The latest poll, which finds Dennis Zine ahead in the controller’s race and Mike Feuer leading for city attorney, also shows that half the voters don’t think Los Angeles is heading in the right direction. Such negativity could affect the most important factor in the election, turnout.

A poll of 674 likely voters by the Pat Brown Institute at Cal State University, Los Angeles, shows Councilman Zine leading Ron Galperin 33 percent to 18 percent and Feuer ahead of Carmen Trutanich, the incumbent, 35 percent to 24 percent.

What’s really interesting about the poll is its breakdown of voters’ attitudes. These will be crucial in the days before the May 21 election. With a turnout expected to be somewhere around 25 percent, above the primary but still low, the campaigns are targeting their appeals to various ethnic groups and geographical areas—and to specific voters. With today’s technology, campaigns know the voting history, consumer preferences, gender, viewing habits and much more about voters. In fact, they probably know what voters had for Mother’s Day brunch. Such information shapes campaigning by telephone, mail and visits to homes.

A total of 45 percent of whites say the city is headed in the wrong direction. Blacks are even more pessimistic. Latinos, on the other hand, said the city is going in the right direction by 44 percent to 23 percent. Latinos also gave Latino Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa a 62 percent favorable job approval rating, above that of other groups. The survey did not count enough members of other ethnic groups for them to be included in the survey.

Perhaps the positive feelings about L.A. among Latinos will help mayoral candidate Eric Garcetti, who was leading City Controller Wendy Greuel among Latinos, 48 percent to 36 percent in the mayoral portion of the survey released last week. He’s no doubt hoping that such good feelings add up to good turnout of Latino voters. Greuel and Garcetti were even in the mayoral survey.

Garcetti is also leading Greuel among voters making $40,000 a year or more. With voting increasing as income goes up, these working class, middle class and affluent voters probably are also on the Garcetti list of voters to target.

Also interesting were the voters’ take on the most important issues facing the city, which no doubt will shape the candidates’ political messages. Crime, 19 percent, ranked highest, followed by the city budget, 17 percent, education, 16 percent and traffic, 11 percent.

Only someone intrigued by the finer points of the politics of education could have figured out the differences between the overly cautious mayoral candidates Eric Garcetti and Wendy Greuel at their debate Tuesday.

The debate, at the Petersen Automotive Museum in mid-Wilshire, was presented by public radio station KCRW and Zocalo, the non-profit group that, among other projects, encourages discussion of public policy matters. Moderator Warren Olney of KCRW did a fine job of moving the debate along and keeping the competitors on point.

Education was a top issue on the agenda. As Olney pointed out, neither the mayor nor the city council have jurisdiction over the public schools. That task belongs to the Los Angeles Unified School District and its elected board. But there are few matters more important to L.A. Mayors Richard Riordan and Antonio Villaraigosa tried to shape policy by raising money to elect school board candidates who favor charter schools, making public teacher evaluations and relaxing teacher seniority protections. They considered themselves reformers, a description denounced by the teachers union, the United Teachers of Los Angeles. Each of them found themselves deeply involved in public school controversy.

Greuel said she endorsed Antonio Sanchez, Villaraigosa’s choice, for the school board on Election Day, May 21. Garcetti said he hasn’t endorsed and won’t until he talks to the candidates. Assuming Sanchez favors the Villaraigosa agenda, Greuel has put herself in the so-called reform camp. But as Hillel Aaron wrote on the LA School Report website, “in general, both candidates sounded closer to the ‘school reform’ end of the ideological spectrum. Garcetti, who has been endorsed by UTLA, came out perhaps a millimeter or so more towards the pro-teacher end of the spectrum, if only in tone.”

The afternoon seemed to leave spectators unsatisfied. The reporters, after covering so many of these debates, seem sick of them. But I, as an occasional visitor, remain intrigued by this face-to-face part of the contest.

It was interesting, for example, to see how Greuel has improved. She speaks with more clarity and force than when she started her campaign for mayor and has ditched her city hall jargon. Garcetti is even smoother than when he began, more practiced, better able to insert at least a small amount of humor. On the down side, both of them annoyingly talk about their kids at great length as if they think parenthood makes them more human and appealing to voters.

Talking about their kids also gives them cover to duck tough questions about education. Still unknown is whether they will take the political risks and forcefully inject themselves in the controversial details of the debate over L.A. schools as did Riordan and Villaraigosa. That’s high-risk behavior, foreign to two decidedly low-risk candidates.

Having watched filmmakers Lyn Goldfarb and Alison Sotomayor scramble so hard for funding for a documentary on the late Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, I was glad to see, as I returned from vacation, that they have received a $500,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant that will allow them to finish the project by next January.

They certainly exemplified the Bradley motto of “Never Give Up” as they approached foundations, surviving members of the old Bradley crew, rich people, any one or any organization potentially willing to get behind the documentary, “Bridging the Divide: Tom Bradley and the Politics of Race.”

After talking to them and being interviewed for the documentary, I think the project will delve into aspects of Bradley’s career that are being forgotten as the years pass.

Bradley, who served from 1973 to 1993, was Los Angeles’ only African American mayor. He had many accomplishments in those 20 years, including the start of the revival of downtown Los Angeles, beginning the rail transit system and bringing the 1984 Olympics to Los Angeles. Perhaps his most important achievement was including Los Angeles’ minority residents in a city government and political system that had pretty much dominated by white politicians and bureaucrats.

Now that we have elected and re-elected America’s first black president, an examination of just how Bradley accomplished the integration of Los Angeles politics is particularly instructive and relevant.

When I talked to them, Goldfarb and Sotomayor were deeply interested in Bradley’s process of building an interracial coalition on his way to becoming mayor. Like President Barack Obama, Bradley knew that he could not be elected without white votes. After an initial defeat in 1969, he worked diligently to win them. I spent many days following him through white areas such as the Pacific Palisades and the San Fernando Valley, watching as his reception became warmer with each visit.

It’s a great story and I’m glad Goldfarb and Sotomayor have finally collected enough money to tell it.