Ruth Galanter

Ruth Galanter (born c. 1941) is an American politician, environmentalist and consultant with a background in urban planning.

Galanter was born about 1941 in New York City, the only child of a teacher and an advertising salesman.

She grew up in the Bronx, New York, "dreaming of becoming an artist, or maybe an investigative reporter."

Ruth's father died when she was age 6.

She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and her master's degree in planning from Yale.

Battling for votes in the final election, the Russell camp made much of the fact that Tom Hayden, "a powerful and controversial 1960s figure" was supporting Galanter and that she also had the support of the Venice Town Council, a civic group "composed mostly of left-wing activists."

It was said that Galanter was attempting a "liberal balancing act."

She moved to Los Angeles in 1970.

In 1973, she was the first California resident to file an appeal under the state's Coastal Preservation Act against an approved project—a Santa Monica plan "first proposed as 1,480 luxury residential units [that in the end] wound up as 340 condos and 160 units for seniors."

In 1973, working as the newsletter editor with the National Health Law Program, a federally funded legal-services program for the poor, she was part of a group endorsing a statewide campaign for national and state health insurance.

Living in Santa Monica at the time, Galanter was active in opposition to a 1976 plan to move two decrepit frame Carpenter Gothic houses from their Ocean Avenue addresses north of Wilshire Boulevard to a city-owned lot in Ocean Park, turning one into an upscale restaurant and the other into a historic museum.

Both were built around the start of the 20th century, one of them by Roy Jones, son of Senator John P. Jones, founder of Santa Monica.

The opposition was enough to kill the project, dubbed Heritage Square, which was eventually finished years later under tighter regulations.

Galanter was appointed to the South Coast Regional Coastal Commission by Governor Jerry Brown in January 1977.

Police Chief Daryl Gates said Olds was "a former gang member with an extensive record of arrests, including two for a 1979 gang murder and others for drug use."

At his trial Galanter testified that she had suffered "permanent damage" to her throat and was "too frightened to sleep through the night."

A reporter wrote sixteen years later that the attack had left Galanter's "New York-accented voice with a slight croak."

A jury found Olds guilty of first-degree burglary and second-degree attempted murder involving great bodily injury and the use of a knife.

It acquitted him of a more serious charge of attempted murder with premeditation, which could have carried a life sentence.

Olds was sentenced to the maximum term, 14 years and 4 months, but was expected to serve only about 6 1⁄2 years with time off for good behavior.

In 1979, she became the Southern California director of the California League of Conservation Voters.

She was elected chairman in 1980.

Decisions on affordable housing, she said, were "probably the most controversial facing the commission."

After leaving the commission, she started her own planning consulting firm.

One of her clients was the State Coastal Conservancy Commission, "an agency charged with restoring damaged coastal lands."

As such, she "worked to preserve wetlands threatened by development in Long Beach and Huntington Beach."

She knew radical and anti-war activist Tom Hayden in college and endorsed him when he ran for the California Assembly in 1982.

She served on the Los Angeles City Council from 1987 to 2003.

She is known for supporting "slow growth" policies on the city's Westside and elsewhere.

She was the victim of a knife attack in an attempted home robbery that left her severely wounded.

She now has her own consulting business.

On May 6, 1987, Galanter was "brutally assaulted" in her Venice home in the 2200 block of Louella Avenue by an intruder who left her in critical condition with stab wounds in her neck.

The intruder entered through a screen window at the back of the house.

Neighbors heard screaming and the sound of a burglar alarm that Galanter was able to trigger after the attack.

"One wound severed the carotid artery that supplies blood to the left side of the brain, and the other punctured the pharynx, part of the food tube near the esophagus."

Police soon tabbed Mark Allen Olds, who lived in a rooming house across the street from Galanter, as a suspect.

In 1987, Los Angeles City Council District 6 was a "diverse area" that included "racially mixed" Venice and Mar Vista, as well as predominantly white Westchester and mostly black Crenshaw.

In the primary election of April 1987 against incumbent Pat Russell, Galanter "stunned Russell by capturing 29% of the primary vote to Russell's 42%."

Galanter made a study-trip to Antarctica in January 1989 as an "exotic vacation" she had promised herself as she lay in bed bleeding from the knife attack.

While a Yale student, Galanter and "scores of others" opposed a New Haven urban renewal program that would have bulldozed buildings and cut streets through poor and working-class neighborhoods.