Los Angeles Elections 2001

Steve Soboroff leans back in a chair at his mayoral campaign headquarters in Sherman Oaks and ticks off the real estate deals that made him rich. The auto parts store in Torrance: "Wonderful." The Ralphs supermarket in Canoga Park: "A beauty." And his favorite, a Sav-on Drugs in Mar Vista, the one he bought and resold for more than twice the price: "Enjoyed every bit." He blows on his fingertips and buffs them on his chest. "That's how I'm going to run the city, too," he says.

A Mailer by Los Angeles City Council candidate Wendy Greuel did not mislead voters about support received by her opponent, Assemblyman Tony Cardenas (D- Panorama City), from a gambling interest, a campaign watchdog group concluded Friday. Neither did Greuel mislead voters about her support by police officers, according to a report issued by the Campaign Watch Commission of the League of Women Voters of Los Angeles, a nonpartisan group of community leaders.

When the Los Angeles Police Protective League recently paused to assess the reasons for the Police Department's plummeting morale, the Rampart corruption scandal did not warrant a mention. "The plunge into the abyss," according to the current issue of the union's newspaper, began with the 1997 decision by Police Chief Bernard C. Parks to scrap a compressed work schedule that allowed some officers to work three 12-hour shifts per week rather than five eight-hour days.

Assemblyman Tony Cardenas and entertainment industry executive Wendy Greuel will face each other in a March runoff after neither won a majority vote in Tuesday's election for the 2nd District seat on the Los Angeles City Council. Needing more than 50% of the ballots cast to avoid a runoff, Cardenas won 47.61% of the votes Tuesday, compared with 42.72% for Greuel, with all precincts counted. The third candidate, Van Nuys businessman James Cordaro, had 9.67% of the vote.

The contest for mayor of Los Angeles is growing increasingly tense as Tuesday's election approaches, with much of the heat generated by attacks on the records of the most experienced candidates. But the assaults have not masked an essential truth: In politics, incumbency almost always provides a crucial boost. Its benefits are immeasurable: a battle-tested army of aides, ready attention from the media, and that most important political asset of all, access to money.

Rep. Xavier Becerra isn't worried that he has less money and fewer endorsements than other candidates running for mayor of Los Angeles. He isn't worried because the lessons he has gleaned from his 11 years in public office are that Things Work Out. Opportunities Arise. The Underdog Surprises People.

It would never occur to Javier Gonzalez, 41, of Boyle Heights to vote today. Political talk at work has never tempted him. There are no campaign fliers, no TV ads, no issues that would jolt him into a voting booth. Yet, he's neither cynical nor apathetic. As far as he's concerned, he's already voted--for God. As a Jehovah's Witness, Gonzalez has essentially sworn, by his baptism in the faith, not to vote in any earthly election.

About 200 students from University of California campuses across the state occupied Royce Hall on the UCLA campus for four hours Wednesday evening, forcing the cancellation of a debate by candidates running for Los Angeles mayor. The impromptu sit-in took place at the end up a long day of marches and rallies to demand that the UC Board of Regents repeal its six-year ban on affirmative action.

Rep. Xavier Becerra received a boost in his mayoral bid Thursday when he was endorsed by former Rep. Edward Roybal and his daughter, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard. "Time after time, regardless of the odds, he continues to fight for things he believes in," Roybal-Allard said during a mid-morning news conference at the Boyle Heights Senior Center. "That's the kind of leadership we need in the city of Los Angeles."

The head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power angrily accused City Atty. James K. Hahn of injecting the utility's energy policies into his campaign for mayor Wednesday and in the process breaching attorney-client confidentiality between the city's top lawyer and its utility chief.

Four months after the Los Angeles City Council elected 28-year-old Alex Padilla as its president, the body remains fractured between the newcomers and the veterans, with bad feelings boiling to the surface during council meetings and spilling over into the upcoming election for the seat vacated by Joel Wachs. Padilla's more senior council colleagues continue to say he is too inexperienced to hold such a powerful position.

Assemblyman Tony Cardenas (D-Panorama City) received a major boost to his campaign for the Los Angeles City Council by winning endorsements Friday from unions representing police officers, firefighters and command officers in the Fire Department. "Tony has always been a good friend of law enforcement and a supporter of public safety," said Mitzi Grasso, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League.

An election watch group said Friday that it was greatly disturbed by mailers and television ads by Los Angeles City Council candidate Beth Garfield attacking her opponent, Tom LaBonge. But the Campaign Watch Commission of the League of Women Voters concluded that the ads and mailers did not warrant censure for misleading voters. "We are, however, greatly disturbed by the nature of the innuendo underlying the materials," the commission said.

Two weeks before their special election, Los Angeles City Council candidates Tom LaBonge and Beth Garfield clashed in a debate Thursday, with Garfield accusing her opponent of being part of a problem bureaucracy and LaBonge saying his rival lacks the experience to get things done at City Hall. The acrimonious exchange signaled a marked rise in temperature in the contest between the two finalists in the Oct. 23 runoff for the 4th District seat vacated by the death of John Ferraro.

A record number of candidates agreed to spending limits in this year's Los Angeles municipal elections, while current and former elected officials benefited from an unprecedented amount of independent expenditures, according to a report Thursday by the city Ethics Commission.

Voters in the Los Angeles City Council's 4th District head to the polls today to elect a successor to the late John Ferraro. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. The 4th District is the only contest on the ballot. With 10 candidates spending more than $1.2 million on a blizzard of campaign mail, many contenders and observers believe it is likely no candidate will get more than the 50% of the vote needed to win the seat outright.

An ad hoc coalition of organizations from both ends of the political spectrum called on the city Ethics Commission on Tuesday to examine the role of special-interest money in the Los Angeles mayor's race as part of an inquiry into City Hall lobbyists. The Coalition for Political Reform cited a study that showed lobbyists and major law firms representing companies with business before the city are among the leading donors to three of the six major mayoral candidates: City Atty. James K.

Three Sherman Oaks attorneys have joined forces to help reverse what they say is a trend of political apathy among Iranian Americans in Southern California. Shahin Sedaghat, Mehrnaz Taheripour and Vafa Khoshbin have launched an aggressive voter registration drive targeting Iranian Americans, the first of its kind for this growing community based largely in the San Fernando Valley and the Westside.

Beth Garfield, a labor lawyer who once led the Los Angeles Community College District board, held onto her sizable fund-raising lead Friday in the race to replace the late John Ferraro on the Los Angeles City Council. Garfield has raised more than $500,000 in her bid to represent the 4th Council District, but two-thirds of the money came from loans she made to her own campaign. In the last two weeks, she has been outpaced in the money marathon by two other top contenders, former state Sen.

Candidates for a Los Angeles City Council seat sparred Wednesday at their last forum before Tuesday's election over such issues as how to rein in development and expand green space. The debate at the Ebell Club was held on the same day a landlord group, the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles, began airing radio commercials opposing former state Sen. David Roberti's candidacy for the 4th District seat and supporting attorney Beth Garfield and private school owner Fares Wehbe.