Joel Wachs

Joel Wachs (, ; born March 1, 1939) is an American former politician and lawyer.

He is the president of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in New York City.

He was a member of the Los Angeles City Council for 30 years, where he was known for his promotion of the arts, support of gay causes, advocacy of rent control and other economic measures.

Wachs was born on March 1, 1939, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the son of Hannah (Stahler) and Archie Wachs, a teacher.

His father was a Jewish immigrant from Poland who ran a grocery and butcher shop.

The younger of two sons, Joel "suffered from hay fever so severe that at the height of the ragweed season, his parents sat him in the shop's cold storage room, in a fur coat, to help him breathe".

They moved to Los Angeles when Wachs was ten, where his family became wealthy with a chain of inexpensive ladies' clothing stores.

Wachs served on the Los Angeles City Council from July 1, 1971, to September 28, 2001, when his resignation took effect.

His 30 years on the council were surpassed only by John Ferraro's 35 years, Ernani Bernardi's 32 years and Marvin Braude's 31.

In May 1971, Wachs, "a young political newcomer," "overwhelmed" veteran James B. Potter, Jr. in Los Angeles City Council District 2, which included portions of the Santa Monica Mountains and the San Fernando Valley.

The vote was 24,704 for Wachs and 14,898 for Potter.

His victory was attributed in part to his opposing a multimillion-dollar development in the mountains just north of Beverly Hills.

At 33, he became the City Council's youngest member.

In 1973, as a relatively unknown new city council member, he finished a distant fifth in a crowded primary in an election in which Tom Bradley eventually won his first term as Los Angeles mayor.

He grew up in Vermont Knolls, between 79th and 83rd streets and Vermont and Normandie Avenue.

He attended Horace Mann Junior High School and Washington High School, followed by the University of California, Los Angeles, where the "gregarious" Wachs was president of his freshman and junior classes, and of the student body.

He earned a degree at Harvard Law School and a Master of Laws in taxation from New York University.

When in Los Angeles, he lived in Studio City.

After completing his education, Wachs was an attorney with the Los Angeles firm of Gray, Binkley & Pfaelzer (later became Kadison, Pfaelzer, Woodard & Quinn) and practiced law for five years.

After ten years on the City Council, two of them as president pro-tem, Wachs was suddenly and unexpectedly elected Los Angeles City Council president in July 1981 when outgoing President John Ferraro decided to drop out of the contest against Councilwoman Pat Russell and, with Councilwoman Peggy Stevenson as a partner, put up Wachs as a candidate instead.

Wachs was elected to a two-year term in an 8–7 vote, with Wachs breaking a pledge to Russell to vote for her and casting a vote for himself instead.

He later described the turn of events as akin to a "Hollywood movie" and, inasmuch as Mayor Tom Bradley was soon to become a candidate for governor, he had plenty of opportunity to act as mayor when Bradley was out of town.

He served for two years.

He said he spent one-third of his annual $43,923 salary (in 1981) on works of art for himself.

In an interview, he told a reporter in 1981 that when the time came to leave the council, he could be happy practicing law, "being a maitre d' in a nice restaurant," or "heading an arts foundation".

In 1986, a redistricting move stripped Wachs of more than 90% of his old district, and put him into a new one that ran from his home in Studio City to Sunland-Tujunga in the far northeast San Fernando Valley.

He was nevertheless easily reelected in April 1987 in the realigned, more conservative district, despite the opposition of the Los Angeles Apartment Owners Association, which attacked him because of his fight for rent control.

Wachs was reelected in every vote thereafter.

In 1987 he flew to New York City to be a part of a seven-member panel that tried to determine what to do with a 12-foot-high, 112-foot-long outdoor steel sculpture by Richard Serra titled "Tilted Arc," which had drawn complaints and was eventually demolished.

He was the author of an ordinance that requires commercial developers to set aside 1% of the value of all projects over $500,000 for cultural and artistic projects—either spending the money on their own, or depositing it with the city for such use.

He told a reporter in 1991, "I didn't love practicing tax law ... the result of my efforts was finding ways to save rich people money. And I didn't find that satisfying."

In 1993, he finished third behind Richard Riordan and Mike Woo.

The unmarried Wachs was a closeted gay man until he was preparing to run for mayor in 1999 at the age of 60.

He was asked by Bill Rosendahl, the openly gay moderator of a public affairs television show, "Are you a gay man?"

Wachs responded: "I am and I'm very proud of what I've done for the community, and I'm also very proud of the fact that what I've done for the community is what I've done for all communities."

Wachs resigned from the City Council 2001 to accept the presidency of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

His last day on the City Council was September 28 of that year.

Wachs thrice ran for mayor of Los Angeles.

He ran again in 2001 and finished fourth with 11% of the vote, behind James K. Hahn, Antonio Villaraigosa and Steve Soboroff.

Wachs was appointed vice chairman of a new National Task Force on the Arts, whose goal, he said, was "to put the arts and culture on the agenda of every city government as a mainstream economic and social concern".