In Shifting Tactical Battle, Hayes and Boudreaux Call on Key Supporters

In the final week of the runoff battle to win the Los Angeles school board’s 1st District seat, incumbent Barbara Boudreaux and challenger Genethia Hayes were shifting strategies and putting their highest-profile supporters on the front lines.

On Friday, Hayes, executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Los Angeles branch, mailed out 54,000 campaign mailers carrying a “message about our children” from her most well-known supporter: 71-year-old poet-actress-singer-songwriter- playwright-philoso- pher-author Maya Angelou.

Angelou’s brief message strongly resembled a mantra in the Hayes camp. “The most important social justice issue facing us is the complete education of our children,” she wrote. “We could not find a more effective or passionate champion for our schools than Genethia Hayes.”

And never mind that Angelou lives on the East Coast and cannot vote in Tuesday’s election. The mailer, which includes a photograph of Hayes and Angelou arm in arm, ends with a declaration: “I join Ms. Hayes with all my energy and prayers.”

If Hayes prevails in the closely watched race, it will mean a clean sweep for the slate of four candidates backed by Mayor Richard Riordan to shake up the board.

Boudreaux has championed existing educational programs, which are beginning to produce improvements in academic achievement. Hayes has promoted a host of new educational programs, as well as audits to eliminate waste and fraud.

Some have criticized Riordan for weighing in so heavily in an area beyond a mayor’s normal control. But he considers the runoff one of the most important elections in the city’s history.

“I am incredibly proud of the attention I have brought to education of our children,” Riordan said. Hayes, he added, “has the dedication and vision to put children first.”

Boudreaux’s top-drawer supporters include virtually every African American elected official in the state, among them Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles). Waters, a political icon in black communities here and across the nation, has been walking precincts with the incumbent.

“I’m supporting Barbara because I believe she is a strong and independent voice on the board,” Waters said. “I also worry about the mayor’s strong-arm tactics, which I believe are improper, even dangerous.

“If a person decides they can ride roughshod over a community by pouring tons of money into a campaign, then it’s all over,” she said. “You don’t take that much money from one person and not do their bidding.”

With the election only a few days away, both candidates were making last-minute changes to their strategies for soliciting votes in the district running from the blue-collar neighborhoods south of downtown to the middle-class communities of Baldwin Hills and Crenshaw.

After months of slamming Riordan’s heavy financial backing of Hayes as an example of a wealthy white outsider trying to influence an election in South-Central Los Angeles, Boudreaux has started trumpeting her own track record for the benefit of one group of high-propensity voters--elderly African American women.

In recent public appearances, Boudreaux has taken credit for the fact that over the last school year, for the first time in years, there were no homicides on campuses in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Moreover, she says, weapons possession and sex charges are down even as student test scores creep upward.

The revised campaign message had been strongly recommended by key supporters, including Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, who held a major fund-raiser on Boudreaux’s behalf during the primary.

“We all advised her of the need to concentrate on what she’s done. And why not? She has a great record,” Burke said.

Still, Boudreaux conceded that she lagged far behind her challenger in financial contributions.

According to the Los Angeles Ethics Commission, Hayes had amassed nearly $800,000--more than half of that amount donated by Riordan’s Coalition for Kids committee--between Jan. 1 and June 3. During the same period, Boudreaux received about half that amount, including large donations from the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles and Service Employees International Union, Local 99.

Like Boudreaux, Hayes has tried to redirect the emphasis of her campaign.

In the April primary, Hayes relied almost exclusively on targeted mailers and telephone calls to force Boudreaux into a runoff election. Lately, however, she has been walking precincts with a growing army of volunteers--many of them dispatched by the 40,000-member United Teachers-Los Angeles.

In the final lap of the campaign, Hayes also has focused on troubling trends she insists have worsened during Boudreaux’s two terms in office. To hear Hayes tell it, Boudreaux is responsible for 50-year-old schools that remain in disrepair and student test scores that are the lowest in the city.

“While it is true that test scores have recently risen 2 percentile points, that’s just not good enough,” Hayes said. “Our kids still can’t read.”

A recent radio debate between Hayes, 54, and Boudreaux, 65, included several clashes with lingering implications. Among other things, the incumbent accused Hayes’ campaign of arranging a recent act of vandalism at her home.

On Friday, Hayes formally complained to the city Ethics Commission about Boudreaux’s assertion of a political motive behind the vandalism.

Boudreaux’s campaign manager, Jewett Walker, labeled Hayes’ complaint a “publicity stunt.”

But Hayes said: “We are presenting ourselves for leadership positions and looking for public trust. Going to the Ethics Commission to ascertain whether someone has stepped over the line demonstrates the kind of leadership I am offering.”