A Charged Garcetti and Cool Cooley Near the Finish Line

The sun hadn’t yet peeked over the San Gabriel Mountains when Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti began campaigning Sunday, barely six hours after he quit trolling for votes the night before.

Arriving at the Burbank studios of KROQ-FM (106.7), Garcetti was, as usual, impeccably groomed, freshly shaved, his cheeks pink and his eyes bright.

It was 6:30 a.m.

For the next 15 or more hours, Garcetti would crisscross Los Angeles County in a last, frantic effort to nail down support for what many believe could be his final bid for elected office. Garcetti is widely believed to be trailing challenger Steve Cooley as the two head into their runoff election Tuesday.

Cooley campaigned Sunday too, visiting a church in South-Central Los Angeles, two Asian American events in the San Gabriel Valley and walking precincts in his own neighborhood of Toluca Lake. But his day was positively somnolent by comparison with Garcetti’s, reflecting either the self-confidence of a winner or the inexperience of a political neophyte.

Both men have been campaigning almost daily since at least January, delivering hundreds of speeches, raising millions of dollars and debating each other head-to-head 15 times. As election day nears, Cooley, 53, is maintaining his stride in a sort of steady-as-she-goes rhythm, while Garcetti, 59, is driving himself ever faster and harder, a man on a mission. He has taken to deriding Cooley as “a tired prosecutor,” as if someone could campaign day and night for the better part of a year without getting tired.

Garcetti began Sunday with 13 events on his schedule, the same number as the day before. As the day went on, events were added, events were scratched, and Garcetti made it clear that he would speak to any group, anywhere, any time, so long as he could shoehorn it into his schedule.

“That’s what this is all about--getting out there, being heard, listening to people,” he told KROQ host Scott Mason at his first stop, the station’s “Open Line” public affairs program.

He was rewarded with at least one promised vote, that of a caller named Kristin who said she had intended to berate him over his office’s child support enforcement policies, but changed her mind after listening to him outline his record.

“You’ve got some amazing things in your office and I’m going to totally vote for you,” she gushed.

That, Garcetti noted later, left only about 4 million other voters to persuade.

Cooley began his day with an 8 a.m. church service at First African Methodist Episcopal Church in South-Central, listening to the fiery Rev. Cecil Murray deliver a decidedly nonpolitical sermon about gospel music. As a first-time visitor to the church, Cooley was not asked to speak, but he, his daughter, Shannon, and his campaign spokesman, Joe Scott, were introduced to the crowd jamming the huge church.

Cooley waved a bit stiffly, not smiling, and sat down. Afterward, church political affairs director Kerman Maddox, who is also a television commentator and pollical activist, introduced him to parishioners outside.

“There’s only two elections people talk to me about,” Maddox said. “Proposition 38, the vouchers initiative, and the district attorney’s race. . . . Those two issues have more impact in this community than anything else on the ballot.”

Asked who he thought would win the district attorney’s race, Maddox didn’t hesitate. “I think Steve Cooley’s going to win, and I think he’s going to do very well in the ethnic communities.”

Cooley Woos Ethnic Voters

Cooley has also forged strong ties in Asian American communities, and spent part of Sunday afternoon speaking to a Vietnamese-Chinese community event in Alhambra, and to the Filipino-American Political Groups Assn. in Eagle Rock.

“We’re all celebrating his victory already,” said Ernest Ignacio, the financial officer of the association. The group’s chairman, Tony Camcam, said many Filipino Americans have been unhappy with Garcetti over his office’s loss in the O.J. Simpson case, echoing the concerns of many other voters.

At First A.M.E., Maddox said African American voters have been unhappy with Garcetti’s relatively strict enforcement of the three-strikes law and his handling of the case of Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt, whose murder conviction was overturned after he had spent 27 years behind bars. Pratt’s defense criticized Garcetti for taking too long to step forward with information that led to Pratt’s release.

Superficially, Garcetti would appear to be the more likely candidate to win support in the African American community. He grew up in South-Central Los Angeles, is a Democrat and has placed a priority on crime prevention programs--the hallmark of a liberal prosecutor--during his two terms in office. Although the office of district attorney is officially nonpartisan, Garcetti has exploited his party affiliation, given the county’s 2-1 Democratic edge.

“There’s only one Democrat running for district attorney,” he told his audience at Greater Bethany Community Church. “Just remember that.”

But Cooley, while a Republican, has taken a more lenient position on the three-strikes law, and has gone so far as to accuse Garcetti of “effective racial profiling” in his enforcement of the law, which mandates 25-years-to-life terms for three-time losers.

Warm Receptions for Garcetti

Still, Garcetti received warm receptions at six predominantly black churches Sunday morning, and delivered some of the most impassioned speeches heard in the campaign so far.

At the New Antioch Church of God in Christ on South Vermont Avenue, the Rev. James A. Lewis Sr. introduced Garcetti as “our candidate, our choice.”

“This is a great man, folks,” he told his parishioners.

On that note, Garcetti, speaking without notes and seemingly off the cuff, delivered one of the best and most emotional speeches of his campaign.

He drew gasps from the audience when he related how he had been approached that morning by a woman who told him she had lost both her sons to gunfire in separate incidents in the past few days. That served as a lead-in to Garcetti’s favorite topic, the crime prevention programs he has championed.

“To prevent crime is always better than to prosecute someone after a crime,” he said.

He spoke, as he often does, about his upbringing, within walking distance of the church. He spoke of his ne’er-do-well father, rescued from a life of crime by his mother. “Women do marvelous things for men,” he said, in one of his best applause lines all day.

Someone approached with a handkerchief, which Garcetti accepted to wipe his brow. “Thank you,” he said. “I get worked up here.”

Then Garcetti did something that caught even his top aides by surprise. He spoke for the first time in the campaign about his diagnosis and recovery from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma 20 years ago. Holding the crowd at rapt attention, he issued a declaration that could serve as a benediction for his campaign: “Life isn’t always fair, but life is good if you don’t give up on it. . . . You never give up hope!”