PERSPECTIVES ON THE MAYOR’S RACE : Candidates Cut Through the Campaign Distortions : Alienated voters want real change in dealing with issues like safety, jobs and education, not City Hall status quo.

In the April primary, voters made clear in their landslide support for term limits that they want an end to the status quo; they want real change at City Hall. They want an end to gridlock in the way Los Angeles city government works.

This impetus for change has been the premise of my citizen candidacy, a response to concerns that Los Angeles has become a war zone, and is on the wrong track in terms of issues that people care about: too few police; too many carjackings and ATM murders; an anti-business climate at City Hall that has cost jobs; guns on campus.

Walking precincts from Sylmar to San Pedro convinces me of citywide alienation; that key issues like safety, jobs and education resonate deeply with voters, regardless of partisanship.

What is repugnant, as this vitriolic campaign winds down, is the tone of the rhetoric aimed at me by Michael Woo--far beyond the bounds of fair-game, rough-and-tumble politics.

As a businessman/problem-solver, I have focused my campaign on ways to add more police without raising taxes, to eliminate recurrent budget deficits, make the city safer and more friendly to business and create good-paying jobs.

Woo, by contrast, has run a different kind of race. Instead of a pro-active message, he has waged a wide-ranging, vicious smear campaign of character assassination.

Over three decades, I have helped create, or save, thousands of jobs in the private sector. Unlike Woo, who has never met a payroll, I have had to make hard choices in saving companies, often losing money.

Yet Woo has unfairly attacked me for costing some workers their jobs, for allegedly exploiting their private lives for personal gain. Real exploitation is prompting former employees to cry on cue for television, as a Woo aide did.

Woo almost reached bottom when he ran a doctored TV ad quoting The Times as saying that the Christian Coalition was working for my campaign. The Times never reported any such link, but Woo lacked the courage to apologize.

I thought that Woo’s scorched-earth campaign of inflammatory rhetoric had reached its nadir when, in a recent radio debate, he referred to me as a “white knight,” a clearly racist slur that should have been reported on the front page--above the fold--but was not.

Not content with that, Woo slandered my campaign staff by calling them “storm troopers,” clearly raising the specter of Nazism, which insulted the intelligence of tens of thousands of voters who helped me finish first in the primary.

Now, Woo has gone over the edge in airing a vicious and misleading ad about my alcohol-related arrests two decades ago, which puts appropriateness to the maximum test of sensitivity.

My hope was that in the final days, Woo would leave the low road and come to realize that this election is not about character assassination, color, creed, ideology or promotion of a special agenda for one part of the city.

We have profound differences on key issues: I support the death penalty; Woo does not. I will expel students who bring guns to school; Woo would give them a second chance. I will not raise taxes; Woo will.

Angelenos have a clear choice on Tuesday: the status quo represented by Woo, whose Hollywood district is a metaphor for the decline of our city, or my candidacy, which stands for change at the top in City Hall.

My candidacy, as demonstrated by a recent citywide meeting of Neighborhood Watch groups I organized in East Los Angeles, represents the best chance to form new partnerships and coalitions well into the next century. I have an inclusive approach to decision-making. And will insist on diversity in broadening the appointment process to include those long excluded from boards and commissions.

Voters must ask themselves which one of us has the demonstrated leadership qualities over time to make the difference in turning Los Angeles around during perhaps the most difficult time in its history.

I believe that Los Angeles must be governed in a different way if we are to make it a great city once again. A city empowered is a city united.