Even the Birds Can’t Take the Heat of City’s Politics

Compton is a peach-tinted city on pages 734 and 735 of the Thomas Guide book of maps for L.A. County. It is boxed in by four freeways--the 105, the 110, the 91 and the 710--and surrounded by towns with idyllic names like Rosewood, Lynwood and Willowbrook. Sweet Kevin Costner was born in Compton, and former President George Bush used to sell drill bits to local oil companies there.

Given the pleasant color of its map-book identity, as opposed to the washed-out yellows and purples of the surrounding cities, and its almost nest-like location amid the branches of four freeways, one would suppose that Compton would exist among twittering birds and blossoming trees. I’m sorry to report today, that’s not so.

The bellow of political rhetoric, like the roar of wounded elephants, has chased all the birds from the skies and blown away the blossoms that once adorned a city begun 135 years ago as a Methodist temperance colony. And there’s not a chance they’ll be returning in the near future.

Among a variety of blowhards who have characterized Compton in recent times, Omar Bradley is the most visible. It is Bradley who emerges as the fist-shaking icon of a town with such a lousy reputation that its name has been erased from sections of the boulevard that run through adjoining cities.

And now, thanks to a hocus-pocus court ruling, the self-proclaimed “gangster mayor” has returned to power after a brief ouster. The calamity is bound to continue.

Those weary of the effluents that flow through politics may have missed the events that have come to identify Compton. Briefly, one Eric Perrodin, an L.A. County deputy district attorney, was elected mayor of the city last June, beating Bradley by 281 votes, and ostensibly ending the political career of the two-term incumbent.

But old Omar, never a good loser, came charging back, not unlike his namesake, the general in World War II, claiming that the election was invalid. After a 10-week trial, which ended Friday, Superior Court Judge Judith Chirlin said he was right and, to the surprise of just about everyone, didn’t call for another election, but restored Bradley to power.

It wasn’t the sloppy process that bothered her, although that was naughty too, and it wasn’t the perjury committed during the trial that bothered her, although it also got a good finger-shaking. It was the technical makeup of the ballot that caused her to give the Bull of Compton another shot at high office.

We can thank an egghead from Ohio for that.

Under state law, candidates in a general election are supposed to be listed on ballots in a “randomized” order determined by the California secretary of state. The Compton city clerk failed to request that determination and listed Perrodin’s name first, the way it had appeared on the primary election ballot.

Jon Krosnick, a political science professor from Ohio State University, testified during the trial that being first, according to his calculations, gives that candidate a 2.87% to 3.32% edge over the others. That amounted to about 306 votes in the Compton election, said the professor, which were enough to swing the election in Perrodin’s favor.

It was on that basis that Chirlin, huffing with indignation, overturned the will of the people with a stinging rebuke of City Clerk Charles Davis, who, later admitting that errors had occurred, commented, “You show me an election that’s perfect, I’ll show you a fixed race.” Good enough.

Compton isn’t a bad place to live. I strolled through the other day and got a lot of pleasant hellos and good mornings from people out walking their dogs the same way they walk ‘em in Beverly Hills or Encino. Well, yes, the dogs may be pit bulls and not fluffy little Lhasa apsos, but that’s a matter of bad taste and not an indication of a prevailing killer instinct among the people.

Compton’s politics are something else. There were all kinds of charges and counter-charges made in that last election, for instance, including accusations of death threats. But what stood out for me was the charge that Perrodin, cursing and using both hands, gave the double-finger to firefighters at a polling place because they opposed his election.

Faced with the accusation in court, however, Perrodin replied, “I didn’t think I did two. I think I did one.”

By that measure, I suppose, the obscenity of the gesture is reduced to an acceptable level of physical comment. This is not unlike the day Bradley swung at Perrodin, but didn’t connect, after a City Council meeting dedicated to harmony. Police stopped him from reaching Perrodin, but one can’t help wondering what would have happened had one of his roundhouses landed.

A technical error, as seen through a legal microscope, might not have saved him there.

Perrodin, who packs a permit-allowed gun, is vowing to appeal Judge Chirlin’s ruling. But would a gun-toting, one-finger-extended, obscenity-shouting deputy D.A. be any better than the roaring, fist-swinging, obscenity-shouting dude they’re stuck with now? Probably not.

Whoever finally wins, one can say with reasonable certainty that it’s going to be a long time before the twittering birds start thinking about returning to Compton.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com.