L.A. ELECTIONS / 4TH DISTRICT : Ferraro Has Strong Advantage

John Ferraro knows the advantage of incumbency. “When you provide services to your constituents, it’s a form of campaigning. Campaigning is a four-year proposition,” the longtime Los Angeles city councilman said recently.

That approach--sticking to daily constituent needs while avoiding conflicts --has kept Ferraro on the council since he was appointed in 1966. And it is the reason he is a heavy favorite to win another term representing the 4th District in Tuesday’s vote.

After running unopposed in 1991, Ferraro, 70, is being challenged by Linda W. Lockwood, a civic organizer who is also basing her campaign on community-based issues.

Ferraro, council president since 1987, won his first race for a four-year council term in 1967 against an opponent who got only 28% of the vote. No challenger has come closer to beating him since then. Ferraro did suffer a defeat in 1985 when he sought to unseat incumbent Tom Bradley in the mayoral race.

Ferraro’s ideology-free, potholes-and-police focus might be essential in a district that includes seemingly disparate parts of North Hollywood, Hancock Park, Los Feliz, Silver Lake, Griffith Park and the Fairfax district.

Lockwood, a nine-year resident of Hancock Park, says that serving virtually unchallenged for nearly 30 years has made Ferraro entrenched and unresponsive. “There’s an attitude that we don’t count, that we’re in the way,” she said of Ferraro.

Lockwood, 52, is a former financial consultant who works for her husband’s construction company. She spends much of her time fighting what she believes is the erosion of the quality of life in Los Angeles, and is not afraid of confrontations.

She was a leader in the fight against a Hollywood needle exchange program meant to prevent HIV infection among drug users. She said the program drew drug addicts into that community.

To keep the city from losing recycling revenue, Lockwood has chased down and had arrested seven people who took bottles and cans out of residential bins in her neighborhood to sell at recycling centers.

Through the Lockwood Grid System, a nonprofit program they developed, Lockwood and her husband teach neighborhood groups across Southern California how to become self-sufficient after earthquakes and other disasters. They were commended by the National Guard and City Council for providing food, water and other necessities in the days after the 1992 riots and 1994 earthquake.

Her campaign is financed mainly with $20,000 of her own money; Ferraro is spending $150,000.

During his current term, Ferraro has sponsored a tax break for entertainment and multimedia companies in a bid to keep those businesses from moving to other areas and to attract firms to the city.

Lockwood’s challenge is to persuade voters in the district that change is needed, which district observers say won’t be easy.

“There isn’t a major issue that Ferraro seems to be on the wrong side of, or a major problem he can be blamed for,” said J. Eugene Grigsby III, a UCLA urban planning professor who lives in the district.