Robert C. Farrell

Farrell's first involvement in political life was in the Johnson-Humphrey Presidential campaign of 1964, and in 1970 he was statewide black communities coordinator in John Tunney's U.S. Senate race. In 1971 he was deputy minority communities director on the national staff of George McGovern, who was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. He next worked for Tom Bradley's mayoral campaigns.[1]

See also List of Los Angeles municipal election returns, 1975 and after.

Farrell was employed as deputy to 8th District City Councilman Billy G. Mills,[1] and when Mills was appointed as a Superior Court judge in 1974, Farrell was elected to succeed him. In that era (1975), the district "ran in a north-south line in South-Central Los Angeles, from Adams and Jefferson Blvds. on the north, to Normandie and Central Avenue on the west, 118th St. on the south, and Arlington and Van Ness on the west." It suffered "some of the worst crime, unemployment and housing problems in the city."[4]

Farrell served for seventeen years altogether, although he did face one recall election—in 1978—and was threatened with another ten years later.. Recall proponents criticized Farrell for "dirty streets and alleys" and a controversial remark he had made the previous year supposedly indicating disregard for the rights of senior citizens. He beat the 1978 recall threat by 9,263 votes to 5,165[5] The second recall attempt, in 1988, failed when not enough signatures were gathered to put the question on the ballot.[6]

Farrell was noted as a liberal who believed in an "active, interventionist role for government." This, it was said, distinguished him from other African-American council members—"Gilbert Lindsay and occasionally David Cunningham"—who relied more on the private sector in solving problems.[5]

Farrell was insistent in pushing the Los Angeles Police Department to end what he considered racism in the department,[7] and he urged an investigation of the controversial "choke hold" used by the police. But he also waged what was called a "personal war on crime and violence," and he said that "there is more to an anti-crime fight than law enforcement." For example, he called for an honor farm where convicted youths could earn money to compensate their victims. He thought of a municipal lottery to finance an anti-crime unit, and he advocated closing Nickerson Gardens and other crime-ridden public housing projects.[8]

At one point, Farrell had to stand and apologize to members of the Southside Serial Killer police task force for questioning whether the "best and the brightest" had been assigned to tracking down the murderer of eighteen women in South Los Angeles between 1983 and 1985.[9]

Farrell wrote a proposal for a special property tax that would be levied on South Los Angeles residents to pay for additional police, but after public opposition developed, he changed his mind and said he would no longer work for it, Proposition 7 on the June 1987 ballot.[10][11]

Farrell was a consistent critic of the Apartheid regime of South Africa in the 1980s, and he used his position to promote those who championed the freedom of Nelson Mandela.[12][13] Farrell also played a leading role for the city of Los Angeles to divest from South Africa,[14][15] and he pushed for the city to deny government contracts to corporations that had ongoing businesses in Apartheid South Africa.[16] Upon the passage of divestiture, Farrell said "This is one where all of us are just doing ourselves and our nation and our city proud." He was subsequently thanked by Archbishop Desmond Tutu for his efforts.[17] In 1986, Farrell accompanied Rev. Jesse Jackson and a delegation of international diplomats and elected officials on a trip to Africa to urge an end to Apartheid.[18]

Fluoridation. Farrell was among the majority of the ten City Council members who in 1974 voted in favor of fluoridating the city's water supply. Five were opposed.

Housing. The councilman stressed the need to improve existing dwellings, rather than to build new housing. "What we can count on is what we can see and what we can touch," he said in 1979.

Middle East. On a visit to Israel in 1984, Farrell warned that the expulsion of a group of African-American immigrants known as the Black Hebrews, as threatened by an official, "would produce resentment in America's black communities and would damage Israel's standing in American public opinion."[19] Along with Compton Mayor Walter R. Tucker and three other U.S. mayors, he made a trip to Saudi Arabia in 1988, funded by the Association of Arab-American University Graduates. The trip was briefly controversial when it was erroneously reported that he had not filed the proper financial documents with the city concerning the visit.[20][21]

Development. Despite the opposition of residents who claimed the project would destroy a block of historic homes in North University Park, Farrell supported and in 1987 voted for a shopping center south of Adams Boulevard between Vermont and Menlo avenues.[22] He acknowledged that he had received "several thousand dollars" in political contributions from the developers "over the years" but denied that "defenseless homeowners" were being exploited.[23][24]

Accusations In December 1987 the now defunct Los Angeles Herald-Examiner published a series of stories that alleged Farrell improperly provided public benefits to a small social service agency controlled by his wife in an alleged attempt to satisfy his alimony obligations to her. The stories alleged that Farrell had arranged for his wife’s agency, the Improvement Association of the Eighth District (IAED), to receive a $250,000 gift of real estate from Security Pacific Bank. The bank donated the property (a branch office and an adjoining parking lot) to the IAED agency. Subsequently, Farrell opened a field office in the building to better serve his constituents. The city paid IAED $2000-a-month to rent the former bank building and $400-a-month for the parking lot. IAED allegedly sold the parking lot to a developer shortly after acquiring it from Security Pacific, and yet IAED continued to receive rent from the city for that property for 21 months after that sale. IAED reimbursed the city $8,400 for the rent it had improperly received from the parking lot deal. Farrell responded to the claims that he was involved in the allegations: "There's no scheme....It would be foolish, absolutely foolish, for me to do that." Frustrated by the controversy, Farrell joined by local African-American leaders, held a news conference on the First Street steps of City Hall where he stated the "attacks" on him were part of a wider, national effort by a white-dominated media to marginalize outspoken African-American leaders like himself. Despite the protest, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner opened a "review" of Farrell's conduct that eventually became a full investigation. “We make a determination about whether the law has been violated,′ District attorney spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons said. ′It is up to others to make moral judgments." In Feb. 1991, three years after the allegations first broke, Reiner's office dropped its investigation. The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner was not around to report or remark on the decision of Reiner's office to drop the investigation; the paper folded on Nov. 1, 1989.

In 1990, he suffered an upset defeat when he lost to Marguerite Archie-Hudson in his bid to represent the 48th district of the California State Assembly. The seat was previously held by Maxine Waters.[25][26]