when she moved to the City Council.

With advanced degrees from both USC and UCLA, Young, 33, made a quick rise in public service, beginning as assistant to the director of finance administration at the MTA.

Over the next four years, she served as liaison to various departments within the MTA and prepared budget presentations for three bosses, including former MTA Chief Executive Officer Franklin White. She takes credit for developing the agency’s $4-billion budget during the early 1990s.

Shortly before White was removed in a Riordan-led reorganization of the agency, the mayor’s office recruited Young to be assistant deputy in charge of budget and administration. She oversaw the merger of three city departments into the Information Technology Agency.

In 1997, Young left public service to become an IBM consultant. She leads teams of five to 30 analysts who assess the technological needs of large companies.

She said she left government to boost her income as she faced a decision on the education of her 3-year-old daughter.

“Have you looked at private school tuition these days?” she asked.

Young has described her decision to seek the school board--a job that pays only $24,000 a year--as a complex one, based on her feelings of duty to help rescue a generation of children from a failed school system. She now plans to enroll her daughter in a district school.

Horton has ridiculed much of her campaign message.

“Her eight-year record of public service reveals a troubling pattern of mismanagement, incompetence and profligacy,” he said.

Horton based the criticism on a number of articles in the Los Angeles Times detailing the financial woes of the MTA as well as audits by City Controller Rick Tuttle, who looked into questionable spending practices in the city’s Information Technology Agency.

Tuttle, who has endorsed Horton, told The Times that Young was not a target of any of the audits. “I have a high regard for her personally and professionally,” he said.

But Horton argues that if she was involved with the MTA and Information Technology Agency, she should take some responsibility for their problems.

“Either you weren’t important in the position or you weren’t very effective,” he said in an interview.

Young said she struggled alongside White in a futile attempt to persuade the MTA board to curtail spending.

“I was very young and believed I ultimately would have a better opportunity to see practices change by working within the agency,” she said. “The thing I learned at the MTA is that accountability has to start at the board level.”

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District 3 Race Contributions

Jeff Horton

Total contributions through April 6: $169,742

Top two contributors: L.A. City & County Employees Local 99 of SEIU, $15,000; Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, $5,000

Endorsements include: Mike Roos, president of LEARN; Delaine Eastin, state superintendent of public instruction; Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles); state Sen. Hilda Solis (D-La Puente); former state Sen. Diane Watson; Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles); Los Angeles City Controller Rick Tuttle; Los Angeles City Council members Laura Chick, Mike Feuer and Jackie Goldberg; Los Angeles County Democratic Party; California School Employees Assn.; Associated Administrators of Los Angeles.

Caprice Y. Young

Total contributions through April 6: $602,123.

Top two contributors: Mayor Richard Riordan’s Coalition for Kids, $558,299; Riordan & McKinzie Political Action Committee, $4,500;

Endorsements include: Rep. Howard Berman (D-Mission Hills); state Sen. Richard Alarcon (D--Sylmar); Assemblyman Tony Cardenas (D--Sylmar); Los Angeles County Young Democrats; National Women’s Political Caucus; Women For; William Ouchi, chairman of LEARN; Joseph Mandel, vice chancellor, UCLA; Gary Wilson, chairman, Northwest Airlines; Mel Wilson, past president, San Fernando Valley Assn. of Realtors.