L.A. City Council Seat Up for Grabs

Voters in the Los Angeles City Council’s 4th District head to the polls today to elect a successor to the late John Ferraro.

Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

The 4th District is the only contest on the ballot.

With 10 candidates spending more than $1.2 million on a blizzard of campaign mail, many contenders and observers believe it is likely no candidate will get more than the 50% of the vote needed to win the seat outright.

In that case, the two top vote-getters would engage in a runoff election Oct. 23.

The district, which Ferraro represented for 35 years until his death last April, includes areas of North Hollywood, Toluca Lake and Studio City through the Cahuenga Pass to Hollywood, Los Feliz, Silver Lake, Atwater Village, Hancock Park and Koreatown.

It is a district caught in the middle of the debate over breaking up the city, with some residents of the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood portions of the district pushing secession.

While some campaign managers were predicting fewer than 20,000 of the district’s 123,531 registered voters--or 16%--would cast ballots, City Clerk Mike Carey said he was optimistically predicting a turnout of 30% to 35%.

He noted that 32.4% of the district’s registered voters, and 38% citywide, turned out in the last city election in June, but that ballot featured a hotly contested race for mayor.

“Hopefully, because the district was represented for so long by one man and the 10 candidates are generating a lot of interest, people will get out to vote,” Carey said.

The candidates are, in the order they appear on the ballot: Beth Garfield, a former Los Angeles Community College Board trustee; Larry Green, a tax accountant; Richard L. MacMinn, a neighborhood congress president; Denise Munro Robb, an environmental educator and preservationist; David Roberti, an attorney and former state senator; Susan Fong, a teacher; Mike Schaefer, an attorney and former San Diego city councilman; Fares “Ferris” Wehbe, a private-school owner and former president of Hollywood VOTE; Linda Lockwood, a community organizer; and Tom LaBonge, a community relations director and former aide to Ferraro.

Voters with questions about their polling places may call the city clerk at (888) 873-1000 or (213) 978-0444.