Robert Asa Todd (March 5, 1870 – March 4, 1943) was a California and Arizona journalist who became a member of the Los Angeles City Council in 1898–1904 and then a deputy city attorney for Los Angeles, California.
He was married in 1896 at age 28 in Immanuel Presbyterian Church to Minnie F. Reinert of Los Angeles, age 22.[3][4] They had one child, Frances (Mrs. Howard Torkelson).[1]
In Arizona, Todd was the secretary of the Arizona Territorial Democratic Convention and a member of the executive committee of the Democratic Central Committee of Pima County.[8]
Todd was elected to the Los Angeles City Council in 1898, representing the 8th Ward; he served until 1904.[1][7] On the council, he sponsored a measure that would have established a hospital in the city to treat smallpox cases. "It is an injustice to quarantine a whole boarding or lodging house because a case of smallpox has been discovered.. . . . The city has spent enough money in guard hire in the last year to more than pay for the erection of a detention hospital."[9]
One of the notable cases he argued as a private attorney was in opposition to the initiative section of a new Los Angeles city charter, which, he said, was unconstitutional "in that it attempts to provide for legislation by a direct vote of the people instead of by representatives of the people elected for that purpose and is therefore inconsistent with a republican form of government."[12][13]
He also represented twelve of the 26 "Japanese" who appeared before the city's police commission to seek restaurant liquor licenses. He suggested that the secretary of the Japanese Association, "which represents the better element of Japanese," be consulted.[14][15]
In 1933 or 1936 he became a deputy city attorney. He retired in March 1940.[1][2]