Stephen W. Cunningham

In 1933, Los Angeles City Council District 3 was bounded on the south by Pico Boulevard, east by Highland Avenue, north by Hollywood Hills, extending west to the ocean and Santa Monica Canyon."[7] It included the Westside and the UCLA campus.

That was the year that Cunningham ran against the incumbent 3rd District councilman James Stuart McKnight and was elected almost 3–1, with 15,698 votes against McKnight's 5,582. In December 1934, McKnight was found guilty of four counts of mailing "defamatory and libelous matter" about Cunningham through the mail and was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge [Paul John] McCormick to six months in jail, suspended for two years.[8]

Cunningham was reelected in 1935 over the End Poverty in California candidate, James M. Carter; in 1937 and 1939 he had no opponents. In 1941 Republican Cunningham ran for mayor against Democrat Fletcher Bowron, and was defeated, by 149,195 votes against Bowron's 181,582.

In 1934, Cunningham introduced a council resolution that would outlaw the use of concrete pipes in sanitary (street) sewers in favor of vitrified clay pipe, noting that the concrete piping disintegrated rapidly from the effects of sewer gas.[9]

Cunningham had one time made repeated efforts to rid Westwood Village, just south of the UCLA campus, of bookmakers who were doing business with university students.[10] He told the City Council in 1936:

I reported the matter to the Police Commission. The police went out there but could find only a punchboard operating, for which an arrest was made. The place is still operating as a bookmaking establishment. Word was brought to me by a friend who got it from someone connected with the bookmaking business, and I was told that I would not live much longer if I kept on monkeying with bookmaking.[10]

In 1937, Introducing a resolution to rewrite Los Angeles's anti-picketing ordinance, Cunningham said that

When men like Harry Bridges and Dave Beck come into Los Angeles and attempt by show of force to intimidate workers and force them to join some organization or not work, then we must . . . do what we can to see that men can go about their normal pursuits in a peaceful way without interference.[11]

Council Member Parley Parker Christensen lauded Bridges and Beck and a recent seamen's strike as a "magnificent demonstration" and questioned Cunningham's patriotism, to which the latter replied that he would challenge his patriotism against that of Christensen "to any proof."[11]

In 1940, when he was considered an authority on the street and highway development,[2] Cunningham was instrumental in lobbying Governor Culbert Olson for approval of a Hollywood Express Highway from downtown.[12]

Cunningham succeeded in killing a Federally subsidized public housing program in Sawtelle in 1940, by a 9–6 vote in the City Council.[13]

A recording device was found in 1941 at the Biltmore Apartments at 330 South Grand Avenue, with the wiring leading to Cunningham's mayoralty campaign headquarters at 1031 South Broadway. A "complete log" of Cunningham's telephone calls was left on a table. Police investigation followed.[14]