First in a series
[img]1088|left|Ms. Hogan-Rowles||no_popup[/img]If this is to be the first time in three campaigns that Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks is destined to face stiff opposition, it will come from the impressive businesswoman Forescee Hogan-Rowles.
She is not his only rival in the March 8 election, but the most muscular one. Her lengthy bona fides give her the appearance of being as solid as the ground she firmly, confidently stands on.
Further, updated proof, however, is needed.
A well-knit fixture in the district where she has lived all of her life, she has been warming up for this run for eight years — coincidentally the last time the 67-year-old Mr. Parks drew a rival, and not coincidentally, one was Ms. Hogan-Rowles.
She finished from here to Kansas City behind Mr. Parks, though. Last evening, she fervently insisted she has thoroughly corrected her course.
As the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday, Ms. Hogan-Rowles just landed a much-sought-after blue ribbon endorsement on Monday night from Maria Elena Durazo’s immensely influential County Federation of Labor, the plum of labor backing in this town, representing 350 unions, 800,000 union members. That bridges a considerable gap separating her from Mr. Parks, and it may move Kansas City of 2003 to within striking distance.
Never known as a union partisan, Mr. Parks is the only member of the City Council the Federation does not support.
He may be unbeaten in Council campaigns, but Mr. Parks won’t forget his last encounter with the Federation of Labor. Three years ago, the Fed spent an eye-catching $8.5 million to greatly aid their candidate, Mark Ridley-Thomas, in walloping Mr. Parks in the last County Board of Supervisors race.
In the Background
For the past 16 years, Ms. Hogan-Rowles has been the president and CEO of the Community Financial Resource Center, a non-profit that provides financial services to business owners and residents in low-income communities.
Her campaign says the former Dept. of Water and Power commissioner — her father worked for the DWP for 43 years — has helped create 3,000 jobs in small businesses.
Ms. Hogan-Rowles boasts of major backing in two dimensions often regarded as bitter rivals, business and labor. “It means so much to me that I have earned support from unions and business leaders,” she says. “We will work together to jumpstart our economy and create more jobs.”
A hometowner all the way, she is a graduate of Narbonne High School, Loyola Marymount and Pepperdine.
A lifetime Democrat and common-sense entrepreneur with strong commerce credentials, Ms. Hogan-Rowles has been campaigning daily since last July, she says, without ever encountering Mr. Parks, whom critics charge with being reclusive.
Not Ms. Hogan-Rowles. She smiles easily, and laughing comes naturally.
She opened a lengthy conversation with the newspaper last evening talking about what she learned from her last face-to-face with the stoic ex-LAPD chief.
On the patio of a Crenshaw Boulevard restaurant at the dinner hour, she looks her interrogator directly in the eye without ever deflecting her gaze. Speaking fast and fully, she confronts each inquiry and responds roundly.
Not the Same
“This year is very different from ’03,” Ms. Hogan-Rowles said. “I thought I had the skills then. I thought I was ready to do it. But other people didn’t. They got behind Bernard Parks.
“Oh, maybe they did think I was ready. The sentiment, though, really was with Bernard Parks.
“And so we ran a race based on my grassroots organizing. I had come up through the ranks of the Assembly district committees, and I served as state Democratic Party secretary from 1989 to 1993. So I had a lot of experience working with shoestring campaigns with not a lot of budget.
“We felt as if we knew how to get a little bit of a sizzle. But we did it on a true shoestring, nothing like what Bernard Parks had.
“We did well, and we got some press. But we didn’t win any major endorsements from the unions or from elected officials.”
Count this campaign in the lesson-learned category for Ms. Hogan-Rowles.
While the Federation of Labor is the juiciest catch, she has won backing from two other heavyweight unions, the Service Employees International Union Local 721 (the city’s civilian workers) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 18 (8,600 DWP employees).
If the unions spend on the candidate and deploy their people as widely and densely as she hopes, this race could have a different complexion.
The lopsided ’03 race was over long before Election Day for the fourth-place finisher, Ms. Hogan-Rowles, at 5 percent, in a five-way campaign won by Mr. Parks with 78 percent.
“We decided to see it through, though, all15 of us who made it happen,” said Ms. Hogan-Rowles, “because we believed in what we were doing.
“As I look back, staying in the race was the best thing I could have done.”
(To be continued)
Ms. Hogan-Rowles may be contacted at forescee.com
