LOCAL ELECTIONS : Candidates in 2 Cities File Bids for Mayor’s Post, Council Seat : Lawndale: Four candidates file for a City Council seat that will be the swing vote on many key issues.

Four political veterans are competing for a Lawndale City Council seat that was left open in April when former councilman Harold Hofmann was elected mayor.

Although the candidates all filed nomination papers by Friday’s deadline, their candidacies will not become official until Monday when city officials expect to verify that they obtained at least 20 signatures from resident voters.

With the current four-member council politically divided and frequently deadlocked, the person elected to the seat is likely to cast the swing vote on several important issues facing the troubled city.

“The seat will determine which camp has a working majority on the council,” said Jonathan Stein, a developer and the president of Citizens for Increased Property Values, a homeowners group and a registered political action committee.

Pundits expect the campaign to be dominated by questions about the city’s financial health, development, public safety issues and allegations of mismanagement at City Hall, and some say the election is likely to be decided on the personalities of the two top contenders, Gary McDonald and Norman Lagerquist.

The candidates with the highest name recognition--former planning commissioner McDonald, 30, who narrowly lost a bid for the council in April, and Lagerquist, 34, who placed about 30 votes behind him--are on opposite sides with the current council.

McDonald, a controversial civic activist who is often praised for cutting through bureaucratic red tape but is criticized for being brash and abrasive, is supported by Hofmann and Councilman Larry Rudolph. Lagerquist, a soft-spoken aerospace engineer who has less political experience but is considered to be more of a consensus-builder, has the support of Councilman William Johnson, who was elected in April, and veteran Councilwoman Carol Norman.

Bob Cerny, 72, and Ron Maxwell, 27, are both running as independents, with grass-roots support rather than political endorsements. Cerny, who lobbied to incorporate the city and was its first treasurer in 1959, has never before run for the council, although he recently served on the Planning Commission. Maxwell, who placed fifth for a council seat in the April election, was ousted from the city’s Parks, Recreation and Social Services Commission last year amid controversy over a mailer he sent before the November election.

Most of the candidates rank the city’s financial troubles high on their list of concerns. Although the city has been earning interest on the $10 million it received from the sale last year of its share of the Galleria at South Bay, the council has still overspent about $50,000 a month and has delayed payment on many of its warrants in the last few weeks.

And as a result of unexpected cutbacks in state funds, the council is once again considering cutting positions from an already diminished staff in an effort to balance its bare-bones $7.8-million budget.

McDonald, who touts himself as a watchdog over city finances, said in an interview that streamlining City Hall and making businesses pay more for city services are the best ways of improving the city’s financial condition. “We also need to ensure we are not paying more for items than they actually cost,” he said.

Both he and Lagerquist said that the city needs to do more to attract new businesses in order to generate more sales tax, but Lagerquist said he is opposed to cutting back on employees as a way to balance the budget.

“We cannot continue to cut employees and expect our city to function,” Lagerquist said. “Instead, we need to vigorously pursue new sources of revenue and carefully manage existing ones.”

Cerny and Maxwell both blamed the city’s problems on mismanagement of its resources and pointed to a speculative securities investment that cost the city more than $1.6 million between 1986 and 1987. Although the scandal resulted in the firing of city employees and a pending lawsuit against the securities firm that handled the investments, both Maxwell and Cerny said more people at City Hall need to be held accountable.

“There’s a lot of unanswered questions,” Maxwell said.

Cerny said: “I’m going to try to have someone own up to who was actually in the process of OKing all this speculation.”

All of the candidates said they would strive to counter the bickering and personality conflicts that have embroiled the council, but Cerny said his longstanding relationships with the three veteran members of the council put him in the best position to act as a mediator.

“I think the city’s in too much turmoil, and I think I can maybe calm the roiled waters,” Cerny said.

Most of the candidates said they would strive to upgrade and improve the physical look of the city, and Lagerquist said he would make police protection the top priority of his campaign and would oppose any attempt to cut back on police services.

Of the four candidates, only McDonald said he would support the creation of a redevelopment agency, but he specified that it should not be used to acquire private property.

Lagerquist and McDonald both said they expected to campaign for the seat more vigorously than they did last time, but Cerny said he planned to wage a no-frills, low-budget campaign.