Although Councilman Alex Padilla won the Los Angeles City Council presidency last week on a 9-to-5 vote over sitting council president Ruth Galanter, the contest apparently was closer than it seemed. That’s because going in to the vote at 10 a.m. last Tuesday, a key veteran voice on the council, Joel Wachs, was uncommitted. If he went for Galanter, a 7-7 tie would have been likely, since rumor had it that new Councilman Dennis Zine, who came after Wachs in the roll-call vote, was leaning toward Galanter.

But Wachs was swayed by Padilla’s speech just prior to the vote, giving Padilla that crucial eighth vote. Once Zine saw that vote, he followed suit. As one council staffer said, “Once the outcome was certain, there was no point in casting a vote for the loser.”

As for how Padilla was able to get the eight votes he needed, his spokesman David Gershwin shared some insights. It appears that, paradoxically, a vote for the young Padilla he is 28 years old was actually a vote for stability. That’s because Galanter is termed out in 2003, which would mean that if she had been elected council president, another election for the post would have had to be held within two years. Of course, with that deadline looming, the jockeying to replace Galanter would have begun almost immediately. Padilla, on the other hand, isn’t termed out until 2009.

“That was an enormous factor,” Gershwin said. “The council has had a reputation for being fractious, and there was a feeling that you needed someone in there as president for the longer term.”

Other City Hall staffers said the reason for Padilla’s triumph was even more basic: Galanter took her votes for granted and Padilla simply out-hustled her in the vital task of member-to-member campaigning.

In fact, the buzz around City Hall was that Padilla and Councilman Nick Pacheco had held some discussions immediately after news surfaced in late April of Pacheco’s alleged indirect involvement in a scandal over controversial phone calls targeting former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa in the recent mayoral campaign. The gist of those discussions were said to be centered on Pacheco delivering his votes to Padilla.

It also didn’t hurt that Padilla came out early for Mayor James Hahn, even as two other Latinos (Congressman Xavier Becerra and Villaraigosa) were vying for the mayor’s post. Galanter didn’t come out in support of Hahn until three days before the election, when it was obvious to most that he would win. Many of the new council members have said they are eager for better relations between the council and the mayor’s office.

Move Glitches

No major move goes without a hitch, and the massive move of L.A. city staff back into the old City Hall building has been no exception.

City Council offices were supposed to complete their moves back into City Hall by July 1. But as of last week, several council offices did not yet have all their computers, fax machines and phones hooked up. In addition, the “squawk boxes” and cable television hookups that monitor council meetings didn’t work. And some of the offices didn’t have adequate air conditioning, which made working through last week’s sweltering combination of heat and humidity quite uncomfortable.

“One of the things we found was that the windows in our office won’t latch shut,” said Greg Nelson, chief of staff to Councilman Joel Wachs, who will be leaving the council in 10 weeks. “Of course, it really doesn’t matter too much right now since we don’t have air conditioning anyway.”

Roy Morales, the staff member to Chief Legislative Analyst Ron Deaton who is handling the move, said that on the whole, the level of glitches was about as expected and that fixes would be completed on most of them by the end of this week.

“The squawk-box problem and the cable television hookups took us a little by surprise, as did the air conditioning,” he said. For example, the new air conditioning system wasn’t properly balanced, so some offices were cooler than normal and others had little or no cooling.

What’s more, there apparently have been some mix-ups in the personnel moves back into the building.

“I saw three guys from the mayor’s office down in front of our office the other day looking for boxes. They were in their suits and ties, hardly appropriate moving attire,” Nelson said. “Apparently, they had initially been told they would move at the end of this month and then were told on Monday (July 2) that they would be moving the next day.”

Staff Reporter Howard Fine can be contacted at (323) 549-5225 ext. 227 or at [email protected].