The tight race to fill the crucial swing vote on the County Board of Supervisors appears to be a straightforward showdown between a pro-business candidate and his pro-labor rival.

Indeed, Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks has garnered much of the support of mainline business groups, including the L.A. Area Chamber of Commerce and the Central City Association. His rival state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas is labor’s anointed candidate.

But it’s not quite so simple.

Ridley-Thomas, who last fall got the coveted endorsement from the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, has won over to his camp billionaire developer Ed Roski, Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt and newly installed Los Angeles Area Chamber chairman and local Verizon Communications executive Tim McCallion.

“This isn’t a simple business vs. labor fight,” said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, a community activist and commentator who heads the Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable. “Parks has more old-guard support from business, but Ridley-Thomas has solid ties with business, too.”

And as the first competitive supervisor’s race in 12 years heats up, the stakes are particularly high for business. The five-member board has two conservative supervisors in Michael Antonovich and Don Knabe, with the other three members–Burke, Gloria Molina and Zev Yaroslavsky – taking positions from the center to the left. The retirement of Yvonne Braithwaite Burke means her replacement will serve as a swing vote.

If Parks were to win election to the board, he would provide that crucial third vote for generally pro-business and fiscally conservative policies. Ridley-Thomas, on the other hand, could provide critical swing votes in favor of labor on such issues as a likely push by building trades for expansion of project labor agreements on public works projects. The agreements mandate contractors hire workers through union labor halls.

The battle between these two African-Americans for this district – which stretches from Koreatown on the north through South L.A. down to Carson and Compton on the south – is expected to be extremely close, and costly.

Parks, the former police chief who was denied a second term as chief by former Mayor James Hahn, has the edge in name recognition, while Ridley-Thomas, who served on the City Council in the 1990s before moving on to the state Legislature, will be able to call on labor foot soldiers to get out the vote. The primary is in June.

Perhaps the biggest wild-card is the presence of eight other candidates, one of which – community activist Morris Griffin – could get just enough of the vote to throw the race into a November runoff election. One candidate must secure a majority in order to avoid the runoff.

Minimal fundraising

So far, not much fundraising activity has been reported, given that each campaign is likely to spend into the seven figures.