Woo Finds Once Again That It’s Little Things That Count

Running for Los Angeles City Council is anything but glamorous. Candidates start their campaigns talking about their plans to end poverty and social injustice and they finish the race promising to fill potholes and put in more speed bumps.

Take former Councilman Mike Woo, who has slogged through half a dozen political campaigns over the years. In his quest for a political comeback in the 13th Council District, Woo vowed to make the fight for more affordable housing his No. 1 priority. But then came the call from a man in Elysian Valley who was having a terrible rat problem. As he made his final push for Tuesday’s election, the council candidate ended up arranging for traps, in between making phone calls to City Hall to get a stop sign at a dangerous intersection in Silver Lake.

Such are the nitty-gritty details of running for local office and courting voters. People want to know what candidates are going to do to fix their sidewalks. They want to know when the city plans to trim the palm trees. And sometimes, they just want someone to listen to their problems.

Grueling Experience

Fortunately for Woo, who went down to defeat once again Tuesday, he likes campaigning. It’s a great excuse to actually walk in Los Angeles, to knock on people’s doors and really listen to how they feel about their neighborhoods and their city. It’s a chance to greet churchgoers outside a Spanish-language Mass, dance at a Thai festival, eat steamed rice, noodles and seasoned beef at a Korean church function and snack on fresh cherries bought from a street vendor--all in one morning.

Some people train for the marathon, others run for office. The lucky ones figure out how to make the most of a grueling experience--or at the very least, they learn to wear comfortable shoes.

“I’ve always felt in better physical shape at the end of the campaign than before,” said Woo, who during the last 20 years has been in six campaigns, four of them in the council district that stretches from Hollywood to Echo Park.

Like other candidates seeking city seats, Woo has raised tens of thousands of dollars, knocked on hundreds of doors, made phone calls from noon until 8 p.m., participated in more than a dozen forums and sent out a stack of mailers--some of them well done and others misleading.

Woo’s campaign was peppered with phone calls in recent days from residents upset over the fliers he sent out attacking his opponent, Eric Garcetti, whom Woo portrayed as an inexperienced kid who was handpicked by Mayor Richard Riordan to ruin the 13th District.

Garcetti responded with an angry dispatch blaming Woo for all of Hollywood’s past problems--criticism some believe is not entirely undeserved.

But Woo--who has lost more campaigns than he has won over the years--just shook off the barbs.

“I think people who have not been through this before have different kinds of reactions,” said Woo, who served two terms on the council in the 1980s. “Some people have been reacting to the ferocity of the mail on both sides. I’ve been through worse than this. This is not so bad.”

He said the hardest campaign he ever waged was the mayoral race against Richard Riordan in 1993. Woo ended up coming in a close second.

“That was a much more emotionally and physically draining experience,” Woo said. “After going through lots of late-night car rides from Chatsworth to San Pedro, it was very tough.”

But within months after his loss to Riordan, Woo was on the campaign trail again, this time running for secretary of state. He ended up coming in second, however, in the Democratic primary.

After that loss, he went to work at a nonprofit agency that helps residents find affordable housing. Last year, he decided that he wanted to run for council again, saying that he believed he still had a lot to offer the district, which includes some of the city’s worst pockets of poverty.

Recruiting Volunteers

At first, Woo was considered a shoo-in for the seat he once held, but his campaign never really took off before the April election. He finished second behind Garcetti, placing him in the runoff.

In the last five weeks, Woo had worked doubly hard to try to catch up with his foe. His new campaign staff worried that too much ground had been lost early.

Woo responded by launching an effort similar to Garcetti’s spirited, door-to-door campaign. He asked every teenager he met if they would volunteer to help hand out fliers. Many did.

At 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, the young volunteers were already on the streets of Silver Lake, hanging Woo’s literature on doorknobs.

Several weeks ago, Woo started giving out his cell phone number, just in case residents needed to reach him. On Tuesday, one man called just to let him know that he voted for him and that he urged his friends to do the same. A young girl called four times to ask if he knew George Bush. Woo said he did not. Another man called to complain about all his negative campaign literature.

After fielding the calls, he decided to hit the streets yet again. Win or lose, Woo said, he has finally figured out the best shoes for climbing asphalt hills. And he’s still available by phone, for those who want to know.