7 Opponents Battle to End Bernardi’s Long Council Career

When Ernani Bernardi was first elected to the Los Angeles City Council in 1961, John F. Kennedy was President and actor Ronald Reagan and police lieutenant Tom Bradley had not yet embarked on their political careers. And Jules S. Bagneris III was 8 months old.

Bagneris, the bright, energetic president of the Lake View Terrace Home Owners Assn., is among seven opponents who say that the crusty, 77-year-old lawmaker is too old and set in his ways to represent the ethnically changing northeast San Fernando Valley’s 7th District.

“When this country wants to send someone to do battle, they send their strongest and their youngest,” Bagneris said. “They don’t send their frail and their tired.”

Firefighter Challenger

Another candidate who is hitting the health issue is Lyle Hall, a 49-year-old Los Angeles city firefighter. He appears to be Bernardi’s strongest challenger because he is supported by organized labor in a district with substantial union membership.

Hall has attacked Bernardi for missing 29 of 135 council meetings between Feb. 1, 1988, and Jan. 31, 1989. That tied for the council’s worst attendance record with Councilman Gilbert Lindsay, who suffered a stroke. Bernardi was afflicted with a virus and was hospitalized after falling and hitting his head. His wife was also ill, causing him to miss additional meetings.

“It is difficult for people who have been ill to devote the kind of time and energy that is necessary to represent the district,” Hall said.

Bernardi replied that he is healthy and energetic. “I’m as sharp, and maybe sharper, today than I have ever been,” he said.

The 28-year council veteran wants to be the longest-serving council member in city history. The late Council President John S. Gibson Jr. currently holds the record with 30 years.

Bernardi, short, bald and bespectacled with a puckish sense of humor, is widely regarded as the council’s iconoclast, due to his many “no” votes against projects he considers wasteful, overly bureaucratic or tinged with political cronyism.

A Scrappy Fighter

But while Bernardi has a reputation as a scrappy fighter of the city bureaucracy--and being one of the council’s toughest budget watchdogs--Hall said the councilman’s unwillingness to trade votes hurts the district.

“Being the maverick may get your name in the paper, but it is not really serving the people,” Hall said.

Bernardi is a son of Italian immigrants who started out as a musician. He played the saxophone during the 1930s with band leaders Benny Goodman and Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey. He wrote the arrangements for Tommy Dorsey’s recording of “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You” and Goodman’s popular “And the Angels Sing.”

But Bernardi gave up the big bands years ago for a career as a builder. And he has assured his constituents that he did not take part in the wilder parts of a traveling musician’s life. A biography provided by Bernardi’s office said that in his travels with bands, “he never smoked marijuana, and he neither drinks nor smokes.”

The challengers are trying to benefit from the fact that the 7th District was drastically reshaped by the 1986 reapportionment of City Council districts.

Chopped Up District

The redistricting cut away more than two-thirds of Bernardi’s old district, including a large part of white working-class Van Nuys, and cost the councilman some of his staunchest support.

Like his old district, the new one is still heavily blue collar and middle class.

However, the area, extending from crime-plagued, low-income Pacoima to the semi-rural foothills of Lake View Terrace and Sylmar, is now heavily Latino.

But only one-fourth of the Latinos are registered voters, according to a study conducted for The Times last year by Caltech political science professor Bruce Cain. There are only 78,000 registered voters in the district, which has a population of 229,460. In contrast, 107,280 of the 222,004 residents of the more affluent, politically active 3rd District in the West Valley are registered to vote.

The ethnic change is easy to see.

In the heart of the district is low-voting Pacoima, once the center of the Valley’s black community but now a Latino barrio. Along Van Nuys Boulevard, bakeries are now panderias and the Church of God is Inglesia de Dios. Off the thoroughfares, Latino families are buying houses and often renting out garages to shelter poor immigrant families. Unkempt vacant lots, abandoned cars and spray-painted graffiti pockmark neighborhoods. Drug pushers can be seen openly pitching their wares.

Sylmar, at the city’s northernmost boundary, and Lake View Terrace to the east are middle class. They are only a short drive from Pacoima but seem light years away. Visitors are surprised to find chickens, goats and horses there, only about 25 minutes from downtown Los Angeles.

They have become home to an increasing number of upwardly mobile second- and third-generation Latinos who are attracted by the area’s relatively affordable housing.

In gaining a largely new district, Bernardi inherited a host of new political problems--all of which have become campaign issues for his rivals.

In Sylmar, residents feel their rural life style threatened by the proliferation of apartments and condominiums. Crime is also an issue. Last month, a teacher was stabbed in a classroom there.

Landfill Protests

Lake View Terrace has been the site of protests over proposed expansion of the Lopez Canyon Landfill, which receives more than half of the city’s trash. “There is a feeling in this part of the Valley that we have had more than our fair share of the city’s woes dumped in our back yard,” said Assemblyman Richard Katz,(D-Sylmar),who represents the area.

Residents are also angry with the poor condition of the 1,437-acre Hansen Dam recreation area, site of a once-sprawling lake that is now a stagnant pond. The surrounding area has become a haven for transients.

“People here can’t understand why the city has plunked down so much money in the Sepulveda Basin (in affluent Encino) and have given us absolutely nothing,” said Lewis Snow, past president of the Lake View Terrace Home Owners Assn.

Hall, a former president of the city firefighters union, has been endorsed by the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, which has 13,000 members in the district. His campaign is being run by Harvey Englander, a professional manager who was in charge of Councilman Michael Woo’s 1985 upset of Councilwoman Peggy Stevenson in the Hollywood area.

However, Hall, who is admittedly pro-development, has lost some potential support by coming out in favor of opening the “Nancy Reagan Center” for drug rehabilitation in Lake View Terrace. The proposed facility is opposed by many residents.

DIFFERENT WORLDS

At first glance, two San Fernando Valley City Council districts seem to embody two different worlds. The 3rd District is predominantly Anglo and white collar, while the 7th District is almost 50% Latino and strongly blue collar. But middle-class homeowners dominate both. Balloting results show voters in both districts they liked Ronald Reagan. They voted against gun control in 1982 and, over the years, for tax-limit ballot measures. And in both districts, the City Council races revolve around the desire of families to preserve their neighborhoods.

Here is how the population in each district breaks down:

RACE / ETHNICITY

3rd District 7th District Anglo 90.3% 64.5% Black 1.5 8.7 Other 8.3 26.8 Latino 10.8 43.9

WORK

3rd District 7th District White collar 67.2% 44.8% Blue collar 22.3 41.8 Service 9.6 11.7 Other .9 1.7

ANNUAL INCOME

3rd District 7th District Under $15,000 18.3% 23.4% $15,000 to $25,000 16.6 19.0 $25,000 to $50,000 38.8 40.0 $50,000 to $100,000 22.2 15.1 $100,000 and over 4.3 1.8

HOUSING

3rd District 7th District Single family 67.6% 74.1% Owner occupied 56.9 62.9

Some numbers overlap because the Census does not consider Latinos a separate race. Census officials say that most Latinos list themselves as white and of Latino ancestry.

Information provided by The Times Marketing Research Department and the Rose Institute of Claremont McKenna College.