Westside to Choose a New Face for City Council

The 11th City Council District on the west side of Los Angeles is the wealthiest and boasts some unique attributes: a world-class hilltop art museum, the freaks of Venice Beach and Los Angeles International Airport.

The district is also likely to pick the only new face on the City Council this election season. Well-known and well-funded incumbents are running in the other seven council races March 8, but the 11th District incumbent, Cindy Miscikowski, will leave office at the end of June because of term limits.

Vying for her spot are three candidates, all making their first bid for elected office.

They are Bill Rosendahl, 59, a former cable television executive and host of current affairs programs, who lives in Mar Vista; Flora Gil Krisiloff, 53, a former nurse and longtime activist in Brentwood, who has been heavily involved in planning issues; and Angela Reddock, 35, of Westchester, a labor law attorney with a Century City firm.

“Sometimes you have to choose between the least evil, but we have three good choices here -- these are the best of the best,” Irma Silverstein, 76, of Westchester said after a candidate forum last week at Venice High School.

The big issues will hardly come as a surprise to anyone who has driven in the area recently: the horrendous traffic in the district and the $11-billion modernization of LAX that could make traffic even worse.

As is often the case in Southern California politics, none of the candidates are from Southern California, but they all have longtime ties to the 11th District.

Rosendahl was a social worker in the Army and worked in the State Department on trade and development issues under President Carter. He’s also gay, a fact he revealed on his cable television show in 1995 after his longtime partner died of AIDS.

“My hope is that being gay is not made into an issue,” Rosendahl said. “But for the sake of diversity in the city and the district, I would be honored to represent the gay and lesbian community.”

Krisiloff was born in Taiwan and moved to the United States when she was 11. She worked as a nurse before getting involved in a series of planning disputes around Brentwood and leading the charge against development of the Veterans Administration lands in West Los Angeles.

She has earned the endorsement of Miscikowski, who has been grooming her as a successor.

“I’m asking people to look at my 20-year record of public service,” Krisiloff said. “This is a natural progression. I never thought about running, but people pushed me to when Cindy was termed out.”

Reddock is an Alabama native who moved to Compton when she was 9 and spent much of her youth commuting to a private school in Brentwood. She attended college at Amherst in Massachusetts and St. Catherine’s College in Oxford, England.

“I think I have a very realistic view of life,” she says. “I’ve known those who struggle every day to make ends meet, but I also understand those who have worked hard and want to protect their quality of life.”

A candidate must win more than 50% of the vote March 8 to capture the council seat. If no one reaches that threshold, the two top finishers will advance to a May 17 runoff election.

Through Jan. 22, Rosendahl and Krisiloff each had raised about $240,000, according to the city Ethics Commission. State Education Secretary and former Mayor Richard Riordan recently spent $24,900 on a mailer supporting Rosendahl, who went to high school with Riordan’s wife, Nancy.

Reddock trails far behind, with nearly $48,000.

She insists she can force a runoff that will include her. The other campaigns concede Reddock may force a runoff -- but contend that she’ll be watching Krisiloff and Rosendahl duke it out.

Larry Levine, a longtime political consultant in Los Angeles, says Reddock will likely have a tough time capturing votes.

“Put yourself in the shoes of a voter in a house whose life is busy with all sorts of other things and is not paying intensive attention to the campaign,” Levine said, “and figure out if a candidate with $48,000 is going to get noticed when the other two are spending almost $500,000 combined.”

The recent forum showed that the candidates agree more than they disagree.

They all tout light rail as a solution to the Westside’s traffic nightmare, bemoan overdevelopment and have grave concerns about the lack of affordable housing.

And all three have lambasted the LAX modernization plan, saying it would lead to millions more people using the airport and jamming area roads.

“I’m the first candidate to oppose expansion of LAX,” boasted Krisiloff at the forum, trying to separate herself from the field.

The City Council voted 12 to 3 in December to go forward with the plan that was backed by Mayor James K. Hahn and Miscikowski.

The plan’s second phase represents the most dramatic make-over of the airport and requires another round of approvals by the council. It would tear down three terminals and the central parking garage, and build a remote check-in facility on the fringes of the airport grounds.

Miscikowski says that she discounts some of what the candidates are saying about LAX as campaign rhetoric.

“If a [future] council member in the 11th says stop everything in its tracks, I don’t think that will have any resonance with the council,” she said. “If they roll up their sleeves and say here’s what I’ve done instead, that will have some legitimacy.”

They do have some distinct ideas. Rosendahl says he wants to wipe out homelessness; Krisiloff wants to work on street beautification projects on major boulevards; and Reddock says she wants to suspend all development in the district for six months while a strategic plan for building is developed.

Although all three candidates have ideas about how to fix the Westside’s problems, they also recognize that they would have to be consensus-builders to push their plans in the Los Angeles City Council.

Reddock said as much: “I think the proof in the pudding is who can ultimately deliver on the same issues that we’ve been discussing for years.”

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Council District 11

A look at the council’s 11th District

Median annual household income: $62,880

Race/ethnicity:

Whites: 152,205

Latinos: 53,530

Asians: 27,429

Blacks: 15,068

Others*: 10,203

Total: 258,435

Demographic information as of the 2000 census.

* Includes persons of more than one race.

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Sources: City of Los Angeles, Los Angeles Department of City Planning, Census Bureau