Few Drawn to Race for L.A. City Attorney

With no incumbent on the ballot, and with term limits forcing career politicians to scramble for different posts, the contest to become Los Angeles’ next city attorney has drawn a surprisingly small field of candidates.

But that doesn’t mean the race to succeed 16-year incumbent James K. Hahn--now termed out and running for mayor in the April 10 municipal elections--will not be costly. Or contentious.

First to jump into the contest was Councilman Mike Feuer, who launched his campaign two years ago on a platform built around gun controls, environmental protections and political reform.

Political experts say his strongest competitor is Deputy Mayor Rocky Delgadillo, who is Mayor Richard Riordan’s point man on business and economic development--but who has yet to receive his boss’ endorsement.

Another contender is Deputy Dist. Atty. Lea Purwin D’Agostino, a veteran prosecutor of high-profile cases who relishes the nickname one criminal bestowed on her: the Dragon Lady.

“Mike Feuer’s got the name ID, but Rocky Delgadillo’s got the deeper Rolodex” of potential supporters, said Howard Sunkin, vice president of Cerrell Associates, a Los Angeles political consulting and lobbying firm.

Feuer has a strong base of Jews and liberals, while Delgadillo can draw on Latinos and moderates and is likely to benefit from the expected strong get-out-the-vote drives of the two main Latino candidates for mayor, Sunkin said. Look for D’Agostino to position herself as the City Hall outsider who has been putting criminals behind bars, he added.

Delgadillo and Feuer had raised more than half a million dollars apiece by year’s end. With both accepting public matching funds--and the spending limit that comes with them--each will have as much as $990,000 to spend on the primary campaign.

D’Agostino lags in fund-raising--she had collected about $158,000 by Dec. 31, the end of the last reporting period. But, as the only woman in the race, and as the candidate who has won endorsements from every major police group in the city, political experts say, she cannot be counted out.

Her presence in the race makes it harder for either Feuer or Delgadillo to draw the majority vote needed to win the seat in the April primary, and increases the likelihood that the two top vote-getters will have to duke it out in a runoff June 5.

A fourth candidate, Deputy Dist. Atty. Frank Tavelman, 45, will be on the ballot, but if early fund-raising is any indication, will not have the resources to reach many voters. He had raised less than $15,000 by year’s end.

Earlier this week, D’Agostino, who had promised an aggressive campaign, launched an attack on Feuer by lodging a complaint about Feuer’s fund-raising with the city’s Ethics Commission, which oversees the city’s stringent campaign finance and lobbying laws.

In her complaint, D’Agostino said she had obtained a copy of an April 1999 fund-raising letter in which Feuer told potential donors their dollars will be matched by public dollars.

However, contributions made more than one year before an election cannot qualify for matching funds. Feuer, during an October 1999 hearing on proposed rule changes, urged the commission to allow donations to be matched throughout the fund-raising period. At a later meeting, however, Feuer said the change should not be made for the current election.

The fund-raising letter was “blatantly unethical and misleading,” D’Agostino said in her letter to the Ethics Commission. She called for an investigation.

LeeAnn Pelham, the commission’s executive director, said the city’s confidentiality laws prevent her from commenting on any aspects of a complaint.

“The fact is that Mike Feuer’s campaign has not applied for any matching funds for which it is not entitled,” said Feuer campaign consultant Larry Levine. “As with so many other things, [D’Agostino] simply has her facts wrong.”

Feuer has worked for stricter ethics rules during the six years he represented the Westside and San Fernando Valley’s 5th Council District. He has tried to position himself as the “good government” candidate. And he makes a point of refusing contributions from lobbyists and political action committees.

Feuer, 42, who graduated with honors from Harvard and Harvard Law School, was executive director of Bet Tzedek Legal Services before winning his council seat in a 1995 special election.

Earnest and articulate, he has pushed for gun controls, charter reforms and neighborhood protections. Feuer’s endorsements include those of a host of Democratic elected officials, such environmental groups as the Sierra Club and the Los Angeles League of Conservation Voters, the Mexican American Bar Assn. and some labor unions.

He views the $70-million, 430-lawyer city attorney’s office as “the largest public interest law firm in the world” and says he would use the office to continue to push for protections for children, the elderly, neighborhoods and the environment.

Delgadillo, 40, was raised on Los Angeles’ Eastside, graduated from Harvard and returned to his alma mater, Franklin High School in Highland Park, to teach and coach several sports for a year.

After law school at Columbia, the outgoing, personable Delgadillo joined the prominent downtown law firm O’Melveny & Myers. The firm lent him to Rebuild L.A. in the wake of the 1992 riots. Shortly after Riordan’s election later that year, Delgadillo signed on as director of economic development, becoming one of few top aides who has been with the mayor for most of Riordan’s nearly eight years in office.

While a number of Riordan backers are supporting Delgadillo’s campaign, the mayor has not, despite his habit of publicly, and generously, backing candidates in other races.

Saying he needs to maintain a good working relationship with Delgadillo and Feuer, who heads the council’s budget committee, Riordan said this week that he probably would stay neutral.

Lest his neutrality be interpreted as dislike for Delgadillo, Riordan added that his top economic aide “is terrific. He’s done a great job. I tell people that all the time.”

Delgadillo says his top priorities in the city attorney’s office would be to improve neighborhood and school safety.

His supporters include former Secretary of State Warren Christopher, a host of legal and business interests, several Latino elected officials and Caprice Young, who worked in the mayor’s office with Delgadillo before Riordan helped her win a seat on the Los Angeles school board.

D’Agostino, who refuses to disclose her age, portrays herself as an outsider, “the only person who can make a difference.” She is passionate and outspoken.

“I’m tough, I’m experienced and I’m not tied in to the special interests,” said D’Agostino, a 23-year veteran of the district attorney’s office.

She ran unsuccessfully against her boss, then-Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner, in 1988, and in 1995, she was seeking the council seat ultimately won by Feuer when she was disqualified from the ballot because she had not collected enough voters’ signatures.

Still, D’Agostino insists she is “a prosecutor, not a politician,” who started work as an administrative assistant to movie mogul David O. Selznick before getting her law degree at the University of West Los Angeles. Among her best known cases were that of the “Alphabet Bomber,” who in 1974 planted a bomb at Los Angeles International Airport that killed three people, and the “Twilight Zone” manslaughter trial, which stemmed from a helicopter accident during filming of a movie. She won the first case, but all defendants in the second trial were acquitted.

The candidates will debate tonight before an audience of their peers during a Los Angeles County Bar Assn.-sponsored forum at UCLA Law School.