Stage set for mayoral runoff
Greuel, Garcetti head to showdown; sales tax hike uncertain
Two veterans of Los Angeles politics, Councilman Eric Garcetti and Controller Wendy Greuel, pushed ahead of six other candidates in initial election returns Tuesday and appeared to be well-positioned to advance to a May runoff to become the city’s next mayor.
Former council President Garcetti and his onetime council colleague Greuel broke to a significant but not insurmountable lead over Councilwoman Jan Perry, entertainment lawyer Kevin James, former technology executive Emanuel Pleitez and three lesserknown candidates.
Greuel, 51, would be the first female mayor of Los Angeles, ironic timing considering women could face an uphill climb to retain at least one seat on the 15-member City Council. Garcetti, 42, a fourth-generation Angeleno, would return his family to a marquee post in local politics. His father, Gil, served as Los Angeles County district attorney from 1992 to 2000.
The outcome of a proposal to add a half-cent to the city’s sales tax remained less certain, with Measure A trailing narrowly as early returns were tabulated — extending just one of the many financial uncertainties that will confront the next mayor, who will face budget deficits projected at $216 million a year and more.
The increase would bring sales taxes in Los Angeles to 9.5%, one of the highest rates in the state, and raise $200 million a year for the city treasury. The measure received ardent support from Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck and a belated endorsement from Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who will leave office July 1 after the maximum two terms.
City budget analysts have warned that the tax’s failure could lead to cutbacks in police and fire service, and make it more difficult for the next mayor to balance income and spending. But critics, including all of the leading candidates to replace Villaraigosa, argued that Los Angeles should bal-
ance its books without asking taxpayers for more money.
“I voted ‘no.’ I don’t want the sales tax to go up,” said Ruben Muro, 61, a Postal Service worker who lives near Highland Park. “It’s such an easy thing for them to say ‘Let’s just up the tax,’ but we already have one of the highest sales taxes in the country.”
But Cheryl Hansen, an Internet tech worker from northeast Los Angeles, voted ‘ yes’ on Measure A. “The city is a huge place and they need a lot of money to run it,” said Hansen, 63. “It made sense to me.”
After eight years of the f lash and occasional missteps of Villaraigosa, the leading mayoral contenders largely eschewed grand gestures and broad new visions for Los Angeles, instead offering City Hall experience and promises to tend to details.
Greuel, who worked in the administrations of Mayor Tom Bradley and President Clinton, repeatedly told voters she didn’t just want to be the mayor, but wanted to do the job of mayor.
Garcetti, a Rhodes scholar and onetime college instructor, promised to fill potholes and improve trash collection, labeling himself a “practical problem solver” with “proven results” in ads.
When Greuel stepped up with one of the campaign’s few big proposals — adding 2,000 officers to the Police Department’s force of 10,000 — she took fire from politicos and budget watchers inside and outside the campaign, who warned that the cash-strapped city could not afford more police. Greuel defended the plan as “aspirational,” not a promise, to be pursued only as city finances allowed.
The controller and Garcetti had a substantial financial advantage over the rest of the field. Both spent just under $5 million as of election day, not counting $2.7 million in independent expenditure spending on behalf of Greuel, much of it from a committee backed by union and entertainment interests. That powered a television ad presence for Greuel and Garcetti that third-place fundraiser Perry (who spent $2.1 million) could not match.
Former federal prosecutor James, the lone Republican in the race, and Pleitez, who once worked for Villaraigosa when he was a coun- cilman, raised less than $1 million. A $727,000 independent expenditure funded heavily by wealthy Republicans for James could not close the gap with the front- runners.
Such committees, with unlimited contributions and spending, are an increasing phenomenon in Los Angeles elections. Nearly $5 million had been spent by election day on all municipal races by various independent campaign committees — much of the money coming from organized labor. That was more than any previous spending in the first round of a Los Angeles election and just shy of the total for both the primary and runoff campaigns in 2005.
Despite the free spending and months of campaigning, voters had trouble distinguishing the mayoral candidates when it came to policy. All of the contenders op- posed the sales tax and said they wanted to continue to work, as Villaraigosa has, to improve Los Angeles’ public schools, even though the mayor has no formal power to set district policy.
Perry opened some distance from the other top candidates by opposing their call to phase out the city’s business receipts tax. The councilwoman, who represents parts of South Los Angeles, said the city’s troubled budget can’t afford to lose the more than $400 million the tax provides.
With less than a week to go before Tuesday’s vote, the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy/L.A. Times Los Angeles City Primary poll found few Angelenos had deeply held convictions about the race. About 14% of likely voters had not made up their minds for mayor. Nearly half of those who had chosen a candidate said they still might change their minds.
With the limited policy differences, the hopefuls tried to distinguish themselves with their resumes. That led to attacks big and small. Greuel, in particular, took jabs from three rivals — as James and Perry worked to break away some of her conservative backers, par- ticularly in the San Fernando Valley, and then Garcetti joined the attack.
Greuel cited nearly 80 audits she conducted as city controller, saying they proved that she could be a tough manager. Her reviews uncovered $160 million in “waste, fraud and abuse” that could be put toward city services, she said in ads and at campaign stops.
However, a Times review found more than half of the claimed savings came from just two audits. One called for shifting money from one city fund to another and the other counted a large revenue projection from a city contract that Greuel herself had labeled “unrealistic.”
Garcetti pitched himself as the only candidate who, as council president, had led difficult decisions to reduce employee benefits and help close the city’s budget deficit. But Perry, as a council member, also voted for those changes and many City Hall insiders viewed her, Villaraigosa and others as pushing harder for concessions from employee unions.
In the final days of the race, the tone turned decidedly sharper. A Greuel mailer accused Garcetti and Perry of living large on the taxpayers’ dime, with expensive travel and city cars. Opponents responded that Greuel had similar taxpayer-funded expenses.
A Garcetti mailer attacked Greuel for budget and audit numbers that he said “didn’t add up.” Perry unleashed a series of mailers targeting Greuel — including one that falsely suggested that the controller was a registered Republican, a party affiliation she dropped years earlier.
Which, if any, of the messages filling the air waves and mailboxes were registering with voters was unclear. And the power of independent money also came with a cost. Working Californians for Wendy Greuel spent nearly $2 million to support her candidacy.
But the group’s substantial backing from union workers at the Department of Water and Power led to repeated accusations that Greuel would look out for the employee pay and pensions and not for utility ratepayers. Greuel denied it, saying she had challenged the DWP on various issues in the past.