Lesser known candidates hope to pull off shocker in L.A. County supervisor race

Every day, Martin Luther King Aubrey reports to work as a maintenance painter at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk. In his spare time, he familiarizes himself with the county budget and, after work, he campaigns -- visiting churches, supermarkets and restaurants -- for a hotly contested seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

Aubrey is one of seven little-known, under-financed candidates whose names will appear on the June 3 ballot in the race to succeed Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke in the 2nd District. Donors, other politicians, interest groups and other campaign players are treating the race as a two-man contest, lining up behind state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles) or Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard C. Parks. And seasoned observers have no doubt that voters will award the seat to one of these two experienced politicians.

That doesn't appear to faze Aubrey -- who is not raising money for mailers, campaign workers or other ways to reach voters -- or the others interviewed by The Times.

They say they offer a welcome alternative to "career politicians."

And they could have an effect on the contest in that together they might pull enough of the vote to deny one of the two main candidates a majority next month. That would throw the race into a November runoff between the two top vote-getters.

The possibility of a runoff "is not a long shot," said Kerman Maddox, a political consultant who is not associated with any of the campaigns.

Two physicians, a dentist, a real estate agent, a civic activist, a self-described attorney and Aubrey are running in the district, which has about 2 million residents and stretches from Culver City and Mar Vista to Watts and Compton, Lynwood and Carson.

"There are people that will come out and vote against [Parks and Ridley-Thomas] if they knew there was an alternative," said Delaney Smith, one of the physicians in the race. "And they're going around acting as if they're the only two candidates. It's going to blow up in their faces."

Smith says his experience as an emergency room doctor makes him uniquely qualified to represent the district and to solve one of its biggest issues: how to reopen the shuttered Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Medical Center.

"Unless the underlying problem of just too many patients going through the emergency room is fixed, its reopening is going to fail," he said.