Los Angeles city councilman opens lead in race for mayor

By Steve Gorman and Sharon Bernstein

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Los Angeles City Councilman Eric Garcetti opened a narrow election night lead in his bid to become mayor of America's second-largest city as it faces an increasingly gloomy financial outlook, early returns showed late on Tuesday.

Garcetti drew 52 percent of the vote, compared with 48 percent for his opponent, city Controller Wendy Greuel, after tabulation of 23 percent of all ballots cast at polling places on Tuesday and all mail-in ballots received as of last Friday.

The two liberal Democrats, once allies on the City Council, spent record sums vying for the city's highest office in a race shaped by dire fiscal constraints, the political clout of public employee unions and a largely disinterested electorate.

The pair emerged as the top two vote-getters in a non-partisan primary in March to replace Antonio Villaraigosa, a charismatic former labor organizer and two-term mayor who faced off against the city's unions to implement budget cuts born of the economic downturn.

A public opinion poll conducted on the mayoral race last week by the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles Times found Garcetti leading Greuel by 7 percentage points among likely voters, and by 6 percentage points among those who already had voted by mail.

However, the same poll showed 11 percent of voters still undecided, while surveys earlier this month put the two in a statistical tie.

Turnout for the election, marked by a heavy dose of negative ads and two candidates seen as largely indistinguishable in their positions, was expected to be low, with perhaps fewer than 25 percent of registered voters casting ballots.

Greuel was seeking to be the first woman elected Los Angeles mayor and Garcetti the first Jew. His mother is Jewish, and he was raised as Jewish.

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a political analyst with the USC Price School of Public Policy, said the biggest contrast between Greuel and Garcetti seemed to lie in their personal styles.

"I characterize this race as Valley girl vs. urban hipster," she said, referring to the city's heavily suburban San Fernando Valley region seen as Greuel's political stronghold.

FISCAL WOES

Garcetti, who earned a reputation as a consensus builder, served as council president from 2006 to 2011 and has called attention to his record on environmental initiatives and his role in the urban revival of once-blighted areas in Hollywood.

A onetime Rhodes scholar, he is the son of former Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti, who was the city's top prosecutor during the murder trial of O.J. Simpson in the 1990s.

The elder Garcetti was among a throng of supporters who packed the Palladium, a landmark Hollywood concert hall, on Tuesday night to watch the election returns.

Greuel touted her current role as a city controller in uncovering waste and fraud. In her former council post she touted her dedication to street repairs in her suburban district and embraced the nickname "Pothole Queen."

The winner of the race will inherit a city government whose fiscal well-being has been crippled by dwindling tax collections wrought by the housing collapse and prolonged recession of recent years, along with rising public sector wages, pension obligations and other unfunded liabilities.

California's largest metropolis has a projected budget deficit set to top $1 billion cumulatively over the next four years and both Garcetti and Greuel have vowed to slash city business taxes to help spur economic growth.

Both said they would seek to renegotiate a five-year, 25 percent pay increase they supported in 2007 for most of the city's municipal workers, which the city's powerful public employee unions are sure to resist.

The influence of organized labor became a key issue during the race, with Garcetti questioning Greuel's ability to wring concessions from public employee unions after they contributed heavily to her campaign.

Garcetti led in campaign spending overall, with $9.4 million in expenditures, compared with $8.9 million for Greuel, according to City Ethics Commission figures. Much of that money has gone on a slew of negative television ads from both sides.

Also on Tuesday's ballot, incumbent City Attorney Carmen Trutanich was trailing in early returns behind his challenger, former state Assemblyman Mike Feuer.

Separately, a City Council-backed ballot measure to cut back the number of medical marijuana dispensaries permitted to operate in Los Angeles and to increase sales taxes levied on medicinal pot appeared to be heading for passage.

(Additional reporting by Dana Feldman; Editing by Cynthia Johnston, Bill Trott, Eric Beech and Pravin Char)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/los-angeles-voters-choose-two-democrats-mayor-024936230.html

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