Attorney general candidate has maintained popularity in L.A.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley strolled into a conference room that bristled with news cameras on a recent morning and announced a sweeping set of corruption charges against government leaders in Bell.

The brewing scandal came at a perfect time for the burly prosecutor, who normally shuns the limelight yet this time seized the publicity windfall in the middle of his campaign for state attorney general. But questioning at the news conference soon grew pointed.

Cooley was asked whether he had given favorable treatment to Bell’s former police chief, who was conspicuously absent from the list of Bell defendants. Cooley brushed off the suggestion.

“I would charge my mother,” he told reporters, “if I had evidence against my mother.”

The answer was classic Cooley, a glib, tough-talking lawman who has billed himself as a corruption buster in the run-up to the Nov. 2 election.

His opponent, San Francisco Dist. Atty. Kamala Harris, has cast him as a lock-’em-up Republican unsuited to reversing California’s sky-high recidivism rate or solving the state’s prison crisis.

On the campaign trail, Cooley has sometimes appeared to play to that image, crediting the state’s bulging prisons with keeping crime rates low and making his support for the death penalty a central part of his platform.

But in Los Angeles County, Cooley, 63, is better known as a moderate who has drawn support from all sides of the criminal justice system.

Law enforcement groups are solidly behind him, praising his aggressive pursuit of gang members and other violent criminals. But so are many defense attorneys, who applaud what they call an even-handed approach to the state’s tough three-strikes law.

Despite the county’s heavy tilt toward registered Democrats, Cooley has won three D.A. elections, the first person to do so in Los Angeles County in more than 70 years. In an election year when moderate Democrats and independent voters are expected to lean to the right, many political observers consider Cooley an election favorite.

“He’s not an ideologue,” said Jaime Regalado, a political science professor at Cal State L.A. “What voters like in their top cop is an even hand.… And in this case, you might have had Steve Cooley for D.A. for life.”

Nevertheless, Cooley has seen his fair share of controversy.

Critics have accused him of going soft on a number of potential targets, including the Catholic Church and bad cops. And some faulted his office for not taking action against Bell officials last year when prosecutors first received reports alleging corruption in the city.

He drew fire over his large pay raise two years ago, bringing his current salary to $297,859, and has been accused of doing little to seek similar increases for his prosecutors. His opponent launched a television ad attacking him for saying that he would take a county pension of nearly $300,000 as well as the $151,000 attorney general’s salary if he wins the election.

Attacks have also come from within his office.

The union that represents the county’s rank-and-file prosecutors contends that he has discriminated against members — an allegation he denies. Hyatt Seligman, president of the Assn. of Deputy District Attorneys, said Cooley has imposed an “imperious” management style that has left many prosecutors afraid to speak out.

“Cooley has put himself and his managers first,” Seligman said. “He has treated [the employees] as second-class citizens.”

Cooley disputed that charge, saying that “the vast majority” of prosecutors in his office don’t share that view.

In this year’s Republican primary election, Cooley’s campaign slogan touted him as “a prosecutor, not a politician.” But during 37 years in an office frequently roiled by infighting, the career prosecutor demonstrated political know-how and an instinct for survival.

The son of an FBI agent, Cooley joined the office straight from USC Law School in 1973. He spent a decade as a trial deputy before taking charge of the Narcotics Division. Later, he ran the district attorney’s office in the Antelope Valley.

In the mid-1990s, while heading the D.A.’s San Fernando branch, Cooley took a leading role in a colleague’s campaign to unseat then-Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti. Cooley blasted the incumbent for allegedly trading favors for campaign cash. When Garcetti won, Cooley found himself banished to the relatively unglamorous Welfare Fraud Division.

Four years later, he challenged Garcetti and won a bruising election campaign.

Cooley cut a different figure from some of his hands-on, high-profile predecessors.

Head Deputy Dist. Atty. John Lynch recalled an e-mail he got from Cooley in 2002 as prosecutors weighed whether to file shoplifting charges against movie star Winona Ryder. I don’t want to micromanage the case, Lynch recalled the message saying, I just want “accurate justice.”

“I don’t get the feeling that someone is looking over my shoulder questioning my every move,” Lynch said.

Ryder was charged and convicted.

Cooley has shied away from news cameras and sneers at “press conference prosecutors.”

Some say the low-key approach has insulated him from what otherwise might have been damaging setbacks. Whereas Garcetti’s popularity was badly dented by O.J. Simpson’s acquittal, Cooley has not been directly tarred with defeats such as the murder acquittal of actor Robert Blake.

“I think Steve learned, you never want an O.J.,” said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School. “If you make it all about you and one case, you’re taking a huge risk.”

One of Cooley’s first actions as D.A. was a major change in the office’s policy on prosecuting three-strikes cases. Unless given special approval, prosecutors were no longer to seek life sentences for repeat offenders unless their latest offense involved a serious or violent crime.

His stance on the issue, particularly his attempts to reform the 1994 law, led him to butt heads with other district attorneys but won him friends among defense attorneys.

“He’s by far the best D.A. we’ve had,” said Ezekiel Perlo, a veteran defense attorney who oversees the panel of lawyers appointed by the court for indigent defendants. “He’s the least political.”

After 10 years in the job, Cooley was widely seen as a near-permanent fixture in the D.A.’s office and his entry into the attorney general’s race surprised many.

Asked about his decision, Cooley said he had planned to serve out his third term and retire or seek a final term. But friends and law enforcement officials, he said, began urging him last year to consider entering the race, arguing that the Democratic nominee would otherwise be a shoo-in.

Would he ever consider a run for governor if he won in November? No, Cooley answered. But then he reconsidered, citing a former Republican attorney general who went on to become governor.

“George Deukmejian said ‘never say never,’ ” Cooley said, “but here’s my goal: to be attorney general. I think that has been lost on many people who have been attorney general historically. They start thinking about governor almost always.”

If he wins the election, Cooley has vowed to defend death penalty sentences on appeal and work with the judiciary to reduce the time it takes to bring condemned prisoners to execution, a process that can take decades.

Many of those on death row owe their sentences to his office. Last year, Los Angeles County judges sentenced 13 defendants to death, more than Texas, Florida or any other state in the nation.

Cooley has also promised to aggressively pursue fraud by Medi-Cal vendors and providers, improve local law enforcement access to the state’s DNA database of offenders and go after corruption in state government.

He has won plaudits for creating a Public Integrity Division that has filed more than 250 corruption cases against government officials and others. The unit boasts a conviction rate of more than 96%.

While the unit has taken heat for allegedly focusing on smaller cities, prosecutors recently made headlines with indictments of Los Angeles Councilman Richard Alarcon and state Sen. Roderick Wright (D- Inglewood) for allegedly living outside their districts.

Nevertheless, critics have accused Cooley of going too soft in other cases.

During his first term, he decided against filing charges over the Belmont Learning Complex, despite a campaign promise to aggressively investigate the fiasco surrounding the school’s construction. And detractors said he failed to aggressively pursue misconduct allegations against officers involved in the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart corruption scandal.

More recently, Cooley drew fire for not doing more to build a case against Cardinal Roger Mahony and other top Catholic Church officials for their failure to alert police to allegations of sexual abuse by priests.

Cooley defended his decisions. Prosecutors, he said, must carefully consider the evidence in a case and be wary of overreaching.

“It’s not always about filing,” Cooley said. “It’s about making the right decision.”

jack.leonard@latimes.com