By Stephen Witt
If good character were the deciding factor in politics, Tim Gaspar would beat Barri Worth Girvan in a landslide.
The two are locked in an increasingly fraught race to succeed term-out Councilmember Bob Blumenfield in Los Angeles City Council District 3, which covers the southwest San Fernando Valley, including Canoga Park, Reseda, Tarzana, Winnetka and Woodland Hills.
Gaspar, a moderate Democrat, has been showing up all over the district, often alongside fellow moderate Democrat John McKinney, who is running for city attorney.
The pair have bona fides. Gaspar was born and raised in the district, went to local schools, married and raised his kids there, and built an insurance brokerage from the ground up before selling it.
McKinney overcame a hardscrabble childhood, losing both parents by age 5, and has spent 28 years in the LA County District Attorney’s Office, first as a prosecutor and now as a manager overseeing hundreds of lawyers and staff.
Both tout sensible policy ideas. Gaspar wants more affordable housing where it fits, such as Warner Center in Woodland Hills, without overriding the zoning that protects the district’s single-family neighborhoods.
His views on homelessness are equally pragmatic. Cut funding to city agencies and nonprofits that miss their goals, and compel treatment for unhoused people clearly suffering from mental illness and addiction.
You may not agree with all of it, but it’s out there for anyone to see and hear.
Girvan has taken a different route. DSA-LA recommends her, and her campaign runs from the same playbook. Stay largely off the campaign trail, dodge the press and attack opponents with manufactured outrage built for social media. Her campaign has yet to comment to LACP despite repeated calls and texts.
Exhibit A is a video posted Oct. 11 on Girvan’s campaign YouTube channel. In it, Christina Rackohn, whose late father ran a competing insurance agency before it joined Gaspar’s business, accuses him of running a volatile workplace marked by angry outbursts, high turnover and broken promises. Cue the mournful violins.
Strip away the soundtrack and what’s left is a soured business deal repackaged as campaign clickbait.
Deals between former rivals go bad all the time. Anyone who has owned a business, myself included, has had a partner, employee or competitor walk away unhappy and say so to anyone who will listen. That’s the cost of doing business, something Girvan, who has spent nearly two decades in government and nonprofit work, may know little about.
What’s telling is that Girvan won’t make the case against Gaspar herself. She outsources it to a grievance with a soundtrack and posts it where no one can ask her a follow-up question.
What Girvan does understand is political expediency.
Four members of the City Council won their seats with DSA backing, and the group pushes an anti-business agenda and an anti-Israel line that some call antisemitic. Give DSA credit for strategy. It has embedded itself inside the Democratic Party and keeps widening its hold on City Hall.
Girvan could clear the air by saying whether she welcomes DSA’s support. So far, she hasn’t.
When you’re short on character, it’s the cost of doing politics.
