The Man Who Listened

The death of Los Angeles City Council President John Ferraro puts an emphatic period on the end of a political era. Under term limits, never again will a politician serve 35 years on the council. Never again will someone who scarcely campaigned, with little or no opposition, be repeatedly returned to office by constituents who viewed him as a powerful protector of the district’s interests.

A skilled insider with a sometimes bumbling public persona, Ferraro’s live-and-let-live style helped form the City Council that exists today. He respected other council members’ wishes concerning their districts and expected the same in return regarding his, which sprawls from the Valley to Hollywood, mid-Wilshire and Los Feliz. It was a style that placed high value on aiding development, fixing potholes, getting the garbage picked up and listening more than talking. To that end, Ferraro hired capable staffers and expected them to accomplish what he asked. Ferraro’s was also a style that offered less encouragement to thinking about the good of the city as a whole, giving rise to the accusation that the Los Angeles City Council was composed of 15 mini-mayors.

Ferraro, appointed to the council in 1966 and elected on his own a year later, did hunger for higher office. But in both a 1974 run for county supervisor and the 1985 mayoral primary against then three-termer Tom Bradley, Ferraro’s retail-level politics, so successful in the council, did not cast a wide enough net. The popular vote was 68% to 30% in favor of Bradley, who would serve five terms before leaving politics. Ferraro had to settle for being City Council president for the majority of his years in office--no small feat in itself and one more suited to his skills as an inside player. He considered and rejected another run for mayor in 1993.

A superb athlete who attended USC on a football scholarship, Ferraro at nearly 6-feet-5 was a commanding physical presence. In public appearances, he was usually self-effacing--at a City Council meeting he could joke that a measure was so simple “even I can understand it.” In private, he could be tougher. It was Ferraro who brokered the deal for Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates to leave office in April 1992. Despite his long support of the controversial chief, Ferraro did not let Gates waver as the departure date neared, even as he tried to mute criticism of Gates by both the City Council and Mayor Bradley.

Many who knew him said Ferraro was devastated by the death in January 2000 of his second wife, Margaret, an unashamed and plain-spoken former exotic dancer. He had cared for her devotedly after a 1983 stroke left her partly paralyzed. Though Ferraro himself was long plagued by heart trouble, it was cancer of the spleen that caused his death Tuesday at 76.

With two years left in Ferraro’s term, the City Council owes it to Los Angeles to call a special election rather than appoint someone to fill the seat. No matter when or how the vacancy is filled, Ferraro’s unifying role on the council will be long remembered. As fellow City Council member Ruth Galanter said after announcing Ferraro’s death, “We are all sort of his children here. . . . It’s really hard to lose your dad.”