2 Gun-Control Foes Fire Off Salvo at Wachs

The northeast San Fernando Valley’s City Council race took a strange twist Friday when two state legislators criticized Councilman Joel Wachs for supporting a defeated gun-control measure on the 1982 state ballot.

Assembly Republican Leader Pat Nolan of Glendale and state Sen. H. L. Richardson (R-Glendora) took an unusual step in thus becoming involved in a nonpartisan city race outside their districts. The attack also is unusual because Wachs is also a Republican, although candidates for Los Angeles City Council run without party designation.

“We usually don’t get involved in city campaigns,” Richardson’s press aide, Marcia Williams, said. “But the fact that Wachs is anti-gunner and the senator is an avid gunner is why the senator got involved in this.”

Leading Opponents

Nolan and Richardson were leading opponents of the 1982 gun-control measure, Proposition 15, and felt voters in Wachs’ new district should know the councilman’s stand on gun control, according to their aides. The measure lost statewide, 63% to 37%.

Proposition 15 was opposed by a large majority of voters in rural, conservative Sunland-Tujunga, one of the areas that Wachs gained in last September’s council redistricting. The proposition carried in Studio City, which Wachs represented at the time he voted with the council majority in supporting the measure.

The measure would have banned most new handgun sales in the state. It also would have required registration of all existing handguns with the attorney general’s office and would have mandated jail sentences for unregistered selling or carrying of such weapons.

“Proposition 15 was given a quick burial by the voters,” Nolan and Richardson said in a written statement. “But the voters in Joel’s district ought to be satisfied he won’t sponsor a similar city ordinance. They have a right to know.”

Wachs said Friday he has “absolutely no” plans to propose a gun-control ordinance. He added that gun control should not be an issue in the campaign, since the city is preempted by the state in regulating firearms.

Asked his position now on gun control, Wachs said, “I would reflect the view of my constituents.”

Wachs said the gun-control issue is “not going to make a difference in this election.”

Proud of Record

“People are going to judge me on my record, which has been a really good one. And people care a lot more in my district about Anne Finn and Ernani Bernardi, who know what we do as councilmen, than Nolan and Richardson. I think they’ll just fall flat on their face.”

Wachs has been endorsed by Anne Finn, widow of the late Councilman Howard Finn, who represented Sunland-Tujunga before redistricting, and by Councilman Bernardi, who previously represented part of the area that was put in Wachs’ new 2nd District.

Wachs said he doesn’t own a gun. “But if I lived in some of the more rural areas of Sunland-Tujunga . . . on some of that property that is not so close to the next person, I would have a gun,” Wachs said.

Aides to Nolan and Richardson said their bosses have no plans to provide financial or political support to Wachs’ opponents.

Wachs is opposed in the April 14 election by Jerry Hays, Jack Davis and Georgetta Wilmeth. All three oppose gun control.