Union Backs Cooley in D.A. Race

In a sharp rebuke to incumbent Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, the powerful labor union representing county workers announced Thursday that it was endorsing his challenger, head Deputy Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, in part because its members believe he would be a better boss.

The endorsement by Local 660 of the Service Employees International Union was the latest in a series of politically potent endorsements for Cooley--and an unusual coup for a Republican, even one who is running for an officially nonpartisan position.

Garcetti, a Democrat, still claims the endorsements of most major labor organizations and prominent elected officials in the county. However, at least some of the endorsements he lists are from officials who no longer are in office, and at least one is from someone who is dead.

Local 660 supported Garcetti in his previous two races, in 1992 and 1996. But when the union’s political education committee voted on a candidate this year, after interviewing Cooley and Garcetti, “it wasn’t even close,” committee Chairman Gary Cramer said at a news conference at union’s headquarters.

Committee members said they were especially impressed by the testimony of workers who reported to Cooley in his posts as head deputy district attorney in the Antelope Valley and the San Fernando Valley.

“All our issues are workplace issues,” said Mark Klein, a spokesman for Local 660. “And when folks came out from the Valley and Lancaster, they were speaking in very specific terms about Steve as a boss.”

Officials of the union were reluctant to criticize Garcetti or to discuss the issues that came up in their interview with him. However, Annelle Grajada, general manager of Local 660, said union members who work for the district attorney have been complaining for some time about a lack of training and promotional opportunities in the department.

“We’ve tried to work with the current management there, and have been largely unsuccessful,” she said. Cooley seemed responsive to the union’s concerns, she said, and people who had worked for him “made a very good case that working under the supervision of Steve Cooley was something that was different from anything they had ever experienced.”

Local 660 represents more than 40,000 county workers, including about 2,000 clerical, administrative and technical workers in the district attorney’s office. Local 660 officials also said Cooley had been endorsed by a regional umbrella group, SEIU Joint Council 8, which represents about 200,000 workers throughout the Los Angeles area.

Garcetti’s campaign manager, Erik Nasarenko, said he was baffled by the endorsement, given Cooley’s past support for former Gov. Pete Wilson, no friend of organized labor.

“Garcetti has a long and accomplished record of protecting the working men and women of L.A. County,” Nasarenko added. “His office strongly enforces the prevailing wage, investigates workplace accidents and cracks down on workers’ compensation abuses.”

Local 660 spokesman Damon Moore said Cooley’s support for Wilson wasn’t a concern to the union because Cooley had opposed the Republican governor on issues of importance to the group. “He ain’t Pete Wilson’s Republican Party,” Moore said.

Still, the endorsement is unusual, given Garcetti’s standing in the Democratic Party, which traditionally has a friendly relationship with organized labor. Nasarenko ticked off a dozen labor organizations that he said have endorsed Garcetti, including the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, the AFL-CIO umbrella group for the region, and the Teamsters Joint Council 42, the parent body for all Teamsters locals in the region.

A spokesman for the federation, Neal Sacharow, said the group endorsed Garcetti before the March primary, which led to the runoff between Garcetti and Cooley. He said the organization’s political education committee would meet later this month to decide whether to extend the endorsement to the November general election.

Another labor leader, Richard Slawson of the Los Angeles-Orange County Building and Construction Trades Council, said he was surprised that Local 660 would contradict the federation endorsement. He said his local strongly supports Garcetti.

“I’m sure Mr. Cooley is a nice person, and an adequate--or, for that matter, an excellent--deputy D.A., but we have no reason to go in a different direction,” he said.

The backing from Local 660 followed several other significant endorsements for Cooley. Former Dist. Atty. and state Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp endorsed Cooley recently; so have several law enforcement organizations, including the Assn. of Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs and the Professional Peace Officers Assn.

Garcetti has a powerhouse list of endorsements himself, including most of the county’s political establishment. He has been endorsed by eight members of Congress; a raft of state officials, including Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer; County Sheriff Lee Baca; three members of the county Board of Supervisors and a majority of the Los Angeles City Council.

His Web site lists those supporters, as well as endorsements from 77 mayors of Southern California cities--not including Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, who so far has withheld an endorsement. But at least half of those listed are no longer mayors, most having been rotated out of office earlier this year. In addition, Garcetti lists an endorsement from Margaret Ferraro, the late wife of City Councilman John Ferraro. She died in January.

Nasarenko acknowledged that the list has not been updated since the beginning of the year, and that all the endorsements predate the primary election, in which Cooley finished first. However, he insisted that all of those listed were still supporting Garcetti.

“We’ll be updating it soon,” he said.