Beverly Hills Mayor to Give Part of Campaign Funds to Charity : Election: With only one challenger, this year’s race for the Beverly Hills City Council isn’t the battle that erupted over three open seats in 1988.

Beverly Hills Mayor Max Salter plans to raise $100,000 as part of his reelection campaign, about as much as he spent on his last race. But this time, he’s going to give most of it away.

It’s not that he doesn’t care about the campaign. “I will be a vigorous and available candidate,” he told supporters last week at a cocktail party in his art-filled living room on Linden Drive.

But this year’s election for the Beverly Hills City Council isn’t the battle royal that erupted over three open seats in 1988, when 13 hopefuls jostled for attention after all three incumbents bowed out.

Despite civic worries including multimillion-dollar cost overruns on the Beverly Hills Civic Center, this year’s election almost did not happen.

Trisha Roth, the only challenger, waited until the last day to file her candidacy papers for the April 3 election. A non-practicing pediatrician who made a name for herself as a campaigner against drug abuse and drunk driving, she has also been active in the fight against AIDS.

Had she stayed out of the race, Salter and the other incumbent, Robert K. Tanenbaum, would have been reelected automatically.

But she did not, and Salter came up with a fund-raising plan that will divert $70,000 worth of campaign donations to the Beverly Hills Education Foundation.

“To make this even more attractive to potential contributors, Janet (his wife) and I have agreed to match every dollar donated with a dollar of our own,” he said.

The idea got his rivals’ attention, although they do not plan to follow his example.

“He’s very philanthropic,” said Tanenbaum of his colleague, the owner of the statewide chain of Beno’s clothing stores. Salter’s salmon-colored Rolls Royce Silver Spirit carries the license plate “HIZZONA.”

The vanity plate on Tanenbaum’s Cadillac Sedan de Ville identifies him as “RMAYOR,” though he gave up the gavel to Salter last April.

But Tanenbaum’s ambitions go higher than the chairmanship of the Beverly Hills City Council. The former New York City prosecutor, who has said he might like to run for district attorney for Los Angeles County, said he does not believe in pulling punches, not in a criminal trial and not in politics. All his funds will go to the campaign, he said.

“I don’t know how anyone can run a campaign to win by one vote. No more than when you prosecute a case, can you stop just beyond the point where you’ve made your case beyond a reasonable doubt,” said Tanenbaum, now a senior partner in a downtown law firm as well as a novelist and screenwriter.

“You have to do the most conscientious job you can,” he said. “Maybe others can be complacent. That’s not what I’m about. I’m not complacent about the political process.”

Roth said she expects to spend less than $5,000 on her campaign, almost all of it her own money, although she jokingly took some credit for the windfall that awaits the schools if Salter reaches his goal of raising a $140,000 contribution.

“I think I did a tremendous community service by running,” she said. “Look at all the money the foundation will be getting. If I didn’t do that, they wouldn’t get the money.”

Some of her money has gone to buy plastic litter bags imprinted with the slogan, “Just Say YES to Trisha ROTH M.D.”

Unlike the incumbents, Roth cannot adorn her car with mayoral license plates. Instead, the wood-sided Buick station wagon carries the plates “657KIDS,” her office number when she was a practicing pediatrician.

The campaign has gotten off to a slow start, with Salter and Tanenbaum distracted by weeks of closed-door deliberations on how to resume work at the Civic Center, where the contractor walked off the job claiming that $53 million in payments did not cover his costs.

Edward S. Kreins, the longtime city manager, announced his retirement after the cost overruns became public.

But with the contractor agreeing to start back to work when the city agreed to pay out $9 million more over the next several months and a new city manager hired, the candidates made a public appearance together for the first time Monday night at a meeting of the Beverly Hills Democratic Club. All three candidates were looking for the endorsement of the membership.

The incumbents talked about how they increased the city’s support for the Beverly Hills Unified School District--a separate legal entity--from $1.2 million a year to $4.6 million, how they helped get parking lots built along Santa Monica Boulevard and how policemen now walk beats in the business district.

“My No. 1 priority in this campaign is to preserve our schools,” Salter said.

Tanenbaum said: “Beverly Hills is the paragon of public education in America. If it doesn’t work in our city, public education in American is through, and the American dream will have to be redefined in a way that I’m not comfortable with,”

Looking back at last year’s Beverly Hills teachers strike, which erupted only weeks after an election for the school board was canceled for lack of challengers, Roth said she would do her best to “bring out a lot of issues” in this election.

She called for an investigation of the cost overruns and delays on the Civic Center, urged development of a regional plan to diminish traffic flow through residential areas and proposed a substance abuse task force.

“I feel badly that a new city manager was chosen before the election. After all, there is a chance that I could get elected,” she said, winning a laugh and some sympathetic applause from the 45 Democrats gathered in a bank’s second-floor conference room.

“I hope one of your votes will go to me. I feel that someone who takes on the alcohol and tobacco industries at the same time has some nerve and will not be influenced.”

In the end, the Democratic Club gave its endorsement to Salter, who got 30 votes.

Roth received 13 votes, and Tanenbaum, who identified himself as a lifelong Democrat, got 11. Tanenbaum’s chances suffered when the group’s vice president pointed out that Tanenbaum once campaigned on behalf of a Republican congressional candidate.