Council Races : Long Shots Fight Odds Against Upset

One is a minister who is also a stockbroker. Another is a former stripper who last ran for mayor--and lost. And another is a firefighter who earned the Fire Department’s Medal of Valor for rescuing three police officers involved in a shooting.

They are among 23 long-shot challengers to five entrenched Los Angeles City Council members who represent parts of the San Fernando Valley. Candidates had until Saturday to submit 500 signatures and pay a $300 filing fee to qualify for the April 11 ballot.

Councilman Ernani Bernardi faces eight challengers; council members Joy Picus and Mike Woo, six each; Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, two, and Councilman Marvin Braude, one.

Some of the challengers, such as slow-growth activist Laura Lake, who is opposing Yaroslavsky, and Picus challenger Peter Ireland, an aide to a county supervisor, say they are running because they are concerned about crime, development and other issues in the community.

Others have different reasons.

“You get to learn a lot selling hot dogs on the street and talking to people,” said vendor Mort Diamond, who is challenging Picus for her $58,592-a-year council job.

Bucking the Trend

History, however, is not on the side of the challengers.

Only three times in the last 12 years has a council member failed to win reelection. In all three cases, the challengers had raised money in the six-figure range. And the incumbents had angered large numbers of constituents.

This year’s challengers to Picus and Yaroslavsky hope to take advantage of growing homeowner discontent with the incumbents’ record on development. Just two years ago, another political newcomer, Ruth Galanter, ousted veteran Councilwoman Pat Russell on a wave of anti-growth sentiment.

Bernardi, the council’s senior member with 28 years of service, faces a large field of challengers because of the 1986 council reapportionment, which put him in a largely new district with a Latino majority.

3rd District

In the West Valley’s 3rd District, Picus’ potentially strongest opponents are Ireland, the son of actor John Ireland and a deputy to County Supervisor Deane Dana, and Jeanne Nemo, a Republican activist who is backed by County Supervisor Mike Antonovich.

Nemo, a former teacher who sells real estate, ran against Picus in 1985 and finished second in a field of five with 21% of the vote. Picus won with 56% of the vote. Candidates need more than 50% of the vote to win the April election. Otherwise, the top two vote-getters will meet in a June runoff.

Besides Ireland, 42, and Nemo, 59, Picus is opposed by Diamond, 57; Ron Rich, 40, a car salesman; Todd Landis, 36, a restaurant manager and co-owner of the Country Club in Reseda, which the council recently stripped of its liquor license with Picus’ support in response to neighbors’ complaints, and Paul McKellips, 29, marketing director of an executive search firm.

The district extends roughly from Balboa Boulevard to the western city limits between Roscoe Boulevard and the Ventura Freeway. It includes Canoga Park, Reseda, Tarzana, Warner Center, West Hills, Woodland Hills and west Van Nuys.

Unhappy With Picus

“In all of the homeowner meetings that I have attended, and I’ve gone to many, there is widespread discontent with Picus over the development issue,” Ireland said. Dana has not decided what role, if any, he will play in the race, said an aide to the supervisor.

Nemo contends that Picus’ political stock has fallen since the last election, but she has not taken a formal poll. Antonovich has sent a letter to his supporters urging them to contribute to Nemo’s campaign.

Homeowner leaders who have clashed with Picus say the 12-year councilwoman is vulnerable because of her vacillation on whether portions of Canoga Park should be renamed West Hills, her support for development of cultural facilities in the Sepulveda Basin and Warner Park, and her slowness in coming out against the proposed Warner Ridge office project.

“I definitely think she’s slipped on the popularity scale,” said Milena Miller, president of the Reseda Community Assn. Miller said she has voted for Picus three times, but this year plans to vote for one of her opponents, though she has not decided which one.

Miller said Picus has lost support in Reseda because of her unwillingness to rule out the building of a ground-level light-rail line that roughly parallels Chandler and Victory boulevards between North Hollywood and Warner Center. The proposed route, one of five under consideration, has drawn strong opposition from residents.

“It looks to a lot of the people along that route as though she is a lot more concerned about development of Warner Center than residents who would be affected,” Miller said. Picus said she wants to wait for a study on whether the environmental impacts of building such a line could be mitigated.

However, Joel Palmer, president of Tarzana Property Owners Assn., said he expects Picus to win reelection “because none of the opponents have seized on any issue” that has angered large numbers of constituents or “shown how they could do a better job.”

“As of today, I would support Joy,” he added.

Incumbent Confident

Picus, 58, said she is confident of winning reelection. She said a poll she commissioned shows that she is viewed favorably by a majority of her constituents. She declined to release the survey, however.

But she is taking no chances. She has hired professional political consultants to conduct a full-fledged campaign on her behalf.

“I have always taken my challengers seriously,” she said. “I once surprised a guy who didn’t take me seriously. I’m not going to let that happen to me.” She was alluding to the late Councilman Donald Lorenzen whom she defeated to win election in 1977.

As evidence of her credentials as an environmentalist, she points to her support of Proposition U, the 1986 slow-growth initiative; her opposition to oil drilling in Pacific Palisades, and her vote to ban new billboards in the city. She has also been endorsed by Galanter.

“Jack Spound doesn’t think I am pro-development,” she said, referring to a developer whose Warner Ridge office project she has sought to block.

Ties to Growth

She points out that Ireland and Nemo, while attacking her for being too cozy with developers, have ties to supervisors who have generally pro-growth records.

“The issue isn’t who I work for,” Ireland said. “The issue is what Joy Picus has allowed to take place in the district.” Miller said Ireland, who is a board member of the Reseda Community Assn., has worked hard to slow growth in the community.

In the northeast Valley’s 7th District, Bernardi’s potentially strongest challengers are Lyle Hall, 48, a former president of the Los Angeles firefighters union and a recipient of the Medal of Valor, and Jules S. Bagneris III, 28, president of the Lake View Terrace Home Owners Assn. and a former aide to state Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Van Nuys).

Hall’s campaign is being run by Harvey Englander, who engineered Woo’s 1985 victory over former Councilwoman Peggy Stevenson. Hall, who has been endorsed by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor’s political arm, served as United Firefighters president from 1976 to 1984.

Hall, who is on leave from his job to campaign full time, refuses to say anything bad about the incumbent.

“It’s not that he’s bad,” Hall said. “I’m running because I’m a better candidate.” Hall, however, has not spoken specifically on what changes he would make at City Hall.

Bagneris, the son of a prominent Pacoima minister, is a minister with the African Methodist Episcopal Church and works as a stockbroker. “That’s how I make my money,” he said.

“I consider my running for office to be part of my ministry as well,” he added. “It’s all about feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless and setting the captives free. Here in the San Fernando Valley, we’ve been held captives to landfills and to inappropriate uses, such as the Phoenix House.” Phoenix House is a drug treatment facility proposed for Lake View Terrace that has drawn strong neighborhood opposition.

Bernardi opponents also include Irene Tovar, 50, a former head of the Hispanic Caucus of the state Democratic Party, and Al Dib, 54, a produce wholesaler who is president of the Arleta Chamber of Commerce and ran unsuccessfully for the old 1st Council District seat in 1973 and 1977.

Also challenging Bernardi are Frederick Taylor, 50, a member of the county Childrens’ Services Commission who runs a religious music store in Pacoima; James Braun, 29, office manager for a construction firm; Richard Yanez, 28, a county mental health worker, and Barry Gribs, 49, a drug therapy student at Glendale College.

The district is made up of Arleta, Pacoima, Sylmar and parts of Lake View Terrace, Mission Hills, Panorama City, Sepulveda, North Hollywood, Sun Valley and Van Nuys.

Bernardi’s challengers will be trying to benefit from a new development in the district--reapportionment--which cut away large portions of white working-class Van Nuys from the district and added predominantly low-income black and Latino Pacoima. Only about a third of the old district was left in Bernardi’s new territory.

The 1986 redistricting also established a Latino majority in the district. But Latinos have a way to go to win the seat simply on the strength of numbers. Less than one-fourth of the district’s Latinos are registered voters.

“I think he is in a tough race,” said independent political consultant Steve Afriat. “There is a large number of constituents who are unfamiliar with him because of reapportionment.”

However, Bernardi has worked hard to win over his new constituents, hiring staff members who speak Spanish and instituting programs to rid the community of crime, abandoned vehicles and graffiti. If he is reelected and serves at least two more years, he will have served on the council longer than anyone in city history, surpassing the late council President John S. Gibson Jr., whose 30-year career ended in 1981.

Some of Bernardi’s opponents have sought to make the 77-year-old councilman’s age an issue.

Bernardi, former President Ronald Reagan’s junior by eight months, said he has a better attendance record than most of his younger colleagues. “I still play 18 holes of golf, and I carry my own bag,” he said.

In the 5th District, Yaroslavsky’s potentially strongest opponent is Lake, 41, a slow-growth activist and UCLA professor of environmental sciences who is being helped by some of the same people who engineered Galanter’s upset of Russell. Also in the race is Ryan Snyder, 33, an urban planner.

The district was extended from the Westside in the 1986 redistricting to include North Hollywood, Sherman Oaks and Van Nuys.

Lake has accused Yaroslavsky of failing to slow development in the district, a charge that he denies.

Jack McGrath, who spent $7,500 on television commercials promoting himself as the only Valley challenger to Yaroslavsky, failed to qualify for the ballot.

“I screwed up,” McGrath said Saturday. He fell 150 signatures short of the 500 required. He said he still plans to run as a long-shot write-in candidate.

McGrath, who managed Yaroslavsky’s first successful campaign in 1975 and served as the councilman’s chief deputy, said he was too busy with his real estate job to collect signatures. He hired a firm to gather the signatures last week but never heard from them.

To qualify as a write-in candidate, McGrath, who lives in North Hollywood, has until March 28 to pay $300 or gather 500 signatures.

In the 13th District, Woo faces six challengers, including former school board member Tony Trias, 56, and Bennett Kayser, 42, a former president of the Federation of Hillside and Canyon Assns. who finished fifth in a field of six candidates in the 1985 race.

Also in the race is Venus De Milo, a former stripper who refuses to reveal her age--she is 49, according to public records. She works as a computer consultant and has run unsuccessfully for mayor and county supervisor.

Other candidates are Howard Obata, 39, a postal clerk; Zahrina Machadah, 58, a business consultant, and Berndt Lohr-Schmidt, 45, an attorney.

The challengers contend that Woo has allowed too much development in Hollywood. None of the candidates lives in the Valley. The district extends from Hollywood to most of Studio City and part of Sherman Oaks.

In the 11th District, Braude’s lone opponent is Irwin Kaplan, 54, an urban planner. The district extends from Pacific Palisades to include the Valley south of the Ventura Freeway from the San Diego Freeway to the western city limits. It includes Encino and parts of Tarzana, Van Nuys and Woodland Hills.