Garcetti Far Behind in Race for 3rd Term

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti is in grim shape politically as he campaigns for a third term in office, and appears to be taking the brunt of voters’ anger over the Rampart police scandal, a Los Angeles Times poll shows.

Garcetti trails challenger Steve Cooley 55% to 18% with seven months remaining until the November election--a remarkable deficit for an incumbent. Garcetti is behind Cooley in every part of the county, among black and white voters and members of both major political parties. Even voters who approve of Garcetti’s performance in office--a distinct minority--appear reluctant to give him a third term.

Twenty-six percent of those polled had not made up their minds. However, if Garcetti were to get all those votes, he would still trail by 11 percentage points.

Although it’s still early in the campaign, and Garcetti has not even begun political advertising, the poll of Los Angeles County residents suggests that the district attorney has a difficult battle ahead.

“He really should just retire gracefully,” said one poll respondent, Westside real estate agent Sally Brant, who said she voted for Garcetti in 1992 and 1996 but will vote for Cooley this time. “It’s time to let go.”

That, in fact, is what Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner did in 1992, when he stepped aside and ceded the election to Garcetti, then one of his top deputies. Garcetti has shown no sign of taking a similar course, and appears to be relishing the chance to take on Cooley, one of his top deputies.

“I’m a fighter,” he said the day after placing second to Cooley in the March 7 primary. “You haven’t seen me fight yet.”

A campaign advisor to Garcetti, Bill Carrick, said the district attorney’s campaign would have no immediate response to the poll. Cooley said he found the poll results “very encouraging.”

“The citizens of Los Angeles County clearly understand Garcetti’s failure to exercise independent prosecutorial oversight in handling the Rampart crisis,” Cooley said in a prepared statement. “Our strong position means that voters have rejected his negative, partisan campaign tactics and his refusal to debate. I will continue to take my message of change . . . all the way to Nov. 7.”

If Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan were Teflon candidates, able to rinse away scandal with ease, Garcetti appears to be the opposite--a flypaper candidate. While Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks and Mayor Richard Riordan are largely spared blame for the Rampart scandal, 50% of Los Angeles city respondents and 41% of county respondents in the Times poll said they thought Garcetti had acted irresponsibly in his handling of the Rampart corruption case. Only about one-quarter said he had acted responsibly.

The figures for Parks, with whom Garcetti has feuded over how to handle the police corruption case, are almost precisely the reverse. Fifty-four percent of Los Angeles city residents thought the chief had acted responsibly, while 25% said he had been irresponsible.

Parks and Riordan have sharply criticized Garcetti for going too slowly in prosecuting corrupt officers in the Rampart Division anti-gang unit. Garcetti has insisted that he is simply trying to be thorough, and will take as much time as he needs to build solid cases. He has accused Parks of refusing to cooperate with him, a charge the police chief has denied.

In all, 49% of the voters polled said Garcetti’s response to Rampart would make them less likely to vote for him.

“That’s very unusual,” said Susan Pinkus, director of the Times Poll. “Usually, events are not that dramatic for a candidate.”

She noted that the Monica Lewinsky affair, far from harming Clinton politically, had no effect on his support. Similarly, she said, the Iran-Contra scandal did little damage to Reagan’s approval ratings. In both cases, voters’ goodwill toward the men appeared to cancel out any negative feelings they had about the scandals.

Mark Schreiber, a defense lawyer who lives in Calabasas, said he had been disappointed with Garcetti for years, and now intends to vote for Cooley, in part because of Garcetti’s response to Rampart.

“I do not get a sense of a partnership with Bernard Parks . . . who I think has acted very responsibly,” Schreiber said.

Kent Moore, a retired aerospace worker who lives in South-Central Los Angeles, said he is leaning toward Garcetti, in part out of loyalty to the Democratic Party. Although the race officially is nonpartisan, Moore said he was aware that Garcetti is a Democrat and Cooley a Republican.

But even Moore said he thought that Garcetti had handled Rampart poorly. “This is really the only negative thing I’ve found that I didn’t like about him,” he said. “You know, the whole thing between him and Parks was kind of childish and immature.”

In some cases, people seemed to simply dislike Garcetti, regardless of his policies. “He just strikes me as a very slick politician,” said Collin Ring, a Claremont resident who works in drug testing and said he would vote for Cooley although he knows very little about him.

“I’d just like to see new blood,” he said.

Only about one-fourth of those polled said they thought Garcetti was doing a good job, a sharp decline from six years ago, when Garcetti had a 45% approval rating in a Times poll. Two years after that, he barely won reelection against challenger John Lynch.

Even among those in the latest poll who said they thought Garcetti was doing a good job, only 49% said they would vote for him--and 24% said they would vote for Cooley.

When Cooley voters were asked to give two reasons why they would vote for him, 53% said they disliked Garcetti and 51% said it was time for a new district attorney. Relatively few cited any positive qualities in Cooley, suggesting that they don’t know much about him.

Only 2% of Garcetti voters said they would vote for him because they disliked Cooley.

Garcetti’s poor showing in the poll was striking for its sheer breadth. He was the choice of only 22% of Democrats and 12% of Republicans; 21% of liberals and 17% of conservatives; 13% of whites and 13% of African Americans.

Garcetti, who is of Mexican descent, held his own only among Latinos, with 34% to Cooley’s 35%--a dead heat, statistically. Asian Americans were also surveyed, but not enough responses from registered voters were recorded to break out that group separately.

Garcetti did poorly in every part of the county, polling in the teens in every region except the north county, where he was the choice of 24% of respondents.

The Times poll interviewed 2,202 residents countywide, including 1,630 registered voters, March 29 through April 5. The margin of error for both groups is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Garcetti Gap

If the election for L.A. County district attorney were held today, for whom would you vote?

County registered voters

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All Whites Blacks Latinos Gil Garcetti 18% 13% 13% 34% Steve Cooley 55% 60% 53% 35% Other(volunteered) 1% 1% 1% 1% Don’t know 26% 26% 33% 30%

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The D.A.’s Race

Voters are upset over alleged misconduct in the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division and they are taking it out on Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti. He has a negative job approval rating and nearly half of voters say they are less likely to vote for him because of the controversy.

Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti job approval rating:

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All L.A. City of Rest of County Los Angeles L.A. County Approve 26% 25% 26% Disapprove 42% 53% 35% Don’t know 32% 22% 39%

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Does the way Gil Garcetti has handled the controversy about police misconduct in the LAPD’s Rampart Division make you more or less likely to vote for him for L.A. County district attorney this November?

County registered voters

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All Whites Blacks Latinos More likely 6% 4% 4% 11% Less likely 49% 52% 50% 36% No effect 37% 38% 34% 45% Don’t know 8% 6% 12% 8%

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In handling the Rampart police scandal, have these officials behaved responsibly or irresponsibly?

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L.A. County LAPD Chief Mayor Dist. Atty. Bernard Richard Gil Garcetti C. Parks Riordan City residents

Responsibly 24% 54% 48% Irresponsibly 50% 25% 27% County residents

Responsibly 25% 48% 46% Irresponsibly 41% 26% 21%

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Notes: All questions were asked of Los Angeles County residents. Numbers may not total 100% where “Don’t know” responses are not shown.

Source: Los Angeles Times Poll

How the Poll Was Conducted

The Times Poll contacted 2,202 residents of Los Angeles County, which included an oversample of 610 L.A. city residents (for a total of 1,219 city residents), by telephone March 29-April 5. Included in the sample were 1,630 registered county voters. Telephone numbers were chosen from a list of all exchanges in Los Angeles County. Random-digit dialing techniques were used so that listed and unlisted numbers could be contacted. The entire sample was weighted slightly to conform with census figures for sex, race, age, education and region. The margin of sampling error for the entire sample, registered voters and city residents is plus or minus 3 percentage points. For certain subgroups the error margin may be somewhat higher. Poll results can also be affected by factors such as question wording and the order in which questions are presented. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. Asians were interviewed as part of the overall sample, but there were not enough Asian registered voters to show as a separate subgroup.

Times Poll results are also available at

https://www.latimes.com/timespoll