Garfield, LaBonge Election Today

Voters go to the polls today for a runoff election between Beth Garfield and Tom LaBonge, who have waged costly and bitter campaigns for the 4th District seat on the Los Angeles City Council.

The polls open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

The only item on today’s city ballot is the 4th District seat, which was held for 35 years by John Ferraro until his death in April.

The election is part of a major changeover at City Hall, which began earlier this year when voters elected six new council members and a new mayor, controller and city attorney.

After today’s election and the 2nd District election to replace Joel Wachs in December, a majority of 15 City Council seats will be held by newcomers.

City Clerk Mike Carey predicted Monday that 25% of the registered voters in the 4th District will cast ballots.

He said absentee ballots are running slightly higher than they did for the Sept. 11 election in which 10 candidates vied for the two positions on the runoff ballot.

The turnout in September was 17.5%, but Carey said participation may have been depressed by the terrorist attacks that day in New York City and on the Pentagon.

The district includes areas of North Hollywood, Studio City, Toluca Lake, Atwater Village, Hollywood, Los Feliz, Silver Lake, Hancock Park and Koreatown.

Garfield is a labor attorney and past president of the Los Angeles Community College Board.

LaBonge, a former chief field deputy for Ferraro, most recently was community relations director for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

By the time the election is over, the two candidates will have spent more than $800,000 combined on the runoff. Much of the money raised by both candidates has gone toward attack mailers.

On Monday, the Campaign Watch Commission of the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles responded to a Garfield complaint by finding that a LaBonge mailer “crosses the line into the category of inaccurate and misleading accusations” about Garfield’s work with the Community College District.

The commission found that a LaBonge mailer inaccurately claimed that a 1998 Times story blasted Garfield for being a “dysfunctional” manager when the article quoted a citizens’ committee comment about the district, not Garfield individually.

Julie Buckner, a spokeswoman for LaBonge, said the campaign stands by the mailer as accurate.