Los Angeles Elections 1993

Retired fire captain Lyle Hall, making his second run for the Los Angeles City Council seat representing the northeast San Fernando Valley, appeared headed for victory in early returns from Tuesday's election. Hall, 53, held a wide lead in absentee ballots over former mayoral aide Richard Alarcon, who if elected would be the first Latino to win a Valley seat on the council. They contested the 7th District seat being vacated by Councilman Ernani Bernardi, 81, who retires this month.

Southwest San Fernando Valley voters, restive over rising crime and a stagnant economy, ousted 16-year incumbent Joy Picus from her Los Angeles City Council seat Tuesday, electing her former aide Laura Chick. In substantial although still incomplete election returns, Chick held an apparently insurmountable lead over her former boss. At her election night party in a 16th floor suite at the Warner Center Marriott, Chick was ecstatic. "It's just too momentous," she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

Richard Riordan, a wealthy businessman barely known to voters six months ago, Tuesday defeated City Councilman Michael Woo to become the first Republican mayor of Los Angeles in 36 years. Combining a strong stand against crime with a long record of philanthropy, Riordan won a bitter race, overcoming an opponent who had sought to portray him as a right-winger unsuited to govern a diverse city bristling with racial tension.

In the most sweeping revamping of the city's leadership in memory, Los Angeles voters Tuesday chose four new City Council members, throwing out two longtime incumbents and electing the council's first openly homosexual member and its first Latino representative from the San Fernando Valley. Council member Joy Picus lost a bitter election to onetime aide Laura Chick. The second incumbent, Joan Milke Flores, was defeated by political newcomer Rudy Svorinich, a paint store owner.

Pinkie Fingers, a nurse, stuck her voting stub in her pocketbook early Tuesday morning and drove five miles to exchange it for half a dozen cake doughnuts, with sprinkles, courtesy of the California Democratic Party. "It's a nice little gift," she said as grease began to soak through the white Yum Yum Donuts bag. Unfortunately for the Democratic Party, Pinkie Fingers had just cast her vote for Richard Riordan, a Republican.

On the final day of her toughest reelection campaign, Los Angeles Councilwoman Joy Picus watched from the sidelines Monday as immigration agents sealed off an intersection in Woodland Hills and arrested 38 day laborers whose presence angers local residents and merchants.

The campaign for mayor of Los Angeles climaxed Monday night with a bruising exchange between two candidates who represent different generations and ideologies and see in each other what is wrong with the city they would like to save. In a debate televised live on KTTV Channel 11 just hours before the polls were to open this morning, City Councilman Michael Woo initiated the hostilities.

With less than two days left before the polls open, the candidates for mayor of Los Angeles finally went head to head on live television Sunday night, in a debate full of the usual acrimony but with few surprises or dramatic gaffes. After sparring over their proposals for stimulating the economy, fighting crime and hiring more police officers, City Councilman Michael Woo went on the offensive first with what has become a familiar attack on Richard Riordan's role as an investor in Mattel Inc.

THE DAY IN REVIEW How the mayoral candidates spent their day: In the final, frenetic days of the Los Angeles mayoral race, Richard Riordan and Michael Woo on Saturday rallied their troops to get out the vote on Election Day and prepared for tonight's first live TV debate of the runoff campaign. Riordan said Woo was waging a gutter campaign by raising questions about Riordan's stand on abortion and about his old arrest record.

Incumbent Joan Milke Flores and challenger Rudy Svorinich square off Tuesday for Los Angeles' 15th City Council District seat after a campaign that has served to underscore their similarities as much as their differences. Stumping in neighborhoods from Watts to the Harbor, both Flores, a three-term council member, and Svorinich, a paint store owner making his first bid for public office, have spotlighted crime, jobs and the city's budget crisis as their top issues.