Robert Stewart Sparks

In the May 1921 primary election Sparks placed 15th in a citywide field of more than 30 candidates, with the top 18 being nominated for a final round in June. In the general election, he placed first and was thus chosen, along with eight other successful candidates, for a two-year term on the council.

Sparks placed seventh in the citywide primary of May 1923, with 26,971 votes, and was nominated for re-election. In the June final he came in 11th, with 34,458 votes, and was defeated; only the top nine vote-getters were elected.

Sparks was out of the council for two years, but in 1925 he returned as the first person to represent the 5th District under the new city charter, which replaced the former at-large election system with one based on single-member constituencies. He was elected 4,379 votes to John Topham's 3,075. In 1925, the 5th District was bounded by Washington Street on the north, the city limits on the east, Exposition Boulevard on the south and Vermont Avenue on the west.[7]

He ran again in the 1927 election but this time he was linked to the unpopular mayoral administration of George E. Cryer,[8] and he was soundly defeated in the final round by Virgil A. Martin, 7,843-2,889.[9] Before that election he was criticized for having mailed letters on official city stationery to people who were on a tentative list for appointment as election precinct workers, asking them to call on him to "discuss with you some matters in which I am interested."[10]

One of the first controversial votes cast by Sparks was in opposition to a proposal by religious groups for a seven-member commission to regulate the showing of motion pictures in Los Angeles. He said he was "flatly opposed" to censorship,[11] and the idea was eventually killed by the City Council amid a storm of protests by both sides.[12] A later resolution defending the film industry, authored by Sparks, was adopted. The "reflections cast upon this industry and its people are the work of a malignant minority," it read.[13]

It was Sparks who introduced a successful resolution into the City Council on January 15, 1923, for the formation of a Board of Freeholders that was assigned to develop a new city charter for Los Angeles. The move was supported by the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.[14]

He also called on the city to require private hospitals to give emergency care to accident victims to avoid the "long delays in transporting injured persons to the Receiving Hospital at First and Hill streets."[15]

In 1925 he voted against a request by the Humane Animal Commission for funding of five additional inspectors: "You know how I stand about animals," said Sparks, a former president of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. "All those inspectors do is to pursue poor people for the measly $2 dog tax. Every child should have a dog. yet many children cannot have dogs because of this tax."[16] The next year he opposed placing on the election ballot a measure that would allow animal-control officers to, as he said, "go on the premises of a dog owner and take away any dog not tied up or on a leash. In other words, the ordinance would permit one's personal property to be seized."[17]