Holden Holds Off Challenge; Padilla, Pacheco Also Win

Veteran Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden held off a challenge from Madison Shockley to retain his seat Tuesday and will be joined on the council by political newcomers Alex Padilla and Nick Pacheco, who both also won runoff elections.

Holden, who has held the 10th District seat since 1987, was opposed by four other council members who had endorsed Shockley, and the incumbent jokingly promised retribution as the returns came in.

“I’m going to bury the hatchet,” he said. “I’ll bury it in their backs.”

The Shockley campaign read the closeness of the early results as a trouble sign for the incumbent. “It’s about what we expected,” said Shockley. “We’re close on his heels. That’s a good sign for us.”

With large sections of the Crenshaw district, Koreatown, and West Adams, the 10th may be the city’s most racially mixed council district. Both Holden, who has depended on a unique mix of Korean American campaign contributions and African American votes to hold his council seat, and Shockley, who convened a series of discussions on race at his church after the 1992 riots, contended that they could best build bridges among residents.

In a bitterly personal campaign, Shockley blamed Holden for the existence of bleak storefronts, filthy sidewalks and lack of new development along the district’s thoroughfares, which include Jefferson, Washington, Pico and Adams boulevards. Shockley said that in a dozen years Holden should have been able to bring more attractive retail and commercial developments to the area to replace the auto repair shops, motels and vacant lots now lining the major streets.

“The people deserve better than their boulevards,” became a Shockley rallying cry.

Holden’s campaign portrayed the incumbent as a master of constituent services, taking credit for fixed sidewalks, filled potholes and new libraries in residential neighborhoods. Warning voters that Shockley’s lack of City Hall experience would keep him from delivering neighborhood improvements, Holden dismissed his opponent by saying, “He doesn’t even know what inverse condemnation is.”

Pacheco, 26, was jubilant as he proclaimed victory late Tuesday. He credited his win to the fact opponent Victor Griego moved into the district to seek the seat. “I think the real difference was that I have real roots in the community. Everyone likes a person who doesn’t forget their roots.”

Narrowly behind in the early returns, Griego said the results justified his decision to run for office after years of helping others win elections. “It was the right decision to run. But win or lose, it’s been a great experience,” he said.

Griego and Pacheco focused their campaigns on calls for more resources for youth, better public transportation and a cleanup of contaminated industrial sites south of Boyle Heights.

But they diverged on approach. Pacheco, a deputy district attorney and member of the elected City Charter reform commission, promoted public-private partnerships as the answer to many of the district’s needs.

Griego, a well-connected political consultant with a long history of community organizing, had said he would use the City Council seat to get residents involved in their government, repeatedly citing his experience supporting striking farm workers and organizing voter registration drives.

With few political differences, the candidates clashed over other issues. Born and raised in Boyle Heights, Pacheco criticized Griego for moving into the district to run. Griego, who acknowledged that he had lived in South Pasadena for the last four years, said he had strong ties to the community, adding that his family is going to buy a house in the district.

In the last week, as organized labor put nearly $100,000 behind Griego, Pacheco criticized the involvement of “labor bosses” in the campaign. Griego said that the union support was a reflection of his history of working on labor issues like the living wage, and that he would still vote independently if elected.

Pacheco called himself a member of the “new generation of Latino politicians,” and cited his broad base of grass-roots support, including a group of Boyle Heights women calling themselves “Mothers for Nick.” That group sold tamales to raise money for T-shirts and fliers.

With heavy backing from labor unions, the youthful Padilla defeated rival Corinne Sanchez, a health agency director also running for the first time, in the race for the northeast San Fernando Valley’s 7th District seat.

“It’s time to declare victory,” he said. “Now the work begins. What we have now is an opportunity and we have to make the best of this opportunity to do the best for our community,”

Sanchez said she had to battle not only Padilla’s better-funded campaign but also independent campaigns by the Democratic Party and organized labor.

Padilla and Sanchez waged a bitter battle to complete the two years left on the council term of Richard Alarcon, who left the seat in December after he was elected to the state Senate.

Alarcon backed Sanchez, a 52-year-old director of the social service agency El Proyecto del Barrio, but Padilla lined up heavyweight support from Mayor Richard Riordan, the state Democratic Party and the County Federation of Labor. Assemblyman Tony Cardenas (D-Sylmar) also backed Padilla, his legislative aide.

Having wrapped up 48% of the vote in the April primary, compared to 25% for Sanchez, Padilla enjoyed the additional support that flows to a front-runner, which allowed him to outspend Sanchez by more than 2 to 1 in the runoff.

Independent campaigns launched in his support by the California Democratic Party and the County Federation of Labor were especially important.

The county federation, labor’s umbrella group spent nearly $100,000 on mail and phone banks targeting its 13,000 members in the mainly working-class district.

Still, the unions were so confident in Padilla that they decided to deploy just 30% of their field volunteers to the 7th District, sending the remaining 70% to the 14th District, where the union-backed Griego faced what appeared to organized labor officials to be a stiffer challenge.

In three candidate forums, Sanchez sought to portray herself as the more experienced civic leader, citing her more than two decades of work running El Proyecto, which provides job placement, health care and drug rehabilitation in the Valley.

Sanchez, a Sylmar resident, accused Padilla of being the puppet of downtown power players including Riordan and the County Federation of Labor. Padilla, in turn, said he was more qualified because he is the only candidate to have grown up in the district. After obtaining an engineering degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Padilla cut his political teeth running state campaigns for Cardenas and Alarcon.

On the issues, Sanchez said she would support breaking up the school district and Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and would support creation of a San Fernando Valley city, if a pending study found it did not harm the Valley or the rest of Los Angeles.

Padilla, a Pacoima resident who lives with his parents, supported the secession study, but said it was irresponsible to take a position on cityhood until the survey is completed.

Instead, Padilla backed the new City Charter on Tuesday’s ballot as a way to make city government more accessible and responsive to residents.

Sanchez opposed the new charter, saying it was only a half-measure for giving residents local control of decision-making, but also is too expensive and gives too much power to the mayor.

*

Times staff writer Patrick McGreevy and special correspondent Monte Morin contributed to this story.