City Hall Lags in Secession Fight
Anti-breakup forces may have gotten late start.
By HOWARD FINE
Staff Reporter
It’s L.A.’s version of the Civil War.
There’s a growing prospect that secession measures for the San Fernando Valley, the Harbor area and Hollywood will be placed on the Nov. 5 ballot and a recent poll shows surprisingly strong support.
At stake is whether the nation’s second largest city stays intact or fractures. And while the anti-secession effort is being run by the team of veteran strategists that helped propel James Hahn into the mayor’s office, there’s growing concern that the campaign has gotten off to a late start and thus handed the early rounds to the opposing forces.
What’s more, the citywide business community has yet to mobilize around the anti-secession campaign. The Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, for example, has not yet taken a position on the issue.
“There’s no question this has been a one-sided campaign to date,” said Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. “The anti-secession campaign has given the total audience to the secessionists.”
While Guerra says it’s not too late for city leaders to turn the tide, others are concerned that by the time Hahn and his team get their act together, it might be too little, too late.
“I don’t see much happening at all, and time is wasting away,” said one local business leader and secession opponent. “We’re behind on this effort.”
The Local Agency Formation Commission Valley is due to decide on April 24 whether to place a Valley secession measure on the Nov. 5 ballot. Decisions on the Harbor area and Hollywood are looming in mid-May and early June, respectively.
Concern among business leaders grew substantially after the release last month of a Los Angeles Times poll showing Valley secession garnering 55 percent support in the San Fernando Valley and 47 percent citywide. In order to pass, a secession measure needs both a majority of votes in the area seeking to secede and citywide.
“It demonstrated that the anti-secessionists need to rev up their program faster than they might have liked,” said Richard Lichtenstein, an L.A.-based lobbyist and political consultant.
There are two anti-secession groups. One, called L.A. United, was formed by Hahn last November to coordinate the campaign against all three secession movements. Hahn chairs this political action committee and other members include three of L.A.’s top political consultants: Bill Wardlaw, who ran Richard Riordan’s first mayoral campaign; and Bill Carrick and Kam Kuwata, who ran Hahn’s mayoral campaign.
The other group, called One Los Angeles, formed last September by several San Fernando Valley activists dedicated to keeping the Valley part of Los Angeles. Its chair is Valley-based consultant Larry Levine, who claims that 400 people who live, work or own businesses in the Valley have signed on to the effort.
Small forums
“We’re in the retail phase right now, meeting one-on-one and in small groups with people all across the city,” Kuwata said. “We’re laying the organizational groundwork right now to be ready for those ripe moments that will come later on in the campaign to put our message before the public.”
One Valley business leader said members of the mayor’s staff have been applying pressure to key Valley business groups to keep them on the sidelines.
“There was a great fear that these chambers and other business groups in the Valley would come out one right after the other in support of secession, creating a huge snowball effect,” the business leader said. “The heavy pressure from the mayor’s office has at least temporarily forestalled that.”
To date, only eight of two-dozen Valley business groups have come out in support of secession, according to Bill Powers, chairman of the United Chambers of Commerce of the San Fernando Valley. The largest business group, the Valley Industry and Commerce Association, has yet to officially endorse secession, although many of its members have publicly expressed support for the cause.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Area Chamber, which some business leaders privately say has ducked the issue for too long, will likely come out against secession later this month.
“We are positioning ourselves to take a position in the next 30 days, and there’s little doubt in my mind where the chamber will end up,” said Chamber president and chief executive Rusty Hammer said. “And when we do, come out with our position, it will be our number one priority for us.”
Joint campaign?
While it may seem like the anti-secession camp is lagging, pro-secession forces have their work cut out for them. First, they must lay out visions of what their new cities would look like, a tough task in five months.
Also, they will have to decide how closely to work together: Is it better for campaigns in the Valley, the Harbor and Hollywood to make a joint pitch or should they each focus more instead on targeting their own neighborhoods?
Finally, they are likely to be outspent by the anti-secession forces. Hahn has pledged to raise at least $5 million to fight secession and the L.A. United campaign has been quietly seeking those funds. “L.A. United will out-raise and outspend the pro-secession camp,” said Guerra.
Yet the biggest secession group, Valley VOTE, is confident it will be able to raise the necessary funds to present its message. “We will raise whatever we need to get our message out and win,” said Richard Katz, a former state Assemblyman who is now on the board of Valley VOTE.
While the pro-secession forces have had several years to get their message out, the anti-secession groups have yet to put out a cohesive message. But local political consultants concur that there’s still enough time to mount an effective campaign.
“What you want to avoid is having the pro-secession people lock up key endorsements early on and then trying to pry those people off to your side,” Lichtenstein said.
Also, he said it would be important for both sides to get their messages out early. If they wait until the closing weeks, when most campaigns rev up, he said the message might get lost in the clutter of attack ads from Gov. Gray Davis and Republican gubernatorial challenger Bill Simon.
Kuwata said one of the key messages L.A. United will use is to dispel a misconception that voting for secession also means breaking up the Los Angeles Unified School District, which is an entity separate from city government.
“In our focus groups, when we ask why people would favor secession, the first thing they say is ‘I am for secession because I want my kids to go to better schools,’ Kuwata said. “When we tell them this has nothing to do with schools, all of a sudden they start saying, ‘Well, I’m not so sure ‘”
Meanwhile, pro-secession forces say they will focus on making a citywide case that smaller is better.
“We’re going to let voters in the Valley know that if they vote to set up a new city, council districts in that city will represent 100,000 people, not the 290,000 they represent now,” said Katz. “That’s a powerful gut feeling that we want to leave people with.”
