Squabbling Demos Try to Heal Split in 42nd District Panel

Some members of the 42nd Democratic Assembly District Committee gripe that the committee does not meet frequently enough. But they will have no grounds for complaint Sunday.

First the committee will meet at 11 a.m. at the home of South Pasadena Mayor Evelyn Fierro to consider ousting Richard David Boyle as chairman for failing to call executive meetings and for “a general lack of organizational skills and effort.”

Then Boyle, who maintains that the 11 a.m. meeting is illegal because all members have not been properly notified, will convene his own committee session at 2 p.m. in Monrovia to assert his authority as chairman.

Richard Gutierrez, regional director of the Democratic Party, said he plans to attend both meetings Sunday and hopes to resolve the dispute so that Democrats can face Republicans with unity in November.

“We’ve got an election coming up,” Gutierrez said. “We shouldn’t be fighting.”

Gutierrez said committee members have so far ignored his pleas to put aside their differences.

Boyle, a 48-year-old Sierra Madre screenwriter who was the Democratic nominee against Assemblyman Richard Mountjoy (R-Monrovia) in 1988, said his rivals within the party are trying to weaken him in case he runs for political office after legislative districts are reapportioned. “I think they want to knock me out as a political candidate in 1992,” Boyle said.

Not true, said Temple City Councilwoman Bobbie McGowan, who is vice chairman of the committee and is seeking Boyle’s ouster. She said he has been a lackadaisical chairman.

“We would have to ask him to please hold a meeting,” she said. Then Boyle would show up without an agenda and allow the discussion to wander, she said. McGowan said the committee should be recruiting Democrats and aiding the party’s nominees but has been virtually inactive. “We haven’t done anything,” she complained. “We need leadership.”

Boyle said the committee has met about eight times since he was elected chairman a year and a half ago. He said he always jotted down topics to be covered at meetings but didn’t distribute a formal agenda. It was his style, he said, to let discussions proceed without restraint in order “to bring people into meetings--get them interested.”

John D. Buchanan, the committee’s secretary-treasurer, said the charges against Boyle were made in writing by McGowan and committee members Dorothy and Phillip Morris of San Marino. They detail Boyle’s alleged organizational shortcomings and assert that Boyle violated the committee’s bylaws by failing to call executive committee meetings.

Boyle said he never assembled the executive committee because the whole membership was so small that it seemed pointless to convene anything less than a general membership meeting. The entire committee has about 20 dues-paying members, Buchanan said.

Membership in the committee is open to any Democrat who will pay the dues of $10 and lives in the district, which runs along the foothills from South Pasadena to Azusa.

The 42nd Democratic Assembly District Committee has never been much of a political force, Buchanan said, because the district is heavily Republican. Latest figures show that the district has more than 74,000 Republicans and fewer than 66,000 Democrats.