Opposing Faces of Pasadena Square Off in Race for Mayor

When Pasadena voters choose their mayor Tuesday for the first time in more than eight decades, the two candidates will in many ways reflect the two faces of a city struggling with its growing diversity.

Former Mayor Bill Bogaard is a buttoned-down law professor and former corporate lawyer. The 60-year-old Democrat with endorsements from 10 former mayors preaches a return to civility at City Hall, and neighborhood preservation over development. His former council district is wealthy west Pasadena, including Millionaire’s Row, a familiar site to Rose Parade watchers.

Mayor Chris Holden is a commercial real estate broker who favors baseball caps over ties and has served 10 years on the City Council. The 38-year-old son of Los Angeles Councilman Nate Holden is endorsed by organized labor and business leaders. He represents a northwest Pasadena council district that is the other Pasadena, where residents are mostly minority and working to pay the next bill.

Tuesday’s runoff election is, for many, a symbolic battle between those like Holden who see Pasadena as a growing urban region and those like Bogaard who believe it is a suburb where preservation and tradition come first.

“He is the candidate for the old millennium. I am the candidate for the new millennium,” Holden said.

Bogaard, on the other hand, says he fears the “Los Angelization” of the city.

Bogaard was the overwhelming choice of residents in last month’s primary, receiving 43.2% of the vote and leaving Holden with what the mayor called “a mountain to climb.” Holden, a Democrat, barely edged Councilwoman Ann-Marie Villicana for second with 25.2%.

Voter turnout in Bogaard’s stronghold was nearly four times that in Holden’s district in the city of 131,000.

Nonetheless, Bogaard said he is not resting now in the most expensive election in city history; candidates have spent $700,000, and Holden alone has raised nearly $300,000.

“When Ann-Marie Villicana endorsed my opponent after the primary, it was a message to supporters of Bill Bogaard that the race isn’t over yet,” Bogaard said. Seeking to woo conservatives, Holden is redefining himself as anti-tax, while calling Bogaard a tax-and-spend mayor who in 1985 approved a property tax without a citywide vote. Holden said that was an end run around Proposition 13 tax limits.

But Joe Scott, a political consultant who ran Villicana’s campaign, questioned Holden’s strategy. Primary returns, he said, “show that Bogaard easily outdistanced Villicana in the most conservative district. So it requires a huge leap of political faith to believe Holden can win.”

Bogaard, a councilman from 1978 to 1986, said the council voted unanimously for the property assessment when the city was in a financial crunch and abandoned it after a public outcry.

He imposed a $1,000 limit on contributions to his campaign and has portrayed Holden as a candidate who would bring what he calls Nate Holden’s Los Angeles-style politics to Pasadena, with paid politicians “beholden” to campaign contributors.

That image has gotten a little help from Holden’s campaign. It has received more than $45,000 from business owners with development projects in the Koreatown section of Nate Holden’s 10th District in Los Angeles.

A current aide and a former aide to Nate Holden solicited the contributions. In addition, many of Chris Holden’s Pasadena contributors have benefited from City Council contracts.

Holden said he is condemned for receiving contributions, no matter where they come from.

“I cannot go to a neighbor and ask for $1,000. The district I live in is a working class district,” he said. “I’m up against the establishment.”

And Holden said Bogaard talks civility while fighting dirty.

“A mayor to be proud of,” one of Bogaard’s campaign slogans, is “a subtle attack on my wife,” Holden said. “It’s below the belt.”

Michelle Holden faces trial later this month on felony charges of having sex with a teenage boy. She has pleaded not guilty. Chris and Nate Holden have also accused a county sheriff’s lieutenant of trying to extort money from them to make the case “go away.” A district attorney’s investigation could not substantiate the charge, and the lieutenant has filed defamation claims against the cities of Pasadena and Los Angeles.

However, candidate forums have focused on schools, development and City Hall.

Bogaard supports the current system, in which a city manager runs City Hall and elected officials work only a few hours a week with minimum compensation.

Holden advocates salaries for council members, saying only the wealthy now can afford to serve.

Holden, who engineered the ouster of the city manager last year, also was the architect of charter reform, which replaced the ceremonial mayor with one directly elected.

He promises to help the city’s troubled schools with a summer reading camp, an after-school reading program and an advisory council. Bogaard wants a monthly round table meeting with city leaders on the schools.

Holden said his record includes establishing a salary minimum for city employees and contract workers and bringing the first supermarket shopping center to northwest Pasadena, the Fair Oaks Renaissance Plaza.

Bogaard said the developer of that center, Danny Bakewell, should not have received a $15-million city subsidy to buy the land. He opposes public subsidies of developers in general.

In addition, he said the city tends to ignore or minimize neighborhood concerns.

The proposed South Lake Avenue retail development is an example of a situation in which a compromise with angry neighbors would have avoided two years of delays and a lawsuit, he said.

On that subject, Holden points out that he brokered the settlement to allow construction, which he says illustrates his consensus-building skills.

In the primary, race was an issue in certain parts of the community, according to Joe Hopkins, publisher of the Pasadena Journal, the city’s black paper.

An African American, Holden is running in a city that is 46.6% white, 27.3% Latino and 17.8% African American.

That means Holden needs a high turnout in his district. But Scott said some there may be turned off by his anti-tax message.

“Holden vowed after the primary to re-energize his . . . liberal base,” Scott said. “In fact, he has since alienated some of it by trying to reinvent himself.”