In Rosemead, a wake-up call for Wal-Mart friendly officials.

OPPONENTS of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s expansion into the area are pointing to the grass-roots campaign that ousted two Rosemead City Council members last week as a blueprint for keeping the retail giant out.

Wal-Mart last year received unanimous approval from the five-member Rosemead City Council for construction of a 230,000-square-foot Supercenter, and two of the three members up for reelection last week were turned out by voters.

"The election was in many ways a referendum on Wal-Mart," said Roxana Tynan, director of accountable development for the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, which advised anti-Wal-Mart candidates. "It's an indication to politicians that Wal-Mart can be very unpopular. Those other municipalities should really understand what they are getting into."

Such backlashes over a single issue are common, particularly in smaller cities, said Raphael Sonenshein, a political science professor at California State University, Fullerton. They can also backfire.

"These insurgencies can bring unskilled officials who are one-issue people that don't know what they are doing," said Sonenshein.

That said, there are times such a groundswell can propel "some of the finest public servants who ride a wave of discontent over one issue into the start of their career," he said.

One such outcome was the candidacy of Marvin Braude, who won an L.A. City Council seat in 1965 based on Westside residents' fear that the Santa Monica Mountains would be over-developed. He wound up becoming a legendary figure in L.A. politics, serving on the council for 32 years.

The Rosemead election may in the end prove a Pyrrhic victory for Wal-Mart opponents. The approvals cannot be rescinded legislatively; the only hope now is in the courts, where a pending lawsuit questions the validity of the company's environmental impact report.

"The City Council majority still supports the project," said Peter Kanelos, a Wal-Mart spokesman. "But anyway, it's irrelevant because we already have our entitlements. The election has no impact and quite frankly, for the unions to claim victory is ludicrous."

John Tran, one of the candidates swept into office by running against the Wal-Mart approvals, said he plans to meet with the City Attorney's Office to "find some loophole" in Wal-Mart's approvals.

With the outcome of the vote, he said he hopes at least one of the three remaining councilmembers that originally supported Wal-Mart will change his or her mind. If not, Tran said, the voters will be given another chance to express their discontent.

"If we can get one City Council member on board, we would have an opportunity to stop the development," said Tran. "If they don't want to support this, let's do a recall on the other councilmembers."

Staff reporter David Greenberg contributed to this column. Staff reporter Howard Fine can be reached by phone at [phone], ext. 227, or by e-mail at [e-mail].