"[1] After his election to the City Council in 1981, the "gray-goateed Finn" was known as a "mild-mannered man who preferred discussions of such practical matters as garbage and sewage to more general political topics."

[3] Finn lost his bid for the Los Angeles City Council District 1 seat to Louis Nowell in 1973 and to Bob Ronka in 1977.

"People who try to run a slick, grabby campaign out here will be surprised on election day, and my plain talking doesn't hurt because I have roots in this area," Finn said.

[1][4] In 1981 the 63-year-old Finn was seen as "an underdog who finished a surprising second" to former Assemblyman Jim Keysor in the primary race and who suffered from a "plodding campaign style—a tendency to speak in fuzzy, convoluted sentences and technical language.

Finn was criticized for a last-minute mailing engineered by Harvey Englander, his campaign chief, "falsely suggesting that Keysor had withdrawn from the race," the Times reported.

Of his tenure, the Los Angeles Times said that Finn's "most telling impact on city affairs came in his role as chairman of the Planning and Development Committee, where the more combative side of his nature came into play in confrontations with environmentalists, who claimed he was pro-development."