Vote Mirrors an Angry Constituency : Galanter Victory Part of Movement to Shift Agenda at City Hall

The trouncing of Los Angeles City Council President Pat Russell on Tuesday by political newcomer Ruth Galanter is the latest and most potent expression of a new movement of angry middle-class voters, reminiscent of Proposition 13, that has been changing the guard and rewriting the agenda at City Hall for the last two years.

Galanter’s victory in the 6th Council District and former state Sen. Nate Holden’s win in the 10th District demonstrated the growing independence of voters across the city who rejected Russell and Homer Broome Jr., the two candidates backed by Mayor Tom Bradley and most of the City Hall Establishment.

“Like Proposition 13, this election and a couple of previous ones tapped public impatience about government’s inability to respond to the problems weighing heaviest on people’s minds,” said Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, a leader of the new movement who is giving serious thought to running for mayor in 1989.

Join Woo, Molina

Galanter and Holden are the fourth and fifth additions to the 15-member council to be elected during the last two years. Along with Michael Woo and Gloria Molina, Galanter and to a lesser degree Holden are part of a new wave of candidates who have run against the local Establishment and enjoyed the support of people who are angry about government unresponsiveness, traffic, pollution and the pace of commercial development.

These four council members, combined with four others already sympathetic to the slow-growth cause, could sway the balance of power of a council that will be under increasing pressure to limit growth and curb pollution. If they do prevail, it would change the course of city policy, that, up to now, has encouraged the building boom that has rebuilt the downtown and rehabilitated many other parts of the inner city.

Moreover, the movement that unseated Russell, after 17 years in office, and raised serious questions about the growth and development policies of Bradley, her longtime friend and mentor, has been gathering strength throughout the state. In November, voters in San Francisco approved a Draconian initiative that virtually prohibits any more high-rise construction in the city’s central business district. And city officials in San Diego unveiled a plan in April that would severely restrict the pace of growth that they argue is overwhelming streets, sewers and other city services.

In Los Angeles, city officials first witnessed the strength of the movement last November when close to 70% of the voters approved an initiative, Proposition U, sponsored by Yaroslavsky and Councilman Marvin Braude, that cut in half the allowable size of new development adjacent to residential neighborhoods.

“Proposition U was the watershed,” Yaroslavsky boasted Wednesday. “It marked the end of the boom-town mentality that said you could build whatever you wanted wherever you wanted to build it.

Public Direction

“It showed just how much the public was at variance with the direction the mayor, the city Planning Commission and the council had been taking for years.”

Galanter’s formidable margin of victory, 58% to 42%, over an incumbent who came into the race with at least three times as much money, is also indicative of the public support for candidates with an anti-growth message.

Taking Russell to task for her sponsorship of four mammoth developments in the 6th District, Galanter, a 46-year-old urban planner, appealed to a disparate constituency made up of Republicans and Democrats, suburban homeowners and young single renters.

Galanter also got help, all of it free, from a potpourri of local politicians who recognized the broad public appeal of her cause. Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) endorsed her and sent out campaign mail on her behalf. Democratic Los Angeles Congressmen Howard Berman and Mel Levine contributed money and advice to her cause. City Councilmen Marvin Braude and Ernani Bernardi took to the stump for Galanter, and City Atty. James K. Hahn, a member of one of the area’s most influential political families, went to bat for her.

With her mix of liberal and conservative supporters, Galanter proved to be impervious to Russell’s efforts to tar her with the brush of ultra-leftism. Moreover, Galanter’s hybrid support is typical of the sort of patchwork coalitions coming together behind insurgent candidates in recent elections.

Coalition Seen Breaking

As one member of the City Council put it Wednesday, “People are seeing elections less along ideological lines than on local issues.”

But to some members of the old guard at City Hall the latest trend in local politics represents more than just a threat to veteran incumbents like Russell. There is the complaint that the new movement, like Proposition 13, marks a retreat from the kind of pragmatic liberalism that helped rebuild the city and provide new jobs and housing in the years after the 1965 Watts Riots.

“The old multiracial coalition that Bradley presided over is breaking down,” said Dan Garcia, president of the Planning Commission. “This slow-growth movement, or whatever you want to call it, is by any other name a movement of white, middle-class, affluent people who are out for themselves and their own neighborhoods.

“That’s fine, as long it does not lead to a fragmentation of local government, which is what we will get if the job of public officials comes down to surrendering their power to neighborhood dissidents angry about the latest development,” Garcia said.

“The question we’re facing now is whether we are going to have a really great city or a series of unconnected suburbs preoccupied with their own well-being.”

In a similar vein, former Councilman Arthur K. Snyder, now a lobbyist for several major developers, said the outcome of the 6th District race represents triumph of a well-heeled electorate.

“People who feel they’re all right financially want to freeze the world,” Snyder said.

Snyder said he fears that council members may become increasingly skittish toward more development, regardless of the location. “That could be the most negative impact. Politicians by nature are very sensitive to what are perceived as trends.

“If this is interpreted as being a citywide phenomenon, they may be very hesitant to buck the trend out of fear that the same thing (that happened to Russell) would happen to them. . . . We could see an exacerbation of the housing shortage we see today.”

But others argue that the movement that brought Galanter to power is more broadly based than Garcia and Snyder are willing to admit.

“This is not a divisive movement,” said lawyer Dan Shapiro, a veteran neighborhood activist in the San Fernando Valley.

Shapiro pointed to the coalition of black and white environmentalists, including Galanter, who have come together to oppose the construction of the LANCER project, a giant trash-burning incinerator planned for a black neighborhood in South-Central Los Angeles. Holden also opposes LANCER, calling it a risk to health and the environment.

Shapiro said the outcome of recent elections makes it clear that a great many people are questioning the direction the city is going.

“It’s ironic, but what you have is a case of too much success. Bradley’s goal of making Los Angeles into a world-class city has created so many problems that people are beginning to question whether the mayor’s quest is still worth pursuing,” Shapiro said.

“The mayor and the City Council had better realize there’s a revolution going on in the community. And we had better get in tune or there are going to be more shake-ups,” said Councilman Ernani Bernardi, who backed Galanter.

“Growth is the No. 1 issue. The livability of the city is really at stake,” he said.

Bernardi said the vote for Galanter amounted to “a repudiation of the mayor and a repudiation of the council. It’s a repudiation of our policies. It’s a repudiation of growth and traffic congestion and the placebos we offer as corrective measures.”

Woo said the defeat of Russell could cloud the future of major projects such as Metro Rail that Bradley and his Russell-led alliance have fought hardest for.

As for development, Woo said Russell tried and failed “to occupy the middle ground” and added that the council has become “increasingly polarized on the development issue.”

Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, a potential successor to Russell as council president, said that one effect of the election will be to improve the chances of a 10-point plan backed by Galanter and Holden that would dramatically increase the City Council’s power over local development.

Heading that plan is its most controversial element, a proposal to give the council veto power over new building of 50,000 square feet or larger even if it complies with the city’s zoning code.

Galanter, during a brief press conference Wednesday, spoke confidently of her own ability to respond to the people who elected her.

“I had some of that experience when I served on the coastal commission,” she said, referring to her four years as a member of the South Coast Regional Coastal Commission.

“I found that I was most comfortable working in close contact with the people who got me appointed in the first place,” she said.

“I will do that here, too. . . . I don’t plan to lose touch. If I feel I’m losing touch, I’ll get out of the office.”

The Galanter campaign turned out to be more than a political triumph. In early May, she was attacked in her home by an intruder who stabbed her twice in the neck and left her near death. A long and painful convalescence kept Galanter in the hospital for the duration of the campaign and gave rise to questions about her physical ability to take office July 1, when Russell’s term expires.

In only her second face-to-face interview with reporters, Galanter discussed her campaign Wednesday from a hospital visiting room.

Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt with her picture on it, Galanter said she did think that she derived a political advantage from the attack.

“I think the major factor the attack played in my campaign was increasing the number of people who knew my name. But I really do have the confidence that the vote was a vote on the issues as I asked all along that it should be,” she said.

“My victory represents a victory of a vision of the future of Los Angeles as a place where people are interested in cleaning up the environment, keeping the neighborhood pleasant and safe places to live and directing growth and development where it’s most needed.”

Contributing to this article were Times staff writers Scott Harris and Ted Vollmer.