Moonlighting : Council Challengers Put Their ‘Real’ Jobs on Hold to Work Full Time on Race for Yaroslavsky’s Seat

The days and nights of Ryan Snyder are rarely idle lately. He starts each morning with a run through his Westwood neighborhood, then spends the majority of his waking hours campaigning against Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky.

Days are given over to door-to-door canvassing, campaign planning and fund raising, while evenings are spent at community meetings and candidate debates. That doesn’t leave much time for a job, but then Snyder doesn’t have one.

“This is a big district and it takes a big effort to meet everybody,” Snyder said. “I’m working about 100 hours a week. I can’t see anyone running a race like this without taking a leave from their job if they’re serious.”

Grass-Roots Campaigns

Snyder, a transportation consultant, is not alone. Fellow candidates Laura M. Lake, a UCLA professor, and Jack McGrath, a commercial real estate broker, are also on leave from their jobs for the duration of the 5th District race.

Surrendering a salary for a slim shot at a public job that pays $58,000 a year may seem like a bad gamble, but people who manage local campaigns say there’s no other choice.

“I don’t know how anyone can be serious about getting elected without working full time,” said campaign consultant Steve Afriat. “You have to work 20 hours a day, seven days a week . . . You never run out of things to do.”

Said Marcela Howell, Lake’s campaign manager: “People want to know the candidates are out there working on getting themselves elected. Regardless of the fact that California is seen as some sort of electronic media state, it’s been proven time and again that grass-roots campaigns have a lot of impact.”

Raise Public Profiles

Howell should know. Two years ago she helped engineer Ruth Galanter’s surprising victory over veteran Los Angeles City Councilwoman Pat Russell.

This year she faces an even tougher task in promoting Lake against the deeply entrenched and well-funded Yaroslavsky, but one lesson Howell learned from the Galanter-Russell race is that voters expect to get an up-close look at their candidates. That means endless hours of traipsing through communities such as Westwood, Fairfax, Sherman Oaks and North Hollywood.

“People are thrilled to see someone walking through their neighborhoods,” Howell said. “It’s a full-time job here and it’s called campaigning.”

In this past week alone, Snyder, Lake and McGrath have participated in an array of campaign events designed to raise their public profiles and capitalize on districtwide concerns about development, traffic and crime. Yaroslavsky, at the same time, has relied on the media exposure that comes from doing his everyday council work.

As Yaroslavsky was helping publicize a household hazardous-waste round-up program to be held at the Federal Building in Westwood on Sunday, McGrath was challenging the councilman to compete against him in a dance-a-thon to benefit AIDS victims.

Lake appeared at a Century City child-care-provider fair, among other events, and Snyder canvassed for votes in the Melrose-Fairfax area.

Snyder’s quest started last fall, when the 34-year-old consultant took an indefinite leave from his private company to campaign. Snyder hit the trail so early that some people mistakenly assumed his name would appear on last November’s ballot, but he felt there was no time to waste.

Snyder, who recently released a booklet listing his solutions to dozens of city problems, said he doesn’t mind putting his business on hold and draining his savings in order to free himself for the campaign.

Getting Message Across

“I have a pretty good business and I live pretty frugally,” Snyder said. “This is what I saved my money for and I have enough to keep myself going.”

But no matter how much time a candidate spends on a race, it doesn’t guarantee success. Snyder said he still has a hard time getting his message across.

The fresh-scrubbed consultant, who has a fondness for technical jargon, has been trying to draw voter attention to his 20-page booklet, in which he calls for community planning boards to oversee development, expresses his opposition to Metro Rail and light rail in favor of improved ride sharing and public transit programs, and calls for tougher rent controls and more low income housing.

Snyder, who often clutches his booklet like a bible, said it proves he’s the best candidate. “I’m personally convinced I’m the most capable one in the race,” he said. “I really feel that I know the issues better than the other candidates, because I’m the only one who has clearly articulated them.”

Although Lake is also a political novice, she is generally viewed as the challenger who poses the greatest threat to Yaroslavsky because of her high-profile work on behalf of environmental issues throughout the district.

When Lake committed to the campaign, she arranged to take a year of unpaid leave from her job as a UCLA environmental sciences professor. Lake, 42, said she and her family view the loss of income as a small price to pay.

A Personal Commitment

“This is basically about making a personal commitment, no matter what your line of work is,” Lake said. “It’s a statement about the seriousness with which a candidate approaches the office. . . . Sure, it’s a financial sacrifice. But my kids still received their Hanukkah presents last year.”

Like Snyder, Lake is campaigning virtually around the clock. At community forums and other appearances, Lake is presenting herself as the populist candidate who can get things done. She has bluntly criticized the level of growth approved under Yaroslavsky and has pledged to protect neighborhoods.

Lake has also called for an end to the agreement that allows 20th Century Fox employees to park their cars at Rancho Park Recreation Center, claiming it’s a sweetheart deal that robs park patrons of much needed parking spots.

McGrath is generally seen as the least serious of the three challengers, since he is running as a write-in candidate. But he is campaigning full time.

From 5 a.m. to Midnight

He is on indefinite leave from his job with a San Fernando Valley realty firm, though he still receives some income from previous real estate deals.

“I have listings that are in escrow,” McGrath said. “So I still have a source of income. Plus, I still do a little bit of political consulting.”

McGrath, 43, the only San Fernando Valley candidate in the race, said he usually campaigns from 5 a.m. until midnight. He often boards public buses with his campaign literature in hand and is also fond of campaigning at restaurants and bars. The part-time political consultant, who once worked as Yaroslavsky’s campaign manager and chief of staff, calls himself a street fighter.

During the past several weeks he has drawn attention to his unlikely campaign by combining serious press events with street theater.

McGrath has called for a half-cent sales tax increase to improve traffic conditions and has joined Lake in criticizing the 20th Century Fox parking agreement. But he has also challenged Yaroslavsky to meet him on the dance floor in a test of stamina, and even demonstrated his rock and roll dance skills at a sidewalk press conference.

McGrath hired an attorney to fight for his right to be known only as “Jack” by people scribbling his name on the ballot. While the city says the idea is illegal, McGrath’s attorney claimed in a letter to the city that McGrath’s identity is wrapped up in his given name.

Low-Key Campaign

“When Mr. McGrath was a student at North Hollywood High School, the term Jack had already acquired a secondary meaning by which all persons who heard or used this term associated this name with McGrath,” the letter states. “The early use of Jack was so extensive that it became the stuff of song. . . .”

Yaroslavsky, meanwhile, is running a low-key campaign. To his opponents’ dismay, he has only appeared at one candidates forum so far, choosing instead to concentrate on council matters such as the hazardous materials round-up and his efforts to ban the sale of automatic assault rifles. Last Saturday, he rode in a New Year’s parade in Chinatown.

Karin Caves, his campaign manager, said Yaroslavsky, 40, is not worried about the number of hours being logged by his opponents since he is also putting in extremely long workdays.

“We don’t see it as a concern,” Caves said. “Zev is working very hard to do his job.”