In Race Against Garcetti, the Best Opponent Is Money

If you ask politicians and insurance agents, it’s never too soon for the rest of us to think about what it is they’re selling.

This weekend is the deadline for candidates for district attorney to file “show us the money” statements. The primary isn’t until March, and candidates need not declare for months.

But if they’ve raised so much as one cent of campaign funds--and the way politics suck up money like a Hoover upright, it’s never too soon to start--they have to say so now. Here’s what’s rattling in the coffers so far:

Incumbent Gil Garcetti: $432,000.

Barry Groveman, formerly with the D.A. and city attorney, co-author of the Prop. 65 toxic law, now heading the team exposing toxic contamination at the Belmont school site: $115,000.

Head Deputy D.A. Steve Cooley, lauded for shaping up the Van Nuys and Antelope Valley court operations: $133,163.

Other contenders will probably emerge. But before gazing upon the field, consider first the nature of the job itself.

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A big-time D.A. always gets touted as a political comer. Gov. Pat Brown got his start as San Francisco D.A. Los Angeles D.A.s Evelle Younger and John Van de Kamp became attorneys general.

The momentum was broken in 1990, when D.A. Ira Reiner lost the primary for attorney general. Two years later, Reiner lost his job to one of his deputies--Garcetti. By then the ethos of the office was changing: It was no longer about winning state office, but about not losing the big cases at home.

With the death of Sheriff Sherman Block, the D.A. may be the best-known elected county official. Alas for Garcetti, that profile has been as pocked with holes as a target on a shooting range--with criticism of the Simpson case and child support, and his 5,000-vote escape in a 1996 runoff against one of his own deputies.

Raphael Sonenshein, a scholar of L.A. politics, finds the intrigue of the office almost Florentine. “You know your own route to the top was assistant to the boss, and then you spend your time as D.A. constantly looking over your shoulder.”

Also, “Everybody expects you to go after the bad guys. You get no points for that. The office is too high profile to get away with just a high conviction rate. You have to be on the right side of the big cases. You can be hugely embarrassed in ways I don’t think can happen to the city attorney or even the Board of Supervisors.”

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Nine years ago, as advisor to Dianne Feinstein’s gubernatorial bid, Groveman played her opponent, former D.A. Van de Kamp, in mock debates. Now he’s after the D.A. job, in part because “almost everything we hear from the D.A. is one big excuse: O.J., welfare fraud, budgets. Child support, they blamed the computer.”

On matters like guns in schools, “others point out the problem and then we find Garcetti reacting, usually defensively. I want to be the one finding the problem and suggesting the solution rather than waiting to have it pointed out to me.” An ideal D.A. is “proactive, solution-focused rather than 911-oriented.”

Any bold changes in what Groveman calls “the imperial D.A. in the big basilica downtown” is impeded by Garcetti himself, he says. “He won’t take any chances on behalf of the 9 million people he serves because he can’t afford the risk of losing.”

Cooley has a reputation for creating order out of chaos in 26 years on the job. Prosecutors and judges lamented his transfer from the Van Nuys office to the small welfare fraud unit, after he backed Garcetti’s opponent. But he has pursued welfare fraud with big-bucks arrests that earned him 24-karat coin: a network newsmagazine interview.

Cooley says Garcetti’s tenure “may be considered by some to have quite a legacy of failure, starting with child support.”

Even slim budgets “can address a wide range of criminal activity,” from elder abuse to fraud, by leveraging “the tremendous potential for good our office can do if resources are allocated appropriately.” Take public corruption: “The L.A. Times writes about it, the Daily News writes about it, but the D.A.’s office doesn’t seem to do anything about it. How come?”

“Gil’s going to run on his record” of successful programs, said campaign manager Bill Carrick. Garcetti will “be focusing on the issues and have the resources to communicate that.”

Ah, resources. The dough to go.

In 1996 county voters put a lid on contributions. Hunks of the $2.4 million Garcetti had spent getting reelected that year came in big donor checks--as big as $50,000 each--that are now out of bounds.

Yet, whoever is on the ballot, the winner is usually the one whose name you never see, the unshakable incumbent: U.S. Dollars.

Columnist Al Martinez is on vacation. Patt Morrison’s e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com