Cooley Bests Garcetti in Recent Fund-Raising

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, struggling to regain momentum in his campaign for reelection, has run well behind challenger Steve Cooley in fund-raising since the March 7 primary, according to campaign spending reports due Monday.

Garcetti still has more than twice as much money as Cooley to spend in the campaign, having vastly out-raised him in the preprimary period. However, the fact that the incumbent raised about $100,000 less than Cooley since the primary is the latest sign that Garcetti could be in for a far tougher fight than four years ago, when he won reelection by a sliver.

Summaries of the expenditure reports from the two campaigns show that Cooley, a top deputy to Garcetti, received $574,000 between Feb. 20 and June 30, the latest reporting period in the campaign. Garcetti received $494,000 during the same period, although $20,000 of it was in the form of a loan.

The full campaign expenditure reports, including listings of everyone who contributed $100 or more, are due to be filed with the county registrar-recorder Monday, but the two campaigns made the summary pages available Friday.

Garcetti placed second in the March primary, throwing him into a runoff with Cooley, the top vote-getter. The district attorney has been widely perceived as vulnerable this year, in part because he barely won four years ago and in part because of public anger over the Rampart police corruption scandal.

“We exceeded our expectations,” said John Shallman, Cooley’s campaign manager. He said Garcetti’s fund-raising report “suggests his support is dissipating, and people are rejecting his bid for a third term--not just the voters, but his own fund-raising base.”

Charley Dobbs, finance director for Garcetti’s campaign, insisted that the incumbent was in good shape as he headed toward the November runoff.

Garcetti has nearly $1 million in his campaign treasury, compared with nearly $400,000 for Cooley. Dobbs said she thought Cooley would be unable to raise much more.

“He’s taken from all the deputy D.A.s he can take from, and all the judges he can take from . . . so I think he’s kind of hit the wall,” she said. “We’re in great shape. We’re at almost a million, and our plan is on track to reach our goal.”

Dobbs said she thought Cooley had out-raised Garcetti during the latest reporting period because “it was his honeymoon period” after his first-place finish in March. She also said he benefited from a Los Angeles Times poll in April that showed him leading Garcetti by 55% to 18%.

Joe Cerrell, a veteran Democratic political consultant, also mentioned the poll and said he wasn’t surprised that Cooley had out-raised Garcetti. “You’ve got people who are fence-sitters . . . and decided, gee, things are looking pretty good for Cooley.”

He said he thought Garcetti would “really crank it up” and increase his fund-raising efforts after Labor Day, and that his overall lead in cash would serve him well.

Some said Cooley’s success in fund-raising did not bode well for Garcetti, however.

Arnold Steinberg, a Republican political consultant, said it was “noteworthy and unusual” for any challenger to raise more money than an incumbent, and that Cooley’s momentum could build on itself.

“It’s certainly going to draw some of the opportunistic money from donors who want to support the winning side,” Steinberg said. He said he expects an increase in donors’ “hedging their bets” by contributing to both sides.

Although Cooley remains far behind Garcetti in overall assets, he is doing vastly better than Garcetti’s 1996 opponent, John Lynch, who lost to Garcetti by 5,000 votes out of more than 2.2 million cast.

Cooley has raised about $900,000 so far in his campaign, adding up the totals from all reporting periods.

At this point four years ago, Lynch had raised just $113,000, according to Shallman. Lynch ultimately spent just $407,000 in the campaign, compared with $2.4 million for Garcetti.

Lynch said Friday that his difficulty in raising money early in the campaign proved fatal. “Every time we’d file a financial statement, we’d take a hit, because everybody would say, ‘He doesn’t have any money; he doesn’t have a chance,’ ” he said.

Cooley should be able to avoid that problem now, he said, and may actually benefit from Lynch’s narrow loss in 1996. Donors who thought Lynch had no chance may now realize that Garcetti is vulnerable and decide to help Cooley, Lynch said.

“You need money to drive the engine, and he appears to be getting it,” Lynch said.