Guns, death threats and fraud in the battle for Compton
"After all, if the same criteria had been used
in Florida, Al Gore would be President."
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
16 February 2002
Even when Al Gore and George Bush were duking it out in
Florida over every last vote, they never quite descended to this
level. Imagine an election that is not just close, not just
dogged by ballot improprieties, not just tarred with hints of
undue family influence and legal strong-arm tactics. Imagine
one that also involves death threats, random gunshots, fist
fights, obscene hand gestures, allegations of sexual
harassment, purloined documents, embezzled public funds
and - for good measure - out-and-out fraud and perjury.
If you can imagine all that, you are getting close to the
spectacular mess on display in Compton, a suburb of Los
Angeles that has sometimes sold itself as the "baddest"
neighbourhood on the planet and is most certainly, these
days, living up to the hype.
Compton is, among other things, the birthplace of gangsta
rap, of drive-by shootings and of Los Angeles' two most
notorious black street gangs, the Crips and the Bloods. It is
also, by way of light relief, the birthplace of the tennis stars
Venus and Serena Williams.
As of a week ago, the suburb has a new cause for notoriety, a
twist in electoral politics even stranger than the
make-it-up-as-you-go-along Supreme Court ruling that put Mr
Bush in the White House a little more than a year ago.
The story began in June last year, when the Mayor of Compton, a
bear-like figure of intimidating charisma called Omar Bradley,
was unexpectedly defeated at the polls by a margin of 280
votes.
Mr Bradley, who had already served two terms in office,
liked to portray himself as the gangster-politician, a
characterisation his detractors thought was more than an act.
The man who defeated him, a criminal prosecutor called Eric
Perrodin, subsequently set about having him investigated on
allegations of gross embezzlement of public funds and illegal
allocation of public housing to his relatives.
Mr Bradley is not a man to take defeat lying down, and in
weeks he was in court alleging that the vote was rigged, that
legal ballots had been spirited away on election day and
illegal ballots brought in. He came close to punching out Mr
Perrodin, at a public meeting called to promote harmony, and
had to be dragged off by uniformed police.
Mr Perrodin was no saint himself. On election day, he made a
rude gesture with his finger to a group of fire-fighters who had
opposed him, an episode that made some people wonder if he
was a real reformer, or merely giving Mr Bradley and his
cohorts a taste of their own medicine.
Then came the real surprise, courtesy of a Superior Court
judge called Judith Chirlin. She ruled a week ago that Mr
Perrodin had not won the election at all, not because of fraud,
but because of the failure of the city clerk's office to arrange
the candidates' names randomly on the ballot paper. Basing
her decision on the theories of an Ohio mathematician who
estimated that Mr Perrodin's place at the top of the list of
candidates probably earned him an extra 300 votes, she
decided that Mr Bradley was in fact the winner and installed
him as Mayor in Mr Perrodin's place.
The reaction to Judge Chirlin's decision has been little short of
sensational. Mr Bradley himself could not believe his luck -
the most he had dared hope for was a new election. Mr
Perrodin's supporters were left incredulous, and determined to
appeal. Electoral law experts called the ruling eccentric, if not
incomprehensible. After all, if the same criteria had been used
in Florida, Al Gore would be President.
"We are all in a state of bafflement," said Father Stan Bosch,
one of a group known as Pastors for Compton, which was
increasingly vocal in its opposition to Mr Bradley's political
style before the election. "We have no idea what really
happened here." Being Compton, the rumours are flying.
Did someone get to Judge Chirlin and scare her?
Did she have some sort of professional grudge
against Mr Perrodin nurtured
in the corridors of the county law courts?
She did not just
reinstate Mr Bradley; she also resurrected one of his
confidantes, the city councillor Melanie Andrews, and
declared that the woman who defeated her, Leslie Irving, had
committed fraud and should never again be allowed to hold
public office in California. Thanks to the judge, Mr Bradley
returned to city hall last week with both his old job and an
unassailable 4 to 1 majority on the city council.
"It's like the return of the Taliban," said Richard Sanders,
another of the Pastors for Compton. He, and many like him
around town, had hoped the defeat of Mr Bradley would herald
a new, more constructive era for Compton after years of
scandal and confrontation in which the state of California took
over the local school district and the county took over the
police department.
Now Mr Bradley is back, all bets are off. Asked if he would
change his style now, Mr Bradley said: "The only thing I would
do different is I would negotiate with far more sugar." In
Compton parlance, "sugar" can mean good humour, or
money, or even sex. Now Mr Bradley's back, there is unlikely
to be a dull moment.
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