Court Clears Mike Woo to Run for His Old Council Seat

Mike Woo has been cleared to attempt a comeback.

The two-term city councilman from Hollywood, who resigned in 1993 to run unsuccessfully for mayor, had been barred by the city clerk from running again.

The clerk, acting on the advice of the city attorney, cited a provision of the new City Charter that limits elected city officials to two terms in office.

But a three-judge panel of the state Court of Appeal ruled unanimously Wednesday that if that provision were taken literally, the seven members of the City Council that have served more than two terms would have to resign immediately.

The justices said that city voters never intended the two-term limit to apply absolutely to people such as these incumbents and Woo, who were elected and, in Woo’s case, resigned from office before voters had put any kind of term limits in place.

Woo is seeking to reclaim his old 13th Council District seat--one of eight on the City Council that are up for grabs next spring. The 13th is being vacated by Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, who took office as the two-term limit took effect in 1993 and could not run for reelection to a third term next year. She is running for state Assembly instead.

The crowded field seeking to replace her includes her brother, Arthur Goldberg, Conrado Terrazas, Eric Garcetti, the son of Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, community activist Bennett Kayser, Sandra Farrington-Domingue, Scott Wildman and Geoffrey Saldiva.

Woo is working as the director of Los Angeles programs for the Local Initiatives Support Corp., a nonprofit group that provides low-interest loans to community groups for affordable housing projects. He could not be reached for comment. But his attorney, Fredric Woocher, said the appeals court ruling was “exactly what we argued.”

Woo was surprised, Woocher said, when the city clerk told him he could not run. The old City Charter stated explicitly that the two-term limits would apply only to those who were elected in 1993 or thereafter.

But the City Charter approved by voters last year dropped the reference to 1993. Therefore, the city clerk and city attorney inferred, voters who approved it intended to apply the two-term limit to everyone. A Superior Court judge agreed.

The Court of Appeal, however, said voters could have had no such intention and presumably had no knowledge they were changing anything, unless they took the time to study changes in the proposed new charter word for word. That is because summaries in the official voter booklet stated that the new Charter “retains current term limits for elected city officials.”