Tomas O'Grady was surprised to learn that the interview committee for the Stonewall Democratic Club was planning to endorse him for city councilman in Council District 4. He had, in his mind, been honest and blunt throughout the 45-minute interview.
ILLUSTRATION BY ERIC DAVIDSON
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"I was thrilled," says O'Grady, in his charming Irish brogue. An outsider and first-time candidate running against incumbent Tom LaBonge, O'Grady had gained admiration for his years of work on community issues in Los Feliz. But getting Stonewall's endorsement was no small feat.
He brought his daughter with him to see what he assumed would be his endorsement. The packed meeting hall included a veritable who's who of the L.A. political elite: Congresswoman Maxine Waters, City Council members Jan Perry and Bernard Parks et al.
The interview committee made its recommendation, and a few people got up to make speeches for and against. A hush fell over the room as the last speaker rose. It was Eric Bauman, former president of the Stonewall Democrats, chair of the L.A. County Democratic Party, vice chair of the California Democratic Party, and senior adviser to Speaker of the Assembly John Pérez.
Of all the dignitaries in the room, it was Bauman, the powerful boss of the countywide Democratic Party, who commanded the most attention.
Bauman's speech was tinged with anger. He was shocked that Stonewall — his club, for Bauman is its former president and in many ways still controls it — would even consider endorsing anyone other than sitting City Councilman Tom LaBonge.
"We don't kick incumbents to the curb," he said plainly, according to O'Grady.
Bauman says that's untrue — that he never used LaBonge's incumbency to shut out O'Grady, a strong new face in city politics. But people present at the meeting say it's not so.
Some in the room accuse him of intimidating Democratic Party Club members. Bauman denies doing this as well — at least on purpose. He is, after all, intimidating before he opens his mouth, looking as he does like some stock character from The Sopranos, from his solid, stocky frame and long overcoat right down to his gold pinky ring and gruff East Coast accent.
When he talks to you, he has the disturbing habit of staring coldly into your eyes.
"I don't have to use intimidation," he says, "because I am really good at being persuasive."
In his speech, he said O'Grady ought to "wait his turn" and that LaBonge should be allowed to "serve out the rest of his term." As if once a City Councilman gets elected he automatically serves for 12 years. As if elections were mere formalities.
Sure enough, the Democratic Club endorsed LaBonge.
"The message was loud and clear: 'We're going with the incumbent,' " says O'Grady. "And Eric Bauman was the enforcer. He told the room what to do."
But six weeks later, the weakened LaBonge, seen by many in Los Feliz and Hollywood as an ineffectual cheerleader, all speeches and no ideas, sweated out Election Night when O'Grady — without any big-name Democratic Party endorsements or big money backing — won an unexpected 31 percent of the vote in a three-way race. LaBonge managed to hang on and avoid a runoff by pulling in 54 percent. Bicycle advocate Stephen Box took 14 percent.
It seems both unlikely and almost inevitable that Bauman, a former trauma nurse, a gay Jew from the Bronx, would rise to such a position of power in Los Angeles — power that Bauman uses with what some might call reckless abandon.
No local Democratic Party Club is too small, no race too minor, for Bauman to involve himself, whether a school board race in Antelope Valley, a City Council battle in West Hollywood or the primary for Los Angeles mayor, still more than a year away.
Last month, his partner of nearly 29 years, Michael Andraychak, hosted an event for Wendy Greuel, a candidate for L.A. mayor in 2013, at their home in North Hollywood.
Again, Bauman pleads innocent, insisting that the event at his house wasn't his. He hasn't endorsed Greuel and he counts both Greuel and Eric Garcetti, also running for mayor, as good friends.
"He's a hard-driving, Machiavellian powerhouse, a brilliant behind-the-scenes tactician," says Ryan Gierach, publisher and editor of WeHo News, the scrappy online site that covers West Hollywood. "He knows where all the bodies are buried because he buried them."
The Stonewall Democratic Club was founded in 1975 by Morris Kight, who also founded just about everything else gay and institutional in Los Angeles (the late Tracy Sypert, former news editor of Frontiers magazine, once joked that Kight "invented homosexuality"). Stonewall was the political arm of the gay-rights movement in L.A., a way to promote gay rights and to back gay-friendly candidates. Bauman, who moved to Los Angeles the year Stonewall was founded, eventually rose to the top of its leadership.
"He basically decided he was gonna be a big shot in California politics," says Miki Jackson, an LGBT activist, president of the Hollywood Highlands democratic club and herself a well-known player in the Stonewall movement.
But rifts soon developed. In 1999, with a push from Bauman, the Stonewall Democrats endorsed Gray Davis for governor, despite the fact that his positions on gay issues were the safest of all the Democratic candidates. Bauman angered many members, like Jackson, who felt the L.A. County Democratic Club was selling out.
