Shifting prospects of L.A. secession bid

Signs are growing that this city – the nation's second-largest metropolis, which recently appeared on track toward splitting into two cities – may not yet be ready for divorce.

A Los Angeles Times poll this month suggests a sudden U-turn in support for a secession measure on the November ballot, with a near majority of registered voters now opposing it.

Polls just last March showed citywide support close to the necessary 50 percent – the first serious sign that the six-year-old, grass-roots secession movement in the million-resident San Fernando Valley could succeed. Those polls showing that an uprising of suburbanites could succeed grabbed headlines worldwide and galvanized factions on all sides of the issue, even spawning breakaway movements by smaller civic entities with similar beefs over unfair sharing of government resources.

But a key Times poll this month shows that voters citywide are leaning against the idea, 38-47 percent. Secessionists are outraged that the air is going out of their balloon before the formal campaigns have seriously begun to publicly discuss the actual merits of the proposal that will appear on the November 5 ballot. (A Hollywood secession bid is also on the ballot, but a harbor-area breakaway bid failed to make it.)

Secessionists are pointing a finger at the state's largest newspaper – the Los Angeles Times – claiming it has steadily campaigned to undermine the seriousness of their effort. "The whole public debate is ... driven by a newspaper which is clearly against the idea," says Robert L. Scott, a board member for the San Fernando Valley Independence Committee (SFVIC). Along with other prosecession groups from the Valley, SFVIC has been researching the impacts of secession on delivery of city trash, police, and fire services, transportation, parks, libraries, and taxes. "The rug is being pulled out from under the idea before the public hears the debate," says Mr. Scott.

The Valley-based Daily News has largely trumpeted the pro side of secession, but it's circulation, 200,000, is only a fifth that of the Times, and is centered in the Valley. "It's like one of those old, one-newspaper towns of the Old West where powerful editors can set and control the popular agenda," complains Scott.

As evidence that the Times is wielding that influence unfairly, he and others say the turning point in public opinion came at the hands of a faulty poll by the Times. They hold that the respondent sample used in the paper's July 2 lead story consisted of registered voters citywide, instead of "likely" voters. Polls of "likely" voters show support for secession at about 50 percent, secessionists say. Some leading polling firms quietly concur that conventional poll strategy for predicting election outcomes is to use "likely voters."

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