City’s Survival at Stake, Say Candidates in Mayor’s Race : Election: Front-runners step up personal attacks. Police are investigating complaints made by relatives of two contenders.

To hear some of the candidates tell it, nothing less than this community’s survival is at stake in Tuesday’s mayoral race.

“Vote April 20 to save our city,” reads one flyer distributed by candidate Kellie Irving.

“Our city could be lost forever,” warns candidate Kenneth Tucker.

“We are losing our community, it is slipping from our fingers and we must save it,” says Councilwoman Patricia Moore.

While one leading candidate, Councilman Omar Bradley, dismisses such doom and gloom as campaign rhetoric, five others said that in the last two years the city has been nearly paralyzed by an increasingly arrogant, divisive council. Most candidates say that the council’s decision last year to approve a card casino development without first submitting the issue to a vote of the people proved that the council cares little about the community.

And while City Council members have fought among themselves, crime continues to plague the city, graffiti has proliferated in almost every neighborhood, business is in decline, and unemployment has risen to 20%, nearly double the county average, the candidates argue.

Candidates Robert Adams, John Clark, Kellie Irving, Patricia Moore and Kenneth Tucker say that unless someone is elected who will listen to residents and get the job done without petty bickering, the city is headed for disaster. Another candidate on the ballot, Johnny Randle, could not be reached for comment and apparently has done no campaigning.

The mayor’s seat became vacant after Walter R. Tucker III was elected to Congress last year. He had won the mayor’s office in 1991 shortly after the death of his and Kenneth’s father, Walter R. Tucker II, who had held the post for nine years.

Though the mayor has no more voting power than the other four members of the council, the candidates say it is up to the mayor to pull the City Council together and act as the symbolic leader of the community.

Adams, a mortician and former councilman, says he would bring stability and business sense back to the council. Bradley touts a record of community activism and a two-year stint on the council that, he says, is marked by the creation of dozens of new jobs. Clark cites his problem-solving abilities and skills as a business owner.

Irving, the youngest of the candidates, says she alone has the energy, determination and ideas to turn the city around. Moore calls herself a progressive, courageous leader who will not be afraid to fight for the community. Tucker points to his college education, business experience, leadership of a family-run nonprofit corporation, and the fact that his brother, the former mayor, is a congressman.

All candidates have promised to bring new professionalism and vision to the City Council. All are touting plans to create jobs, clean up graffiti and make the streets safer by hiring more police officers.

Apparently, however, the pledges about being professional and getting along with people have been set aside for the duration of the campaign. As election day draws near, the campaign has begun to resemble a giant game of King of the Mountain as the candidates try to scramble to the top of the heap, championing their platforms and increasingly attacking their opponents.

The personal attacks have become particularly fierce among the three candidates considered to have the best chance: Bradley, Moore and Tucker. Each has attacked one another’s educational background, work experience and accomplishments.

Moore has accused Kenneth Tucker of being Rep. Walter R. Tucker’s puppet, and says that both Tucker and Bradley have threatened her potential campaign contributors. Kenneth Tucker has called Bradley a “dictator” and a “thug.”

A candidates’ forum in City Council chambers ended in pandemonium Monday after Tucker said Bradley had sold out the community to the gambling interests and then likened the councilman to Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus Christ for 30 pieces of silver. The remark sparked a shouting match between Tucker and Bradley supporters who swarmed to the back of the chambers, while an astonished Irving tried to finish her closing remarks.

The forum ended abruptly when six police officers rushed in and called for everyone to calm down. As Bradley’s entourage hustled him from the building, the furious councilman glared at Tucker, who was being ushered out a separate door, and issued a few parting shots about Tucker’s mother.

Since then Bradley’s wife, Robin, has filed a police complaint accusing Tucker’s brother-in-law, Richard Brown, of shoving her. Brown has filed a lawsuit against Bradley’s brother-in-law, Lonnie Howard, saying that Howard had threatened his wife, Keta Brown. The Police Department is investigating the allegations.

On Thursday, a Superior Court commissioner in Compton ordered Bradley, Tucker and their families to stay at least 100 yards from each other.

Of the three leading candidates, Bradley, a Lynwood High School teacher, has built the biggest campaign fund. He has drawn financial support from a wide range of supporters, including Beverly Hills-based developers doing work in the city and local business owners. Though his current financial statements were unavailable, he had raised $40,186 by March 7. By comparison, Tucker reported that he raised $32,566 by April 8, and Moore said last week she has raised about $8,000.

Bradley, who was elected to the council two years ago, says the city has made great strides in that time. He said there has been an “explosion” of new business in the city, including Blockbuster Video, Subway Sandwiches and Little Caesar’s Pizza. He said the city also plans to bring in a 12-screen movie theater and food court in 1994. He has pledged to bring in 200 new businesses to the city and create at least 10,000 new jobs in the next four years. He did not say where most of those jobs would come from but he did say that the card casino/entertainment center will create 1,200 and a new Vons grocery store will add another 300. Bradley also promised to hire 70 more police officers and build 1,200 homes affordable to middle-income earners.

Bradley’s political Achilles’ heel, however, may be his vote for the card casino license. Bradley has conceded that his decision angered some people, but he said the city needs the revenue. The developers of the casino have estimated that the complex could pump $10 million a year into the city. Bradley and Councilwomen Jane Robbins and Bernice Woods voted for the casino.

Kenneth Tucker has repeatedly criticized Bradley for seeking what he says is a quick fix to the city’s woes. “The Thing We’ve Feared The Most Is Upon Us . . . Gambling!!!” shrieks the headline of one Tucker flyer. In the same mailer Tucker warns that unless Bradley, Robbins and Woods are unseated, residents will “never again have a say into the future of our city, just as you had no say in the gambling issue. It happened in Nazi Germany. It happened in Communist Russia and it can happen here.” Voters will also decide Tuesday whether to elect Woods to a second term.

Tucker said that if he is elected he will try to stop the casino project and have it placed on the ballot. He said that instead of a card casino, city leaders should be trying to build a manufacturing base in the city to provide high-skilled, high-paying jobs to residents.

Tucker, 29, is often portrayed by his chief rivals as too young and inexperienced for the job. Typically upon introducing himself, his first words are: “I am the son of the late Mayor Walter R. Tucker II and the brother of Congressman Walter R. Tucker III.” He talks about how he can bring more federal dollars to Compton and create job-training programs with help from “my brother in Congress,” sparking charges that Kenneth Tucker has no credentials of his own.

Tucker says he is proud of his family and that his father and brother were good role models who influenced him greatly. And, he adds, having a brother in Congress can only help him as mayor.

Regarding comments that he is too young, he said, “Age is just a number.”

Tucker points out that he studied mechanical engineering for five years at Howard University in Washington, D.C., before transferring to Cal State Long Beach, where he received a degree in technical design.

Moore, who has one of the highest profiles among city leaders, has been conducting a decidedly low-profile campaign. She did not appear at a single forum and has not held any fund-raisers. Moore was elected to the City Council four years ago, and rather than run for reelection she announced last year that she would run for mayor.

Moore has been seen numerous times on national television as an outspoken, sharp-tongued fighter against injustice in the minority community. But her activism in such controversial cases as the killing of black teen-ager Latasha Harlins by a Korean grocer has been criticized by some as exploitative and insincere. That perception was strengthened early in the campaign when Moore made what sounded to some like a campaign speech at the funeral of slain Compton Police Officer Kevin Burrell.

Moore, who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 1991, has also been under fire for not taking an early stand to have the casino issue placed on the ballot. She abstained when the council first voted to issue the license because she had accepted a campaign contribution from one of the casino developers during her unsuccessful campaign for state Assembly last year. When the second and final vote was taken she was out of town with an ill family member, she said. Nonetheless, her silence on the issue has been taken by some of her opponents as a vote in support of the casino. Since then, Moore has sponsored a measure calling for a referendum on the casino issue, which is now wending its way through City Hall.

Moore said she has refused to attend political forums because she would spend more time defending herself against “nonsensical charges” than talking about her record and her plans. She has concentrated, instead, on getting out her message through door-to-door campaigning, speeches to neighborhood groups and interviews.

She said one of her chief goals is to eradicate graffiti in the city and to lobby local judges to consider graffiti as great a crime as “killing someone, because they (taggers) are killing our community.” She said she would also seek funding to put at least 80 more officers on the street, would restore youth programs and would lobby for more housing for the elderly. While Moore, Tucker and Bradley battle it out, candidates Adams, Irving and Clark point to the bickering among the leading candidates as an example of what is wrong with the leadership in Compton.

Adams served on the City Council from 1977 to 1989, and says the council hasn’t been as effective since he left. He said that most of the redevelopment now going on in the city was approved when he sat on the council, and that the council needs his business sense. His first priority on the council would be to rescind the gambling ordinance and place the matter on the ballot for voters to decide.

Adams, who owns a funeral home in the city, has spent about $17,000 of his own money on the campaign, much of it for huge billboards bearing a photo of himself taken in 1977. Some of his opponents say that Adams, 61, is too old and frail for the job. Adams said his doctor has given him a clean bill of health. The candidate dismisses comments about using an old photo, saying, “I’m better looking than that now.” In a jab at candidates Irving and Tucker, Adams says that a mayor should have some experience and training.

Irving, 26, who runs a business consulting firm, insists that experience and training are not always essential.

“If you look at the school district, they are having trouble, the community college is having trouble, the City Council is having trouble and they are all (run by) seasoned politicians,” Irving said. “Maybe that is part of the problem and they need something fresh and new, and that is me.”

Irving said her first priority would be to add more police officers and begin a full-scale campaign to bring more business to the city.

Clark, 41, says business experience is crucial. Clark, who has been wheelchair bound with polio since he was 2 years old, runs a consulting firm that helps other businesses comply with a federal law governing opportunities and working conditions for the handicapped.

“How can we entrust the city to someone who doesn’t have five years of work experience?” he asks, referring to Tucker and Irving.

Clark said that in addition to his business skills, he has worked in city government and earned a college degree. “The words ‘I can’t’ and ‘problem’ don’t exist for me,” he says.

Polls will be open Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. A candidate must receive more than 50% of the vote to win. If no gets that much, a runoff between the top two vote-getters will be held June 1.