Rivals Paint Selves as Best Hope for a District in Despair

By HUGO MARTIN

May 31, 2001 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

In the Los Angeles City Council district with the highest poverty rate and one of the most overcrowded housing markets, there is little dispute over the challenges the next council member will face.

Instead, the candidates for the 9th Council District seat--former council aide Jan Perry and Assemblyman Carl Washington (D-Paramount)--are debating who has the experience and character to rescue the district from the bottom rankings of poverty and despair.

The district stretches from Little Tokyo and the downtown Civic Center south to the hard-boiled streets of South-Central Los Angeles. Councilwoman Rita Walters, who represented the district for 10 years, is retiring due to term limits.

Perry, Walters’ former chief of staff, has emphasized her many years of City Hall experience working for three council members and two mayors. She is a former urban planner with a master’s degree in public administration, which she vows to use to revitalize the economically depressed areas in the district.

“I’m the best one to bring economic development to the district,” said Perry, who is married and has one school-age child.

Washington, who has served two terms in the Assembly representing the nearby communities of Paramount, Compton, Lynwood, Gardena and Watts, touts his legislative experience in Sacramento. He also emphasizes his efforts in 1992 to mediate a truce between warring gangs, for which he won the Reebok International Human Rights Award.

“I’m the only elected official in this race,” Washington said. “I’m the only one with a track record.”

Washington and Perry won the chance to face off after finishing ahead of four other candidates in the April 10 general election. Washington won 34% of the vote, while Perry got 29%.

In the funding race, Perry received $113,000 in contributions for her runoff bid as of May 19, while Washington has raised $69,000, according to campaign records.

The district’s 250,000 residents had long been predominantly African American, dating to early in the last century when blacks moved to the area from the South. Today, however, the district is an entry point for immigrants from Mexico and Central America who, along with their children, constitute more than 60% of the population. Blacks constitute about a third of the residents.

At candidate forums and other campaign events, residents and business owners have complained about deteriorating parks, streets and schools in the district. They said jobs and after-school programs are in short supply, while gangs continue to proliferate.

Washington, 36, said that if he is elected,he will use his connections in Sacramento to secure money for after-school programs and funding for business improvement districts.

But more than anything, Washington said, he will be available to hear the concerns of the constituents and their ideas for solving problems.

“I don’t have one thing that is a priority, I have a whole district that is a priority,” said Washington, a former Baptist preacher who can be a very moving speaker.

The Assembly district that Washington has represented for eight years does not include any part of the 9th Council District. But Washington noted that before he was a state lawmaker, he worked for eight years as an aide to Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, whose district includes most of South Los Angeles.

Perry, 45, who most recently worked as Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan’s minority census outreach manager, said one of her priorities is to improve the district’s deteriorating commercial areas.

For example, she said, she plans to use money from parking meters in the district to pay for street and sidewalk improvements along Central Avenue, in hopes of turning the thoroughfare into a pedestrian shopping district.

As a planner and a longtime City Hall insider, Perry has a strong grasp of city programs and funding mechanisms. But at campaign forums, she can come across as a bureaucrat by using dry government jargon to explain her neighborhood improvement ideas.

In recent weeks, the two candidates have taken some time away from such issues as economic development to attack each other’s political and personal records.

Washington describes himself as the “people’s choice” while charging that Perry is too closely tied to downtown merchants, such as the Central City Assn., a downtown business organization that has endorsed Perry.

In response, Perry said she has broad-based support from longtime homeowners and merchants throughout the district. She noted that she has been endorsed by former state Sen. Diane Watson, council members Mark Ridley-Thomas and Ruth Galanter and homeless activist Ted Hayes.

Washington likes to point out that he has been endorsed by Walters and Riordan, two of Perry’s former employers.

Riordan spokesman Peter Hidalgo said the mayor holds no animosity toward Perry but believes “Carl Washington has stronger leadership abilities than the opposing candidate.”

Walters said she endorsed Washington because she believes his legislative experience makes him the best candidate.

In campaign mailers, Perry charges that Washington has repeatedly voted against organized labor in the Assembly. She cited four bills that were designed to protect workers from discrimination, and her mailer accuses Washington of voting against all four. But legislative records show that Washington supported two of the bills after opposing earlier versions.

Richard Ross, Washington’s campaign consultant, said Washington has a strong pro-labor record, as indicated by his endorsement by two local chapters of the AFL-CIO.

Perry’s campaign has collected dozens of court documents about a son Washington had out of wedlock when he was 17 years old. In 1996, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office won a court order to force Washington to pay $900 a month for his then-14-year-old son, Carl Washington Jr. Those payments ended in June 2000, when his son turned 18.

Other candidates raised the child support issue during the general election. Perry said she is considering reviving it to “make my case to the voters.”

Washington called such a tactic “desperate.” He defended himself, saying he was a teenager when he became a father and “couldn’t provide for myself.” But he said once he became an adult, “I took care of my obligations.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

City Council District 9

THE CANDIDATES

School breakup, LAPD reform and public safety, public transportation, secession.

Carl Washington

Age: 36

Residence: downtown Los Angeles

Education: attended Bishop College, Texas

Career highlights: former aide to Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, two-term assemblyman for 52nd District

Family: single with two grown children

Jan Perry

Age: 45