Elections The liberal Ronka, an attorney who specialized in real estate, was elected to represent
Los Angeles City Council District 1 in 1977, succeeding veteran Councilman
Louis R. Nowell, who did not seek reelection. He defeated the Nowell-backed Jim Peterson by a 62%-38% margin and served for just four years. In that era (1971), the 1st District was the largest geographic area in the city, about 76 square miles, which was a sixth the total area of Los Angeles. It included
Arleta,
Lake View Terrace,
Mission Hills,
Pacoima,
Shadow Hills,
Sunland-Tujunga,
Sun Valley and
Sylmar. The councilman took preliminary steps toward running against
Baxter Ward for the county Board of Supervisors in 1972, but decided against it when private polls showed the Ronka name was not recognized in the supervisorial district.
Highlights Recall Ronka faced a recall petition in 1978 in which he was accused of, among other things, receiving unreported cash contributions from the "
Mexican Mafia" and of failing to report the gift of a trip to Hawaii and ownership of real property in
Westlake Village. The allegations of criminal activity were investigated by the district attorney's office, which found no reason to continue the probe. The petition lacked enough signatures to bring about an election.
Olympics The councilman was one of the leading skeptics about the idea of hosting the
1984 Summer Olympics, for which Los Angeles was the only candidate. He sought assurance that the games would cost the city nothing, and he favored asking the voters to decide by ballot if the competitions should be held in the city at all. This ultimately resulted in a ballot measure forbidding Los Angeles from spending taxpayer monies on the games without reimbursement. Ronka was on the negotiating team with Mayor Tom Bradley and a Bradley aide, Anton Calleia, which dickered in 1978 with the
International Olympic Committee in
Athens, Greece, over terms of the contract to bring the games to California, "and every time Bradley and Calleia appeared to give way on a point, he [Ronka] objected publicly." Soon the councilman was "shunted aside" from the negotiations, and he returned from Athens a day before the others to tell reporters that Bradley and Calleia had been "
double-crossed" by "landed gentry and . . . brittle, archaic, arcane aristocrats." "
Lord Killanin," Ronka said, speaking of the Irish president of the Olympic Committee, "has shown himself again to be totally brittle and autocratic and inflexible." In the final City Council decision, Ronka voted against the contract, but it was nevertheless approved, 8–4.
Flooding He gained favorable citywide publicity in February and March 1978 when he cut short a vacation in
Acapulco, Mexico, (from a planned three days to an actual twenty minutes) to return home when he heard that heavy storm waters had flooded the
Sunland-Tujunga area. The
Los Angeles Times reported: "Ronka slipped out of his low-profile image when disaster struck his district Feb. 9, and subsequently he has become almost as regular a television figure as the weatherman." Interviews by "
Mr. Clean, as the Harvard-educated freshman councilman is sometimes called . . . may be turning into political gold." Ronka warned that "Body parts and human flesh" from the flooded
Verdugo Hills Cemetery and rats and poisons and dead snakes were threatening the area. City officials played down the alarmist reports, but residents said they were grateful for Ronka's on-the-scene presence and his fight in City Hall to cut
red tape. (According to
Thomas Noguchi's book
Coroner, some 100 bodies were indeed sent plunging from the flooded cemetery into homes, businesses and city streets.)
Aides In 1978 Ronka verified a
Los Angeles Times report that he had hired five former political campaign workers as City of Los Angeles employees to work for him under the federal
Comprehensive Employment and Training Act but said: "They were qualified, they are hard workers, they weren't coming in on a tenured position. I make no apologies for them." One of the aides, Larry Hanna, was fired by Ronka and led a recall drive against him (above). It was soon determined that other council members had made the same kind of appointments, and a few weeks later the U.S. Department of Labor announced that it would no longer pay the salaries—about $3 million annually—to the council-hired workers.
Reputation It was said that Ronka was disliked by his fellow City Council members because he was not a
team player but instead acted like a "publicity hound." Bad feeling developed, for example, between Ronka and Council President
John Ferraro, who was "astonished and angry" when Ronka voted against the Olympics contract although Ferraro had felt he had Ronka's firm commitment to vote in favor. As well, some other city officials felt that Ronka was
grandstanding in his publicity during the Sunland-Tujunga floods (above). ==City attorney campaign==