1ST SIMPSON TRIAL CASTS SHADOW OVER DA RACE.

Byline: Dennis Love Daily News Staff Writer

``Talk Radio 790 KABC. It's 10:22. I'm Michael Jackson. Our subject: The Office of District Attorney for Los Angeles. Should it be John Lynch, the challenger? Should it be four more years with the incumbent, Gil Garcetti? We have the candidates with us this morning. What are your questions? Bill, good morning.

Caller: Hi, Michael. I have a question for Mr. Lynch. I think Mr. Garcetti blew it on the O.J. Simpson trial. I don't know much about you Mr. Lynch, but I'm supporting you . . .

In the broadcast booth, Gil Garcetti winces ever so slightly. He recovers in a second, but it was an all-too-telling expression, worth at least a thousand words. One can almost hear Garcetti thinking: Here we go again.

And again, and again, and again. In a re-election campaign nearly 10 months old, Garcetti has done his best to talk about his initiatives against domestic violence, his efforts toward preventing juvenile crime, his 93 percent overall conviction rate, his focus on child-support collections, his managerial tapdance to keep his office in working order despite unprecedented budget cuts and an assembly-line caseload brought on by the ``three strikes, you're out'' law.

He talks about how he has been a pro-active, visionary, ``new kind of DA,'' while his opponent takes a more limited view of the district attorney's role.

All of which mostly brings a great, gaping yawn from voters and the press.

What people really want to hear and talk about, of course, is that roaring, house-buckling, thousand-year-flood of a media trial which visited itself upon Los Angeles during Garcetti's watch, the trial to end all trials and, quite possibly, Gil Garcetti's political career.

From the very moment the Simpson jury delivered its not guilty verdict, Garcetti - by nearly all accounts a decent, capable, hard-working district attorney - has been viewed as an endangered species. While virtually everyone else connected with the Simpson case seems to have gone on to blockbuster book contracts or, at the very least, the rest of their lives, Garcetti has been left with the exhausting task of avoiding that most cursed and deadly of political labels: scapegoat.

Garcetti's emboldened opponent, Lynch, a 19-1/2-year veteran of the District Attorney's Office, presents himself as a qualified challenger but makes no pretensions about the nature of the race. ``This is a referendum on Gil,'' he says simply.

Day after day, Garcetti has repeated his mantra about the Simpson case: ``We gave it our best shot. . . . There is no perfect system of justice. . . . In my opinion the jury did not return the verdict warranted by the evidence. . . . Don't look at just one case.''

On the Jackson program - an appearance which came on the same day Robert Kardashian went on KABC's ``20/20'' to tell Barbara Walters of his doubts about Simpson's innocence - Garcetti attempts to be heard above the impregnable wall of sound which O.J. represents.

``Look at all of our very difficult cases,'' he says earnestly. ``Look at the Halloween murder cases in Pasadena. Look at the two Japanese students who were killed in San Pedro. Look at the two Compton police officers who were killed. Look at every cop killer. Those are tough, tough cases. We have tried those cases, and we win most of those cases.''

The next caller comes on the air. He wants to talk about Simpson.

Later, after Garcetti and Lynch leave the studio, the venerable Jackson is asked if he detects any diminishing of the Simpson din which, at times, still threatens to swallow the airwaves whole in Los Angeles.

``Not at all,'' Jackson says. ``It will never go away.''

On a recent weeknight at the Sportsmen's Lodge in Studio City, some 300 people have gathered for a fund-raising dinner for John Lynch. Activist Gloria Allred is there, as is Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich and former District Attorney Robert Philibosian. One-time Olympic hero Mark Spitz is to be a featured speaker, as is retired California Supreme Court Justice Armand Arabian.

The cocktail hour is abuzz with talk of the district attorney's race, of a just-released Loyola Marymount poll which shows Lynch slightly ahead in the city of Los Angeles, of a just-published Fortune magazine article critical of Garcetti's relationship with the owners of Guess? Inc., who since 1992 have contributed $220,000 to the district attorney's campaigns.

Clearly, this lawyer-heavy crowd has, sharklike, detected the faint yet distinctive smell of blood. ``Lynch will probably be outspent 3-1,'' says Woodland Hills attorney Wayne Avrashow, virtually shouting in competition with the noise. ``But there seems to be a real sense that Gil is vulnerable.''

The event chairperson is Steve Cooley, who heads the district attorney's San Fernando office. When the program begins, two friends present Cooley with a mounted trout, a trophy from some bygone fishing trip.

To great applause, Cooley hoists the fish above his head and addresses the audience: ``Take a look at the expression on this trout,'' Cooley says. ``This is what Gil Garcetti is going to look like at about 9 o'clock on election night!''

Another speaker jokes, ``Lynch is a great name for a district attorney. Garcetti is a great name for a pizza parlor.''

The hits keep on coming. Basically, the theme seems to be that during Garcetti's tenure, the office has been embarrassed by Garcetti's ``grandstanding'' during the Simpson trial and the loss of other high-profile cases.

``Back in 1992, we were told we needed a prosecutor, not a TV personality,'' Antonovich says, in an ironic reference to one of Garcetti's criticisms of Ira Reiner.

Philibosian calls for a return to an era when ``we used to lock up the bad guys to protect the good guys.'' Arabian (who Garcetti says is mad at him because Garcetti wouldn't hire his son) charges that Garcetti has ``sold his deputies down the river.''

Lynch finally takes the podium. ``I am not a career politician,'' he says. ``God did not wake me up and say, `John Lynch needs to be district attorney.' But we need a change. We have been embarrassed. . . . Despite what Mr. Garcetti says, we are not proud of what we did in the Simpson case.''

Lynch likens Garcetti's leadership of the office to ``watching a kid walk across an eight-lane freeway . . . I'm running for district attorney because we need to restore the basic faith in the community of Los Angeles that we know how to do our job.''

When the applause dies down, Lynch asks all ``working members'' of the District Attorney's Office in attendance to be recognized. About three dozen stand; Lynch lauds their ``courage.'' ``By the way,'' he says, ``Gil has asked for a group photo.''

When the laughter recedes, Lynch adds: ``If I'm not successful, you just saw the new staff of the Antelope Valley office.'' The place breaks up again.

The next day, as Garcetti meets with a group of editors and reporters, he is jokingly asked if re-elected he really intends to banish to the hinterlands those who have supported Lynch. ``Yes!'' he says, laughing. Sort of.

Gil Garcetti and John Lynch may want the same job, but they provide vividly contrasting portraits both as people and in the way they say they intend to pursue the duties of district attorney.

Garcetti, 55, with his now familiar shock of white hair and sometimes intense bearing, was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. He lives in Brentwood with his wife of 33 years, Sukey, with whom he has two children.

Three-quarters Mexican, his surname comes from his paternal grandfather who emigrated from Italy to Mexico only to be hanged during the Mexican Revolution because, as Garcetti dryly notes, ``he was on the wrong side.''

Garcetti attended Washington High, then the University of Southern California and then University of California, Los Angeles Law School. He immediately joined the District Attorney's Office, where he served as a trial deputy in Van Nuys before being tapped to form the office's Consumer Protection Division. He then headed the Special Investigations Division and in 1984 became Reiner's chief deputy.

Garcetti was reassigned in 1988 as head of the Torrance office, a demotion which he has described as ``humiliating'' and that many at the time viewed as Reiner's response to Garcetti's increasingly apparent political ambitions. Whatever the reason, the demotion convinced Garcetti to run against Reiner in 1992, and so stunned Reiner by leading the field in the primary that the incumbent opted out of the race rather than face Garcetti in a runoff.

Lynch, 50, comes from classic Boston Irish stock, and still retains smatterings of hometown accent. He lives in Manhattan Beach with his wife of 15 years, Carol. He has two children.

Less wound and more jocular than Garcetti, Lynch came to Southern California in 1963 with the Air Force and eventually found his way to USC and Loyola Law School.

Lynch first thought himself a defense attorney. ``My preconceptions were based on TV shows like `The Defenders,' where the prosecutors were all nebbish bunglers, and the defense attorney always rode to the rescue of an innocent client,'' he says.

He soon learned that ``the jails weren't full of wrongfully convicted people,'' and joined the District Attorney's Office in 1977 as a trial deputy in the Whittier and Compton branches. After hitches in the consumer protection, special operations and environmental crimes divisions, Lynch was named in 1988 as supervisor of all prosecutions in the downtown courthouse.

When Garcetti rose to district attorney in 1993, Lynch was dispatched to head the Santa Monica office and, in 1994, was named head deputy of the Norwalk branch. He entered a crowded primary field against Garcetti at the behest of a coalition of insurgent deputies upset about a great many things, most notably bonuses that were awarded to Simpson prosecutors Christopher Darden and Marcia Clark.

Aside from the Simpson case, Lynch has criticized Garcetti for, among other things, his failure to win convictions in other big cases like the Snoop Doggy Dogg murder trial and the first Menendez brothers trial, as well as the dismissal of the most serious charges against the two defendants in the Reginald Denny beating trial. Lynch also has charged that Garcetti unduly meddled in prosecutions affecting campaign contributors.

Garcetti responds that he has won his share of big cases, and that allegations of favoritism have withstood every attempt at scrutiny. As for the Simpson bonuses, he said they were awarded during the trial and that he ``obviously'' would not have given them had he known big-dollar book deals were in the stars for Darden and Clark.

Still, the bonuses grate among many of the deputies, and Garcetti acknowledges as much. He also points out that when the deputies conducted a straw poll Oct. 2, he outpolled Lynch by 303-269, a result which has been argued over since.

``I was a little disappointed,'' Lynch says. ``I would have liked to have won it outright, but I think you have to recognize the power of the incumbent. Gil has hired and promoted more people than he got votes. . . . Those young people who were hired in a tough job market are loyal to the person that hired them.''

Garcetti nearly sputters at Lynch's spin. ``I won hands down on this,'' he says. ``When you look at the deputies, only half of them voted. There was a lot of seeming intimidation of our young deputies. Most of them, I'm told, did not vote. The angry ones did vote and certainly I had enough that voted for me.''

Garcetti assails Lynch because he has seen fit to accept campaign donations from deputies. ``I do not,'' Garcetti says. ``Why? Because the obvious conflict is there. Mr. Lynch has acknowledged that if there is a disciplinary matter he will recuse himself. But what about promotions, what about assignments? He said, `No, I won't recuse myself.' ''

``I'm proud to take the money from people who know both of us best,'' Lynch says.

When it comes to money, Garcetti holds the clear advantage. Recent campaign reports showed the incumbent with more than $700,000 on hand, and Lynch with about $47,000 - although Lynch says he will spend about $400,000 by campaign's end.

Garcetti launched his first TV ad of the season Friday, a 30-second spot which attacks Lynch as ``too risky to be DA.'' The aggressiveness of the commercial would seem to reaffirm the general perception that the race is, indeed, a close one.

At its core, the race may depend on whether Garcetti can sell this notion: that he is a pro-active community leader who has worked diligently to prevent crimes as well as to prosecute them, while Lynch is merely an opportunist who views the DA's role as one of a ``reactive bureaucrat.''

In a refrain heard many times, Garcetti refers to a statement by Lynch that ``a potted plant could do his job in Norwalk. Well, a potted plant doesn't get much done, frankly. . . . We have a situation where if you're in charge of 30 or 40 prosecutors and you also have some outlying offices like he does, you can wait for people to bring you problems, or you can be a much more aggressive manager as I was in Torrance.''

The role of the ``new DA,'' Garcetti says, is ``to be one of the leaders in getting the community focused on preventing crimes before they occur. That's my responsibility. That's what you get from reading and learning and talking to other experts. You don't get this from osmosis, from being the potted plant and sitting on your ass all day.''

Lynch responds that Garcetti ``means well. He works hard. But I don't think he understands the nature of being the district attorney.

``It is true that not being a politician, and occasionally being given to the sarcastic flip remark, I did at one occasion say that a potted plant could probably run the Norwalk courthouse, because the Norwalk courthouse is a very well-run organization by the professional prosecutors in that office.

``Gil takes credit for the 93 percent conviction rate; that's their conviction rate. They work very hard, and if you're an effective manager and you walk into an ongoing professional operation, the best thing you can do as a manager is let those people continue to effectively prosecute those cases.''

Garcetti admits that he is exasperated with the black cloud the Simpson case has cast over his bid for re-election. ``It's very frustrating to me,'' he says. ``I wish I could talk to all 4 million voters individually because I see the change in people when I'm able to talk to them, when I explain to them that we handle almost 100,000 felonies every year.

``I tell them and show them how blacks do convict blacks, whites do convict whites, whites and blacks do convict blacks and whites, that the system really does work most of the time, but there's a lot that has to be done. Yes, there's some frustration there.

``There's always one or two big cases that come up in your four years as DA, but sometimes you think, my goodness, how many big cases is the good Lord giving me to test me here?''

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos

Photo: (1--color) LYNCH

(2--color) GARCETTI

(3) Challeng er John Lynch and District Attorney Gil Garcetti have been less than cordial during the district attorney's race.

David Richard Crane/Daily News