Gloves Come Off in Last Round of Bitter School Board Race

In a bitter finale to an increasingly aggressive campaign, the two candidates for the West San Fernando Valley seat on the Los Angeles Board of Education have escalated the personal attacks on each other as Tuesday’s election approaches.

The attacks and counterattacks mark the waning days of a runoff contest in which character assaults have consistently overshadowed the issues, primarily because the candidates hold similar positions on such vital classroom concerns as busing and school closings.

The 11th-hour strategies of Barbara Romey, 40, and Julie Korenstein, 43, are reminiscent of the final moments of April’s primary race, when a mailer sent by Romey criticizing other candidates provoked her opponents to denounce her for breaking a promise for a clean campaign.

When the dust settled, the field was narrowed to two: Romey, a Northridge political fund-raiser and leader in the battle to keep low-enrollment schools open, and Korenstein, an educator from Chatsworth.

Dissimilar Political Views

The contrast between the two candidates is stark. Korenstein, top vote-getter in the primary with 25% of the vote, is a liberal Democrat who has been active in the nuclear freeze movement. Romey, who garnered 23% in the primary, is a conservative Republican who has been active in fighting school district policies on mandatory desegregation, year-round schools and school closures.

Although the runoff campaign started peacefully, with Romey and Korenstein making separate appearances before friendly crowds, that pace was shattered as Election Day drew closer. Last week, the pair began taking swipes at each other in a series of sharply worded mailers and during a television interview taped for broadcast today.

Recent events and campaign attacks include:

A letter from Romey’s camp mailed to 38,000 West Valley Jewish households, in which three of her supporters expressed “surprise” that Korenstein was active in the 1984 Jesse Jackson presidential campaign. “We cannot let someone with ties with Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, Yasser Arafat and Moammar Kadafi be our school board member,” the letter stated, loosely linking Korenstein with anti-Semitic statements made by Jackson and the others.

Korenstein responded last week: “I think that is such an absurdity to make such statements. I disagreed with Jackson’s support of Farrakhan, but that doesn’t mean I support Farrakhan. That’s guilt by association.”

A Korenstein brochure stating that Romey is not an accountant and that she never graduated from college.

In response, Romey said she never claimed to have been a college graduate, although she did attend California State University, Northridge. Additionally, although she has worked for accounting firms and has passed parts of the state exam to qualify as an accountant, Romey said she never claimed to be a certified public accountant.

On an oversize post card sent to 80,000 West Valley Republican households, Romey described Korenstein as an “ultra-liberal” Democrat whose main backers are “the downtown union bosses.”

Korenstein has been endorsed by United Teachers of Los Angeles, the largest union in the school district. Although she has received more than $30,000 in campaign contributions from the organization, Korenstein criticized the teachers’ threats to strike and, according to union leaders and board members, worked behind the scenes to prevent a walkout.

In another mailing, Korenstein reminded voters of a controversy over one of Romey’s primary mailers that her opponents characterized as misleading and a violation of a pledge not to name them in campaign literature.

“Barbara Romey lied to you. You can’t believe a word she says,” stated the recent Korenstein mailer sent to Democratic and Republican households. “She will say anything to get elected in June.”

Romey contends that she never promised not to use the names of her opponents in her campaign literature, as the other school board contenders had charged during the primary.

Last week, when the candidates met to tape the KCBS-TV program “At Issue,” they continued to trade sharp criticisms. The program is scheduled for broadcast today at 9:30 a.m.

“It’s very unfortunate that she has to make these kind of statements,” Korenstein said when asked about the letter that referred to anti-Semitic statements. “She should really stick to education issues.”

Romey was just as angry about some of Korenstein’s campaign tactics.

“She called me a liar,” Romey said. “I could sue her for that. I’ve been going out in the community for the last six years. I’ve been working with the parents. We’ve been fighting for our kids. Where has she been? She was being a delegate for Jesse Jackson.”

Personalities have taken a prominent place in the campaign because Romey and Korenstein agree on most of the issues.

They both oppose current proposals to establish year-round schools as a way to accommodate more students. They are in favor of reopening West Valley schools closed because of low enrollments. Those schools, both candidates said, could be used by students from overcrowded campuses.

Agreement on Funding

Both candidates said they believe more money should be pumped into education. Romey believes that, if wasteful spending were eliminated, it would free money for more classroom activities. She was among the first to call for a state audit of the school district’s financial records to see whether funds are being used wisely. Such an audit is under way.

Korenstein supports state School Supt. Bill Honig’s quest for additional public-education funding. She also has called for changing the Gann spending limit, an initiative approved by voters in 1979 that sets an annual limit on tax dollars that can be spent by state government.

Campaign Managers’ Roles

It is no accident that Romey and Korenstein have adopted aggressive and combative campaign styles. After all, such approaches are trademarks of the campaign managers hired by both women.

The Romey effort has been guided by Paul Clarke, who, with his wife, Republican former Rep. Bobbi Fiedler, was indicted by a county grand jury on charges of violating the state election code by offering $100,000 to state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Valencia) in an attempt to persuade him to give up his U. S. Senate race. Fiedler was running in the same race.

The charges against Clarke and Fiedler were later dismissed.

Korenstein’s campaign is being managed by Parke Skelton, who ran Elizabeth Ginsburg’s unsuccessful bid for the West Valley school board seat in 1985. In 1979, he managed the winning Santa Monica City Council campaigns of a pro-rent-control slate featuring Ruth Goldway and Bill Jennings. Skelton has played roles in other aggressive Southern California campaigns in favor of rent-control ordinances.

‘Outrageous Statements’

“We knew Romey was going to make outrageous statements about us,” Skelton said in an interview. “We had to go out and undercut her credibility.”

Clarke said tough measures were needed to get his candidate’s background cemented in the minds of the voters, especially Jewish residents. Almost 160,000 Jewish voters live in the West Valley, according to the Jewish Federation Council, making their votes particularly critical to the candidates.

Three Korenstein mailers targeting Jewish voters carried subtle references to her Jewish background, he said. “With a name like Korenstein, you can beat around the bush about being Jewish,” Clarke said.

Not so with the name Romey, he said. The anti-Semitism letter was needed “to bring out that this woman was hooked up with Jesse Jackson” and also to directly notify Jewish voters that Romey was Jewish too, Romey said.

Romey and Korenstein are battling to complete the final two years in an unexpired term created in 1986 when David Armor resigned to take a job with the Department of Defense in Washington.

The women are vying to represent board District 4, which runs from the San Diego Freeway to the Ventura County line. The Santa Susana Mountains provide the district’s northern border, and Mulholland Drive is its southern border.

The West Valley has the reputation of being filled with renegades who always seem to be battling district policy.

Most anti-busing leaders have come from the Valley. And two weeks ago, when the board voted to change ethnic ratios at 48 district schools--32 of which are in District 4--once again, West Valley parents opposed the decision.

Romey is a conservative Republican and a member of the so-called Jewish right--politicians who came to prominence in the late 1970s by turning their backs on liberal Democratic politics to support anti-busing groups, the GOP and conservative politics.

Many of the politicians who have endorsed Romey’s candidacy were among the original members of this political fraternity. They include Fiedler, a former school board member; current school board member Roberta Weintraub, and state Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Van Nuys). She has also been endorsed by the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Police Officers Assn.

One politician with the same anti-busing, Jewish-right credentials who has broken rank and endorsed Korenstein is school board member Tom Bartman, who said he supported her because her style is the antithesis of Romey’s.

Korenstein is soft-spoken and chooses her words in a deliberate manner, he said. During the campaign she has stressed her ability to be “a strong voice for the West Valley” on the board while also being a team player, Bartman said. Three other school board members have endorsed her candidacy.

Korenstein runs a volunteer program that places Chatsworth High School students in jobs at hospitals, day-care centers and nursing homes.