Debates and Early Start Set D.A.’s Race Apart

They have held more debates than Lincoln and Douglas.

They have faced more stale luncheon fare than a Shriner, lobbed more lame jokes than a Rotarian, orated until their throats were throbbing and their voices hoarse--to what end?

Labor Day may be the traditional kickoff of the campaign season, but Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti and his challenger, head Deputy Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, have been campaigning furiously for months. And yet most voters still haven’t focused on the race, and the real campaign--the televised, $50,000-a-minute one that is the be-all and end-all of modern politics--probably won’t begin for another month.

Have they wasted their time?

No, insist the candidates’ campaign consultants. The debates, the endless speeches have gotten the candidates on the radar screens--if not of the general public, then of influential opinion leaders who theoretically can sway large blocs of votes.

Moreover, most of the candidates’ time has been taken up with fund-raisers--generally, small gatherings of targeted interest groups--that have provided the money needed to get their messages out in October.

Cooley and Garcetti have debated each other nine times since the March primary, and have at least four more debates planned before the Nov. 7 general election. Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas debated only seven times in their 1858 U.S. Senate campaign, which set the standard for all future political confrontations.

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst at Claremont Graduate University, said she had never heard of a campaign that included so many debates. “It’s incredible,” she said. Similarly, Cooley spokesman Joe Scott, who has more than 30 years’ experience as a political consultant and journalist in Los Angeles, said he couldn’t recall “anything remotely close to this. It’s a staggering number of debates.”

Jeffe agreed with the two campaigns’ managers that the debates were probably not a wasted effort. “It’s a decent tactic,” she said. Jeffe said Cooley probably has more to gain than Garcetti, simply because the debates give him the exposure that he needs.

“Unless Cooley stumbles badly, it’s not going to hurt him and it could help him,” she said.

But for Garcetti, too, she said, the debates have had value. If nothing else, they have given him an opportunity to test themes that could be used in later campaign advertising--and to hope for a blunder by his opponent, ideally one that can be replayed for voters in October.

Each Camp Has Its Own Themes

The two camps say their messages are now set.

For Garcetti, the campaign will revolve around three themes, campaign manager Eric Nasarenko said: crime prevention, gun control and the three-strikes law. Garcetti supports all three, and will try to show that Cooley doesn’t.

For Cooley, the main issue is the Rampart scandal, campaign consultant John Shallman said. The O.J. Simpson case, which dominated Garcetti’s last campaign in 1996, “pales by comparison,” the consultant said. At the same time, “We need to talk about who Steve Cooley is . . . to talk about his accomplishments, to talk about his endorsements.”

In the campaign so far, Garcetti has been the more disciplined about sticking to his themes. Asked about the weather, he will probably find a way to relate it to the crime prevention programs that, he says, are his proudest accomplishment.

At the same time, he has periodically come up with new, hot-button issues--gun control, abortion--that have diverted attention from Cooley’s attacks, even though the contrast he has tried to draw with Cooley has been largely illusory.

Cooley has been less successful in sticking to his Rampart theme. He has lashed out at Garcetti on a variety of issues that haven’t always registered with his audiences. “One week it’s Chuck Quackenbush, the next week it’s Belmont, and then it’s some vague reference to public corruption,” Nasarenko said scornfully but not inaccurately.

Cooley has argued at various points that Garcetti should investigate Quackenbush, the former state insurance commissioner; should look into possible environmental crimes at the Belmont Learning Complex site; and should be more aggressive about rooting out public corruption.

And yet, Cooley’s message has been focused in one sense: He has been relentless in attacking Garcetti. He has called him a failed prosecutor, with lax ethics and a lax managerial style. Together, he says, these qualities have shamed the office and led to systemic breakdowns, such as the failure of the district attorney’s office to spot corruption in an anti-gang unit of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Division.

“If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on Cooley,” said former Democratic strategist Jorge Flores, now a public affairs consultant in Los Angeles. “The temperature out there just doesn’t bode well for Garcetti. And this is one race where people remember the job you’ve done.”

Flores managed the campaign of another veteran law enforcement deputy who challenged his boss: Lee Baca, who won his race for Los Angeles County sheriff in 1998.

Of course, Baca’s candidacy got a significant boost when his opponent, Sheriff Sherman Block, died shortly before the election. Garcetti, a fitness fanatic who looks as if he could run a marathon tomorrow, is unlikely to grant Cooley any such favor.

There are many other sharp contrasts between the two races, but there are also significant parallels.

Cooley and Baca are moderate Republicans with an ability to appear both tough and progressive. Both have appealed to diverse ethnic groups; both have reached out to the gay community in their campaigns; both are long-serving deputies who challenged vulnerable bosses.

In Baca’s case, he challenged a sheriff who was popular but, many people felt, had served too long and was too ill to do the job--a perception that proved to be true.

Cooley is trying to unseat an incumbent prosecutor who has not been particularly popular for years and who has been damaged by his association with two tumultuous episodes in the city’s recent history: the acquittal of Simpson in the most closely watched murder trial of its era, and the Rampart scandal, involving allegations of perjury, evidence tampering and even murder by police officers.

In the 1998 primary election, Block received just 36% of the vote in a four-way race, forcing a runoff with the second-place Baca. In this year’s March primary, Garcetti received 37% of the vote in a three-way race, forcing a runoff with the first-place Cooley.

Block managed to pull in 39% of the vote in the 1998 general election--a remarkable feat for a dead man. Cooley will face a much livelier opponent, and one with enough money--more than $1 million--to get his message out to virtually every voter. The campaign may have begun in March, but it’s far from over.