No-Sweat Campaigns

The race for Los Angeles mayor is a cliffhanger, but City Atty. Rocky Delgadillo will coast to reelection Tuesday. So will City Controller Laura Chick. In seven of the eight council seats on Tuesday’s ballot, incumbents face either no challengers or none as well known or well funded as those who have forced Mayor James K. Hahn into the fight of his political life.

Only District 11 on the Westside is guaranteed a new face. Outgoing City Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski in 1997 was the first new council member elected under voter-imposed two-term caps. Now, after serving eight years, she becomes the first to be termed out of office. (The Times endorsed Flora Gil Krisiloff as the candidate best qualified to succeed her.) The hard-working Miscikowski’s common sense and uncommon class have served her district and the city well. It’s a shame to lose her.

Term limits remade the council during Miscikowski’s tenure, catapulting her from newcomer to elder stateswoman. To appreciate how dramatic this change has been, consider that the elder statesman she replaced had served 34 years. Today, even the shoo-in incumbents will be heading toward only their second (and final) term.

Making (Mostly) Good

It’s too soon to grasp the long-term effects of these changes. Spinmeisters might explain the dearth of well-funded challengers as proof that newly minted city officials have accomplished great things in a short time, or at least not messed up too badly. (That could also account for why Hahn faces opposition.) A more mundane explanation is that name recognition and established political donors still deter most challengers, especially when would-be candidates need wait a mere four years to run for an open seat.

These one-term incumbents have exceeded some expectations and disappointed in others.

Delgadillo deserves credit for the neighborhood prosecutors he has assigned to fight blight in every City Council district. He has saved money on city settlements even as he spent more on private attorneys.

Chick has been a crusader against City Hall waste. Her audits were the first to question whether members of the Hahn administration were favoring political donors with city contracts and have led to county and federal investigations. But she made a serious misstep in meeting privately with Hahn’s opponents in the mayoral race to discuss her audits. Her biggest challenge is going to be undoing the damage she brought on herself.

As a whole, the 15-member City Council (only those in odd-numbered districts are up for reelection) is still searching for its role in a term-limited, post-charter-reform era that stripped it of some of its power. At times, it has seemed preoccupied with resolutions against foreign wars or prohibitions on Silly String. One of the biggest disappointments was the council’s adoption of the old council’s arrogance at public hearings. This came to a head last year when a judge overturned a council decision on the Blue Zebra strip club after seeing a videotape of council members yakking on cellphones, schmoozing and admiring each other’s Hawaiian shirts at the “hearing” in which the decision was made. The members were full of excuses, which only showed how much they didn’t get it.

And though the council has served as a check on Hahn, it hasn’t always offered an alternative to “no.” One of its biggest tests in the coming four years will be to follow through on its pledge to hire badly needed additional police officers.

As for the individual members up for reelection, here’s the short scoop.

The Candidates

In District 1, Ed Reyes has laid to rest worries that all short-termed council members would refuse to take on long-term projects. He has pushed forward plans for parks and playing fields along the Los Angeles River and stirred a passionate, citywide debate about how best to provide housing that ordinary people can afford.

In the western San Fernando Valley’s District 3, Dennis Zine, a retired cop, blundered early on by showing up at the Frisky Kitty adult club in uniform to deliver constituent complaints. But he has overcome this Keystone Kop beginning by asking tough questions and displaying a Joel-Wachs-like attention to rip-offs, such as the city paying $3 for each half-liter bottle of water at city conferences. (He got the price down to 22 cents.)

Councilman Jack Weiss has attracted the challenger with the most money, but that says as much about how much wealth is in District 5 as about his performance.

In District 7, council President Alex Padilla is smart and ambitious but can be too much an insider, taking stands not necessarily because they’re best for the city but because they will ensure his reelection as council president.

In the bifurcated District 9, Councilwoman Jan Perry is well liked by downtown business leaders, less so by low-income residents in the southern reaches of her district, where she did little to settle a dispute over a beloved urban garden.

In District 13, Councilman Eric Garcetti has balanced the liberal causes dear to the hearts of his Silver Lake constituents by co-sponsoring the first citywide business tax reform in a decade.

And in the Harbor area, District 15, Janice Hahn has been, well, Janice Hahn. If her brother the mayor inherited their famous father’s focus on potholes, Janice got his exuberant personality. She’s been a strong advocate for getting port operators to spread out traffic by operating during off hours but is sometimes not persuaded by facts.

Finally, it’s worth pointing out that one of the stranger consequences of term limits is the money being raised and spent on races that are uncontested. Delgadillo, Padilla and Garcetti all have raised hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars. The money has no credible use except to get their names out there for future races. So much for term limits reining in “career politicians.”