At campaign stops across Los Angeles, mayoral hopeful Wendy
Greuel is promising to do more than improve schools, transportation and
the economy.
She's vowing to make history.
At a time when men hold 14 out of 15 seats on the City Council,
Greuel is issuing a call to arms to female voters to help her break City
Hall's ultimate glass ceiling. She says she's aspiring to become Los
Angeles' first female mayor in part to be "a role model to every young
girl out there who dreams they can reach for the stars."
With some internal polls showing most undecided voters in the March
primary are women, Greuel and her strategists see an opening they are
determined to exploit. But not without a fight from the other top
contenders.
Councilwoman Jan Perry is making her own, less overt appeals to
women. So is City Councilman Eric Garcetti, a self-proclaimed feminist
who recently won the endorsement of the California chapter of the
National Organization for Women.
The competition to woo female voters was on display last week with
Greuel and Garcetti making appeals in connection to the 40th anniversary
of the Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade decision, which relaxed
restrictions on abortion. In a fiery Huffington Post article, Greuel
pledged to be a national leader on abortion rights, while Garcetti
tweeted: "We must keep fighting for reproductive justice for all women."
All Democrats, the top three candidates in the race share the same
views on women's issues. Each supports equal pay for equal work
requirements, and each believes that women should have unrestricted
access to birth control and abortion. Even Kevin James, the leading
Republican in the race, is pro-choice.
"The candidates are so similar, they are scrambling for a base," said
political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a senior fellow at the Price
School of Public Policy at USC.
Jeffe said Greuel is smart to emphasize the historic possibility of her election because it may differentiate her from the pack.
"Any effective campaign manager of a woman candidate should and must
articulate to a female audience that it is important to have a woman
running Los Angeles," she said. "Wendy has to pull as many [female
voters] in as she possibly can."
Whether Greuel's aspirational appeal will work remains to be seen.
Wide economic and geographic stratifications mean female voters in the
San Fernando Valley may have different priorities than those in
Koreatown or San Pedro.
But there are signs that Greuel's pitch is gaining traction. Her
Women for Wendy group has more than 700 members who host house parties
and fundraisers. She has lined up endorsements from influential female
politicians, including Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina,
Houston Mayor Annise Parker, and U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who
appeared alongside Greuel on Saturday at the opening of her new
campaign office on the Westside.
At ground level, USC student Kaya Masler said she was excited by the
chance to help elect the city's first female mayor. But that's only
partly why she volunteered to help Greuel's campaign.
"She is a woman, and that would be huge, but it really is the kind of woman she is that inspires me," said Masler, 21.
She met Greuel at a campus event designed to encourage young women to
run for office. She said she was energized by Greuel's honesty about
the strain of long workdays and about her frustration with people who
"will pick apart her haircut rather than the content of her speech."
Although city leaders rarely, if ever, make decisions on such issues
as abortion, "women's issues and women being disenfranchised affect
every part of the city," Masler said.
Patricia Bellasalma, the head of California NOW, said a mayor should
weigh every decision in terms of how it would affect women and girls.
She said men have shown they are capable of making that assessment.
For example, Garcetti, a NOW member, helped preserve the city's domestic violence response teams, she said.
But Stephanie Myers, national co-chair for the advocacy group Black
Women for Positive Change, argues that there is a unique aspect to a
woman's perspective. "I think that women bring a certain compassion and
understanding to elected office," said Myers, who is supporting Perry.
In contrast to Greuel, Perry is not stressing the historic
possibility of electing a woman because "identity politics is not what
people are looking for in a mayoral election," said Eric Hacopian, her
campaign consultant.
Ultimately, Perry said, voters are not seeking officials who look
like them but leaders who can demonstrate "that you have some capacity
to deliver what it is that they need."
Voters' attitudes toward the importance of electing the first woman mayor also are mixed.
At a Neighborhood Council meeting in the Valley, North Hills resident
Anita Goldbaum said a mayor's gender doesn't matter because most
decisions affecting women aren't made at City Hall. "I don't know if the
city is where women's politics take place," said Goldbaum, 72.
Her friend Mary Armenteros said this election is about issues and candidates' qualifications, not gender.
But Yvette Brown, who was picking up lunch last week at a Ladera
Heights McDonald's, said the gender of the candidates "matters a lot."
Brown is undecided, but said she probably will vote for Greuel or
Perry partly because they would bring a mother's perspective to
education, the issue she cares about most.
Brown compared the chance to elect the city's first female mayor to
the excitement she felt voting for Antonio Villaraigosa, the first
Latino mayor in the city's modern history.
"Everything that's a 'first,' I've been for," she said.
kate.linthicum@latimes.com
