Robert C. Farrell

Robert C. Farrell
Member of the Los Angeles City Council from the 8th District
In office 1974–1991
Preceded by	Billy G. Mills
Succeeded by	Mark Ridley-Thomas
Personal details
Born	October 1, 1936 (1936-10-01) Natchez, Mississippi
Political party	Democratic
Residence	Los Angeles, California

Robert C. Farrell (born 1936) was a journalist and a member of the Los Angeles City Council from 1974 until 1991.

Biography

Farrell was born in Natchez, Mississippi, on October 1, 1936, and moved with his family to New Orleans and Newark, New Jersey, before settling in Los Angeles, where he attended Los Angeles High School, graduating in 1954. He enlisted in the Navy and in 1956 was promoted to midshipman. After his service, he received a Navy scholarship to earn a bachelor of arts degree in Near Eastern Studies at UCLA in 1961. He returned to UCLA in 1962, where he studied journalism.

Farrell began his journalistic career as a reporter for the black-oriented California Eagle newspaper and on the Los Angeles Sentinel. He was also a correspondent for Jet magazine. In 1966 he published his own newspaper in Watts, the Star-Review. He also helped research and prepare a UCLA report on hard-core unemployment in South Los Angeles.

Farrell was married to Essiebea Farrell, and they had one daughter, Mia Ann. They separated in April 1984 and were divorced in September 1986.

Politics

Campaigns

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.

City Council

Elections

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, 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."

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 The second recall attempt, in 1988, failed when not enough signatures were gathered to put the question on the ballot.

Positions

Liberal

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.

Crime

Farrell was insistent in pushing the Los Angeles Police Department to end what he considered racism in the department, 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.

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.

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.

Other

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." 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.

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. 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.

Accusations

In a Los Angeles Times story, Farrell was accused in December 1987 of using his influence "to steer a corporate real estate gift intended for the City of Los Angeles to a small social service agency run by his former wife." For the past two years, Farrell had paid $57,600 in rent for his district office to a nonprofit association whose executive director was Essiebea Farrell, who, with her then-husband (Robert), founded the association in 1980. Other public funds went to the association in the form of contributions "by Farrell's political committee" and a $53,105 federal grant approved by the City Council, the Times said. Farrell was chairman of the council's Grant's Committee. Eventually the sum amounted to "nearly $400,000 in real estate gifts, rental payments, campaign contributions" and the government grant, the Times said. Farrell's attorney, Johnnie Lee Cochran, denied any wrongdoing.

The Times later stated that Farrell had assisted "A wide range of relatives and friends, including a sister-in-law in need of work and a female companion" though "patronage" that he had "doled out." The district attorney's office, though, cleared Farrell almost three years later in the Essiebea case, stating that "the facts do not warrant criminal prosecution." There was no action on the other accusations.

State Assembly race

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.

References

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Preceded by Billy G. Mills

Los Angeles City Council 8th District 1974–91

Succeeded by Mark Ridley-Thomas