Deputies Focus on Ousting Burke

Michelle Collins, an off-duty sheriff’s deputy clad in jeans and a denim jacket, spends her Saturdays knocking on doors and ringing bells. Half the time no one answers, but whenever a door cracks open, she unleashes her well-oiled pitch: It’s time for Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke to go.

Burke, 71, is up for reelection in the March 2 primary, as are Supervisors Michael Antonovich and Don Knabe. All three face little-known and poorly financed challengers for seats they have held for a combined 44 years, but only Burke has been targeted by the deputies’ union for defeat.

“Yvonne Burke’s been sitting in office forever,” Collins told one Hawthorne resident. “She’s an old dinosaur who’s been hanging out for the last 10 years! Guy Mato is committed to making a change.”

The matchup between Burke and Mato, a 46-year-old Gardena real estate executive new to politics, is a test of the deeply entrenched power that county supervisors enjoy.

Sometimes dubbed the “five little kings,” the Board of Supervisors manages a vast government with a $17.1-billion budget and nearly 93,000 employees. They preside over massive districts that each serve about 2 million residents -- more than the population of 14 states. (By comparison, presidential candidate Howard Dean served about 600,000 people as governor of Vermont.)

Anyone hoping to take on a sitting Los Angeles County supervisor and win -- a feat that hasn’t been accomplished in 24 years -- needs plenty of campaign cash and name recognition. The districts are so huge that appealing to only one geographic area or interest group probably won’t cut it on election day.

Rousing voters is another challenge. Many of the people most directly affected by county policies are either poor, sick or in trouble -- not the most reliable voting bloc.

Supervisors rarely face muscular challenges at the polls. In 2000, Antonovich, Burke and Knabe all ran unopposed for reelection.

But during a contract dispute last fall, the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs set its sights on Burke, whom it deemed inadequately supportive of law enforcement.

The union recruited Mato, a former deputy, to run against Burke and promised to pump $500,000 into the race. On weekends, dozens of deputies fan out through the district to buttonhole registered voters and talk up their candidate.

“Our county leaders have been insulated and unaccountable for long enough,” said one campaign mailer sponsored by the deputies union. “This year, you have a choice!”

Still, most political observers consider Mato’s bid a long shot. “It’s inconceivable that Yvonne Burke would be defeated,” said Parke Skelton, a veteran Los Angeles campaign strategist. “Her poll numbers are astonishingly good.... She’s one of the most popular officials around.”

So far, Mato has yet to make much of an impression in the 2nd District, a diverse, urban area that stretches from Carson to Culver City and includes Inglewood, Compton, Gardena and part of South Los Angeles. He had raised less than $20,000 in campaign contributions by mid-January, including several thousand from family members.

Mato concedes that “99.99%” of his campaign depends on the union’s determination to overthrow Burke.

“Everyone says she’s experienced, she’s a three-term incumbent and everything else. My response is, well, then what has all her experience and power done for King/Drew?” Mato said, referring to Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, the troubled county-run hospital in Burke’s district. “She’s had 12 years.”

At the county Hall of Administration downtown, some political insiders don’t seem to be taking the deputies union candidate too seriously. “ALADS, yeah ... whatever,” an aide to Burke said, giggling.

Burke, who has raised $234,000 for her reelection, insists she is vigorously campaigning.

She said she has attended community events from Crenshaw to Culver City in recent weeks. She plans to send out mailers and erect fluorescent green and blue billboards throughout her district. She is also holding a Feb. 18 fundraiser at the City Club on Bunker Hill.

“My attitude is: I don’t take anything for granted,” said Burke, a former congresswoman. “So, I’ll campaign.”

Other county unions dabbled with the idea of taking on Knabe, whose U-shaped 4th District hugs the county’s southern end. Opposition research found that the ideal challenger would be a well-known white woman who could raise at least $3 million for her campaign. There were no takers who fit the bill.

Knabe’s opponents this time around are Jayendra Arvindlal Shah, a Long Beach physician whose sole recorded campaign contribution is a $7,671 loan from the candidate himself, and Joann Hillary McDermott, a business planning consultant who has yet to report any funds raised.

Knabe, meanwhile, has raked in more than $528,000 for his reelection campaign.

And in the vast northern reaches of the county, Antonovich, a 24-year incumbent, also appears poised to glide to another term. He has raised more than $600,000. One of his challengers, a Pasadena foster parent named Linda Jordan, has not reported raising any money, according to campaign finance records. The other, Santa Clarita environmentalist Lynne Plambeck, owner of a film recycling business, lent her campaign $50,000.

“What I wanted to do when I ran this campaign was to offer people a choice,” said Plambeck, who challenged Antonovich in 1992 and finished fourth with 10% of the vote.

“Antonovich ran unopposed in 2000, and to me this is not democracy when you don’t have someone on the other side,” she said.

Critics have often complained that the supervisors are virtually immune to challenge because it takes so much money to compete against them. Until 1996, the county was like the Wild West of political fundraising: There were no restrictions on contributions to supervisors, who routinely collected large donations and hoarded millions of dollars for their campaigns.

Under a voter-approved reform measure, supervisors are now limited to accepting contributions no larger than $1,000. But that cap can be lifted if other candidates lend themselves large sums of cash, making it difficult for even a wealthy challenger to upset an incumbent.

The supervisors now face term limits, but the clock only recently began running. None of the current lawmakers will be termed out until 2014.

Other reform attempts have fizzled at the polls. A five-member Board of Supervisors has governed Los Angeles County since 1852, but county voters have repeatedly, and resoundingly, rejected measures to increase representation. Most recently, voters crushed a measure that would have expanded the board to nine members in 2000.

For some people who are disgruntled with their supervisor, even the chance to replace him or her on election day seems to inspire mainly despair.

Take Barbara Wampole, a Santa Clarita Valley environmentalist who has clashed with Antonovich over his support for Newhall Ranch, the county’s largest housing development.

She despises his positions on just about everything, but she’s pretty sure she’s stuck with him.

“It’s like he runs everything out here,” Wampole said. “We’re prisoners of a political system that we don’t have any idea how to change.”