Garcetti’s Fund-Raising Gives Him Big Advantage

Four years ago, with incumbent Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner vulnerable after embarrassing losses in high-profile trials, the primary election attracted a pack of challengers.

It also produced a surprise winner--one of Reiner’s chief deputies, Gil Garcetti.

Now it’s Garcetti’s turn to stand for reelection. And a new pack of challengers insists that Garcetti is vulnerable in the wake of his failure to win convictions in the murder trials of O.J. Simpson and the Menendez brothers.

With many of the challengers pledging to make the March 26 primary a referendum on Garcetti--particularly his handling of the Simpson case--the question is a natural:

Is it Garcetti’s turn to be tossed out of office?

It’s possible, political experts said. But unlikely.

None of the five challengers has Garcetti’s extraordinary name recognition. And perhaps more important, none of them has the stash of cash--roughly $1 million--he has tucked away in the bank.

“There is some room to move Garcetti, to get him into a runoff. And it may still happen,” said political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, senior associate at the Center for Politics and Economics at Claremont Graduate School. “But I don’t think so.”

The reason, she and other analysts say, is the money Garcetti has in hand.

Garcetti has redefined the way one runs for the office of district attorney in the nation’s second-largest city. Throughout his term, he has raised money aggressively, raking in six figures even in 1993, a political off-year. “I’m a good businessman,” he said in an interview at his office, a tinge of bravado in his voice.

The money--$944,881 cash on hand as of the end of December, the most recent reporting period--is not long for the bank. Instead, vast sums will be spent on television advertising in the weeks before the primary; Garcetti is campaigning for a local office as if he were running for a state or national post.

Unless the five challengers abruptly raise significant amounts, according to Dick Rosengarten, editor of the California Political Week newsletter, Garcetti stands a 70% chance of winning election outright in March, averting a runoff in November. To win outright a candidate must draw 50% of the vote plus one.

As of the last reporting period, according to county files, the combined totals of the five challengers’ cash on hand is not even one-fifth of what Garcetti has. Though a couple of challengers can boast that they have raised sizable amounts, their war chests pale next to Garcetti’s, and the money available to spend--cash on hand--was far less.

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Malcolm Jordan, a veteran deputy district attorney, leads the challengers with $336,215 in contributions. He had cash on hand of $177,913.

Lawyer Harold Greenberg raised $69,850 but had cash on hand of only $3,394. He and Jordan spent about $50,000 apiece on statements to be included in the sample ballots that go to registered voters; they were the only candidates who did so.

John Lynch--who heads the district attorney’s Norwalk office and entered the race late, in December--raised $7,273. His available cash totaled $4,836.

Encino attorney Steve Zand raised $8,600--$6,500 of which came in loans he made to himself. He had $1,143 cash on hand.

Sterling Norris, a deputy district attorney based at the Pasadena courthouse, filed no report.

An updated report from each of the six men is due to be filed this week.

The challengers’ December numbers, Rosengarten said, are “miserable.” He quickly amended that statement: “No, they’re absolutely atrocious. Combined, these guys don’t have enough money to cause Garcetti to even break into a sweat.”

Garcetti, however, is taking no chances. He said he plans to buy television and radio time to deliver his message to the county’s 3.5 million registered voters.

Garcetti’s message is plain: As a whole, the office--the nation’s largest local public law agency--does a good job.

Each workday, he said, Los Angeles County prosecutors ship 100 newly convicted felons to state prison.

The conviction rate in felony jury trials, he said, is 85%. In murder cases involving alleged gang members, notoriously difficult cases to prove, the conviction rate is 90%, he said.

“The accomplishments, with some modesty, are significant,” Garcetti said. But he also said: “Most people don’t know about all this.”

Hence the motivation to raise a pile of money.

“The truth,” said Garcetti’s political strategist, Bill Carrick, “is that you’ve got to get to at least a 1,000 rating-point level on TV,” meaning a candidate must buy enough broadcast television time--not cable--to give the average viewer 10 chances to see an advertisement before the March 26.

That takes at least $600,000, he said.

In politics, Garcetti said, money is a “regretful necessity.” But, he added, “It is a necessity.”

The others are just as mindful of that fact.

Jordan, who at least has six figures to spend, intends to buy time on TV and radio and space on slate cards. And, reminiscent of Garcetti’s 1992 hotline number “900-DUMP-IRA,” Jordan has set up his own, “800-NEXT-LA-DA.”

“We may not have enough money to bury [Garcetti],” said a Jordan spokesman. “But we can bring him to his knees.”

“Give me $1 million and there’d be no doubt about the outcome,” said Norris, a veteran prosecutor with a reputation for being plain-spoken. “There’d be nothing but toast left. Burnt toast.”

The challengers also said that Garcetti’s money may yet work against him--by reminding TV-watching voters, particularly those who were captivated by nonstop coverage of the Simpson case, that it was Garcetti at the helm.

“Here’s a guy who’s known not only countywide but internationally,” Lynch said, speaking of Garcetti. “He has $1 million and probably will spend $2 million if he needs to.

“He is the incumbent. The conventional wisdom would be to stay home and save your money. But this is not a conventional race”--because of Simpson, the latest and most-watched in a string of prosecution disappointments in headline-grabbing cases.

At a press conference last month, when reporters asked a series of questions about the Simpson case, Garcetti said, “Let’s move on. Simpson is history. Let’s move on.”

Zand concurs: “Get over it,” he said. “That case is not the sum of the problems with our society.”

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The other four candidates, however, have no intention of getting over it.

“Talk all you want about other cases,” Norris said. “It’s the high-profile cases that focus attention on the district attorney and result--if we don’t succeed--in great community and social upheaval.”

Norris’ campaign literature decries what he calls tactical “disasters” in the case--such as trying the case downtown rather than in Santa Monica, where the jury pool is “more representative” of the county’s population.

For his part, Lynch said, the case proved that Garcetti has an “endless quest for self-serving publicity,” adding, “I give you my word that as district attorney, I will not discuss pending cases in the media.”

In announcing his candidacy, Greenberg blasted Garcetti for, among other things, awarding $43,000 in bonuses to the three lead prosecutors in the Simpson case, calling that “mismanagement.”

And Jordan began a series of Saturday-morning campaign walks last month by shaking hands and knocking on doors along Bundy Drive in Brentwood, near where the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were found.

Jordan said in an interview that it’s good strategy to remind voters of the Simpson case. “It’s like at the Super Bowl,” he said. “The coach is the one responsible; he is the one calling the plays. Here, Garcetti called the plays.”

Garcetti countered: “For anyone to say that one to five to 10 cases should be the ultimate test of the effectiveness of a D.A., that is a person who does not understand what being district attorney is all about.”

And he said he was “involved, yes,” with the Simpson case but that “it was pretty much their case,” meaning lead deputies William Hodgman, Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden.

He also said he did not wish to get into a point-by-point refutation of his challengers’ criticisms. “Most of their comments are based on ignorance--at best.”

There promises to be no letup in what former district attorney and state Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp called the “scapegoating” of Garcetti.

A similar strategy took its toll on Reiner--after the McMartin preschool case and the first trial of police officers accused of beating Rodney King.

“We all say that Garcetti is vulnerable. Why? Because he lost O.J.,” newsletter editor Rosengarten said. “But the big question is: do the voters blame Garcetti and the prosecution? Or do they blame the jury? Or the system?”

Jordan commissioned a poll of 400 households in November and found, he said, that 52% of respondents want a new district attorney. The poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 5%, a Jordan spokesman said.

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Carrick, Garcetti’s strategist, declined to release results of the incumbent’s polling. But he said: “What we’ve seen . . . is essentially that people don’t make any harsh judgments about Gil individually. The harsh judgments are reserved more for what they think are the deficiencies of the system.”

Analyst Jeffe said she sees it that way, too: “The rage or the anger [at the verdict] seems to be focused more on the jury than on the prosecution.”

Garcetti said such talk makes him “hopeful” of an outright win in the nonpartisan March 26 primary. But he stressed that he is not expecting one.

Six weeks, he noted, can be a long time in politics. The second murder trial of the Menendez brothers, for instance, is due to go to the jury by the end of the month--meaning that a verdict is almost certain before the primary.

Yet another big case. Will it be a triumph? Or another blow?

“The Menendez case could help or hurt. I mean, that’s obvious,” Garcetti said, adding, “You know how unpredictable juries are.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

District Attorney Candidates

Here, in alphabetical order, are the candidates for Los Angeles County district attorney in the March 26 primary election:

GIL GARCETTI

* Age: 54

* Law school: UCLA

* College: USC

Garcetti has been a county prosecutor since 1968. In the mid-1980s, he was Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner’s chief deputy. Then Reiner demoted him, appointing him head deputy of the Torrance branch. In 1992, he defeated Reiner. Garcetti says of the primary: “I am very confident [voters] will be pleased that they have a district attorney [who is] not only protecting them today but is doing things to protect them and their families tomorrow.”

HAROLD GREENBERG

* Age: 57

* Law school: Temple University

* College: Penn State

Greenberg has been in private law practice since leaving the district attorney’s office 25 years ago. He also teaches law. Early in his career, he was a deputy public defender and, before that, an Army lawyer. A self-described maverick, he envisions an office “where there is full and frank discussion, where people’s views are respected in and outside of the office.”

MALCOLM JORDAN

* Age: 54

* Law school: California College of Law

* College: UCLA

Jordan has spent 26 years as a deputy district attorney, both downtown and in branch offices. Over the years, he says, he has prosecuted more than 1,000 cases and won 90% of his jury trials. He has spent the past few years filing criminal complaints. He holds a doctorate in political science from USC and says he offers “effective leadership, good management [and] sound judgment.”

JOHN F. LYNCH

* Age: 50

* Law school: Loyola

* College: USC

Lynch has been a deputy district attorney for 19 years. Now head of the Norwalk office, he used to be the top deputy in Santa Monica. He oversaw all felony prosecutions stemming from the 1992 riots. He also has served on the district attorney’s internal committee that decides whether prosecutors should seek the death penalty in murder cases. “What you need in the D.A.--more than anything, given the present [situation] in Los Angeles County--is competence,” he says.

STERLING “ERNIE” NORRIS

* Age: 56

* Law school: UCLA

* College: UCLA

A 29-year veteran of the district attorney’s office, Norris currently tries cases at the Pasadena courthouse. He prosecuted serial killer William Bonin, scheduled to be executed Feb. 23 at San Quentin. Norris helped write Proposition 115, the sweeping 1990 anti-crime initiative. He ran for district attorney in 1992, finishing fourth. He says his years in the courtroom give him the “unique judgment to make the criminal justice system work.”

STEVE ZAND

* Age: 34

* Law school: University of La Verne

* College: Cal State Northridge

Born in Iran, Zand attended boarding school in England, then came to the United States for college and, ultimately, law school. He hung out his shingle in Encino in 1989 and concentrates his practice on family and criminal law. He says the “real issue” of the campaign is being ignored: “In an era of limited budgets, how are we going to maximize our effectiveness for every dollar we spend?’

Sources: State Bar of California; campaign literature; interviews.