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The City Elections : Bernardi’s Challenger : Hall’s Labor Backing May Prove Double-Edged Sword in Runoff

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Times Staff Writers

Mingling in the crowd of volunteers at Los Angeles City Council candidate Lyle Hall’s campaign headquarters in Sylmar on election night were many union members, some of whom do not even live in the 7th District.

Their presence highlighted both the strengths and the Achilles’ heel of the fire captain’s coming runoff campaign against veteran Councilman Ernani Bernardi, Hall’s supporters acknowledge. His organized-labor connection gives Hall a ready-made constituency and bank of campaign help to draw from, but it also makes him vulnerable to charges that he is a “special-interest” candidate. Bernardi on Wednesday accused Hall of being “beholden” to labor interests.

Hall, 49, was raised in Burbank and has been a Los Angeles firefighter for more than a quarter of a century.

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The 6-foot, 2-inch, 220-pound Hall joined the Fire Department in 1962, working his way through the ranks to his current position as captain at Fire Station 75 in Mission Hills. Two of his three brothers also work for the department.

On the wall of his Sylmar campaign headquarters hangs a commendation for his rescue of three police officers under gunfire in 1969 in South-Central Los Angeles. For that deed, he won the Fire Department’s Medal of Valor.

“You do what you have to do, and then you worry about it later,” he said.

Born in North Dakota, he married at 17. He and his wife had four children before they were divorced. He remarried, and he and his second wife, Kitty, have two children. They live in Panorama City.

Hall became a well-known figure in City Hall, and demonstrated his political skills as a lobbyist for the 2,700-member United Firefighters union from 1976 to 1984.

During that time, the union spent $25,000 in an unsuccessful effort to defeat Bernardi because of his role in a campaign to limit police and firefighter pensions.

Hall said he sees his labor support as a plus in the heavily blue-collar district.

But he also hopes to campaign on other issues. Specifically, he said he wants to reclaim the district --street by street--from the grip of gangs and crime through more police officers and innovative prevention and rehabilitation programs.

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In January, Hall took accumulated sick leave and vacation days to campaign full time for the council, his first try for political office. It was an idea he had been discussing for two years with Harvey Englander, an aggressive political consultant who is known for his campaign mailings and who engineered Michael Woo’s 1985 defeat of Councilwoman Peggy Stevenson.

When Hall announced his campaign for the City Council last December, he pledged not to say anything bad about the incumbent. But as the election grew closer, he sent out a spate of mailers, many of them attacking Bernardi for his age and absence from council meetings.

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