Bernson Faces His Toughest Race Yet : The Challengers: Diverse opponents all target councilman for his support of Porter Ranch development and acceptance of contributions from the builder.

When they go to the polls April 9, voters in the 12th City Council District will choose from among the largest field of candidates since incumbent Hal Bernson was elected in 1979.

Bernson’s five challengers are a diverse group, all hoping to take advantage of what they see as Bernson’s vulnerability on district development issues. The 12th District covers the northwest San Fernando Valley, including the communities of Chatsworth, Granada Hills, Northridge, Porter Ranch, Reseda and Winnetka.

If no candidate receives a majority of the votes, the top two vote-getters will face each other in a June 4 runoff.

What follow are profiles of Bernson’s opponents: school board member Julie Korenstein; businessman Walter Prince; newsletter publisher Leonard Shapiro; printer Allen Hecht, and Arthur (Larry) Kagele, a police detective.

Julie Korenstein

Less than four years ago, Julie Korenstein was an ambitious nonentity in San Fernando Valley politics, a high school program director running for a seat on the Los Angeles school board.

But with heavy financial support from a city teachers union, Korenstein won the West Valley school board job, beating out an outspoken conservative backed by antibusing leaders in a bitter campaign.

Now Korenstein, 47, of Northridge wants to take another giant step in city politics. The liberal Democrat is pinning her hopes of unseating Bernson on what she says is widespread community anger at the 12-year council veteran’s support of the $2-billion Porter Ranch project. Plans for the ranch call for 3,400 dwelling units and 6 million square feet of office and commercial space in the foothills north of Chatsworth.

Korenstein also is trying to make Bernson’s ethics a central issue in the April 9 municipal primary election. She has criticized him for accepting more than $55,000 in campaign contributions from the Porter Ranch developer and his business associates “while serving as the project’s main backer.”

“When I talk to people, I say we need a city councilperson who represents the needs and interests of the community. We do not want a councilperson who represents vested interests of developers, and this is a classic case of that,” she said.

A Cal State Northridge graduate, Korenstein’s first exposure to politics was her effort along with other local homeowners to block expansion of the Sunshine Canyon landfill near Granada Hills.

In the late 1970s, Korenstein involved herself in the anti-nuclear movement while raising three children. Then a resident of Chatsworth, she and other local homemakers gathered information on health problems they believed were traceable to Rockwell International’s energy research laboratory in the Simi Hills, where nuclear tests were once conducted.

In 1984, she was a volunteer campaign worker for the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Chicago-based minister and liberal political activist then seeking the Democratic nomination for president. Her association with Jackson was later used against her in a school board race and she remains somewhat defensive about it even now.

“Eight years ago was a long, long time ago. . . . Look, I came out of the anti-nuclear movement and he was one of the few candidates at the time who was very interested in scaling back nuclear weapons and also aggressively pushing for education for children.”

After running a private tutorial service for high school dropouts in the early 1980s, Korenstein headed a Chatsworth High School program that placed students in volunteer jobs with local nursing homes, latchkey-child programs and animal clinics.

Korenstein first ran for the school board in 1987, campaigning for a seat vacated when incumbent board member David Armor left to take a job with the Defense Department. After a bitter campaign, she defeated accountant Barbara Romey, a conservative Republican backed by leaders of the Valley’s antibusing movement, including former Rep. Bobbi Fiedler (R-Northridge) and state Sen. Alan Robbins (D-Tarzana).

Virtually unknown in local political circles before the race, Korenstein was strongly supported by United Teachers-Los Angeles, the city’s largest teachers union. Of the $108,000 she spent in the campaign, $70,000 came from UTLA.

Korenstein was elected to a full four-year term in 1989, beating Granada Hills junior high school principal Gerald Horowitz.

On the school board, Korenstein has carried the ball on successful drives to toughen the district’s punishment of students who bring weapons to school and to soften its academic standards for students who participate in extracurricular activities.

A self-described fiscal conservative, she has set herself up as a watchdog of district spending, and often questions even small amounts for building projects or field trips.

She has been dismissed by some as an intellectual lightweight, in part because her questions are often simplistic and appear to reflect a lack of understanding of district procedures. According to one source familiar with the school district, some district employees have derogatorily nicknamed her “Corn Flake.”

But others praise her for not hesitating to question “sacred cows” or to challenge conventional notions, such as her suggestion last year that the district’s busing-for-integration program be disbanded because its students were not showing achievement gains.

As a City Council candidate, however, Korenstein will enjoy only minimal support from UTLA, which is concentrating its resources on four school board races. Moreover, organizations can give only $500 to council candidates under recently adopted city campaign laws.

But Korenstein said her campaign is developing different constituencies for the council race, including women and environmentalists.

Korenstein acknowledges that she will have far less money for her campaign than Bernson, who expects to spend $300,000 on the primary election alone. Korenstein hopes to spend about $100,000.

“We knew when we started the campaign that we weren’t going to be able to compete with Bernson. . . . We’re banking on his unpopularity in the community,” she said.

Walter Prince

If Walter Prince dislikes anything about running for Los Angeles City Council, it is all the time his campaign takes away from his favorite hobby: dune-buggy racing in Mexico.

Prince, a wealthy businessman who also pilots his own airplane, figures he will have to miss two races this spring--including the famed Baja 500--in order to run against incumbent Hal Bernson.

After Los Angeles school board member Julie Korenstein, Prince, 55, is considered the most serious challenger to Bernson.

Though not well-known in the district, Prince--who owns a Northridge building-maintenance firm as well as local property--is expected to mount a relatively well-financed campaign. He has already loaned his campaign $30,000 from his own pocket.

The son of an Armenian refugee who became a rich Los Angeles property owner, Prince attended several colleges without graduating and served during the late 1950s as an Army newspaper correspondent in Japan.

After working for his father as a property manager in the early 1960s, Prince began his own janitorial service firm, Executive-Suite Services Inc.

A vigorous, knowledgeable man who peppers his conversation with expletives, the Chatsworth resident launched an unsuccessful recall attempt against Bernson in 1989, shelling out $55,000 of his own money to underwrite it.

Prince objected to Bernson’s efforts to redevelop property along Parthenia Street in Northridge into a business park. Prince’s company is headquartered in an industrial building he owns on Parthenia. He said Bernson’s plan would have displaced him and 300 other small-business people.

The dispute is only one of several times that Prince has tangled with the veteran lawmaker over local zoning and development issues.

Prince’s activism led him to become a leader of PRIDE (Porter Ranch is Developed Enough), a homeowners group that has urged massive scaling back of the sprawling Porter Ranch commercial-residential project in the hills north of Chatsworth. Bernson has been the project’s chief City Hall champion.

Prince said the project will badly overload streets, schools and water-delivery capacity in the area and worsen traffic congestion and air pollution. He has urged a moratorium on all construction in the Chatsworth-Porter Ranch area except single-family homes on lots larger than a half acre until infrastructure problems are solved.

Prince also has criticized the councilman’s political ethics for his acceptance of campaign contributions from the Porter Ranch developer, Nathan Shappell, and his business allies.

Prince, who is not affiliated with any political party, acknowledged that he voted for the first time last June.

“We all make mistakes and that was a big one,” he said in a recent interview. “I preach the gospel to people now--get out and vote. Bernson got in because people like me weren’t voting.”

Leonard Shapiro

Dial the number of Leonard Shapiro’s home answering machine and a voice with a distinctively New York accent announces: “You have reached . . . the home of the feisty L.A. Observer publisher.”

It is an apt self-description. For the past 11 years, Shapiro has used his monthly newsletter--circulation 2,100--to take City Hall bureaucrats to task for what he views as their almost boundless inefficiency, wastefulness and stupidity.

At age 71, he is a classic City Hall gadfly, haunting City Council meetings and often taking the microphone to berate politicians during public-comment periods after almost everyone else has gone home.

“People say I talk too loud. I talk passionately,” said Shapiro, who lives in Granada Hills. “Personally, I’d rather play golf and travel in my last years. I don’t like going downtown, but . . . I just can’t stand what’s happening.”

Shapiro recently decided that it was not enough to zing politicians with mere rhetoric. However, with little name recognition and less than $6,000 in campaign funds, Shapiro is a long shot at best to unseat Bernson. Nevertheless, he is conducting an active campaign, speaking at candidate forums and passing out campaign brochures to voters daily.

The race is Shapiro’s first in California. But it is hardly the first time he has tilted at political windmills.

As a bowling alley operator in Cocoa, Fla., he lost three races for the local City Council. As an oil and gas distributor in the upstate New York town of Monticello, he lost a race for school board.

Like Bernson’s other opponents, Shapiro has sharply criticized the councilman for his support of Porter Ranch and his acceptance of campaign contributions from the builder.

“How the hell can the city of Los Angeles afford a man like this? He has no scruples,” Shapiro said.

Shapiro said he is so angry at the incumbent that he recently confronted Bernson publicly at a City Council meeting, criticizing him for setting up a fund-raising committee to run for lieutenant governor in 1994.

As the councilman listened, Shapiro charged that Bernson never intended to run for the position and only set up the committee in order to circumvent city election law by accepting campaign donations larger than $500.

After he spoke, Shapiro said, Bernson angrily told him: “I’m going to sue you for everything you’ve got. You can’t make statements like that about me.” Shapiro said he replied: “Bernson, you haven’t got the guts to sue me. And he didn’t.”

A Bernson spokesman said he was not aware of any such exchange and could not comment.

Allen Hecht

Like the other candidates running against Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson, printer Allen Hecht can boast of a number of awards for civic and business achievements. But Hecht has one the others do not: an Academy Award.

Hecht, a onetime computer consultant, won the award in 1980 for developing a computerized process to aid the blending of film sequences shot at different times, angles and in different light. Before he automated the process, film editors had to merge such sequences by hand on paper tape.

Despite the reflected glamour of an Academy Award, Hecht, 52, faces long odds in his first bid for public office. He has raised about $15,000 for his campaign but has little name recognition in the district.

A Boston native and ex-Marine, Hecht has an easygoing manner, a quick wit and a first-time candidate’s relish for the roughhouse world of politics.

“I love the action,” he said in a recent interview at a Northridge deli. “That’s probably why I wanted to get into the game.”

He owns a Sir Speedy printing franchise in Northridge, a business that he notes will come in handy in a campaign where direct-mail brochures are the major form of communication with voters.

A Granada Hills resident and longtime opponent of the Sunshine Canyon landfill, Hecht is running against Bernson despite being the veteran councilman’s appointee to the city’s Solid Waste Advisory Group.

Following his graduation from Boston Technical High School, Hecht volunteered for the Marine Corps, serving as a missile technician in the late 1950s. Discovering an aptitude for computers, he later went to work for Honeywell as a computer trouble-shooter, a job that brought him to California.

If elected, Hecht said he will work to double the size of the city’s 8,300-member police force.

Asked how much that increase would cost, Hecht said: “I haven’t the slightest idea.” In order to pay for the new officers, he said he would save money by eliminating City Hall inefficiencies or ask voters if they were willing to pay higher taxes for more police.

Hecht also said he would work to revamp the city’s procedures for approving new development, saying that local streets, schools, water delivery and other services should be in place before additional construction gets a green light.

He is prepared to sink up to $10,000 of his own money into his campaign, even if “I have to knock off my wife and collect the insurance,” he said, laughing.

Criticizing Bernson for “a total lack of respect for constituents,” Hecht said he would not distance himself from voters.

“My goal is to be more responsive,” he said. “I’d like to be a walk-around councilman. I’m good at that.”

Arthur Kagele

In his long career as a Los Angeles police detective, Arthur (Larry) Kagele has arrested a notorious child-killer, nabbed a band of gypsy con artists as they tried an airport getaway and worked on the Police Department’s respected art-theft detail.

But in recent months, Kagele, 47, has been trying his hand at a new, but no less demanding job: running for Los Angeles City Council.

Kagele has raised less than $2,000--including a $1,000 loan from his own pocket--and is little known in the district. But like Bernson’s other opponents, he believes that the time is ripe for the veteran councilman’s defeat.

“People are tired of Mr. Bernson. They can’t reach him. They can’t talk to him. If they tell him their problems, he doesn’t listen,” said Kagele.

A Granada Hills resident, Kagele was raised in Wyoming but attended high school in Los Angeles. At age 17, he enlisted in the Navy, serving as a firefighter on an aircraft carrier and, later, on a minesweeper off the coast of Vietnam.

In 1968, he joined the Los Angeles Police Department, working as a patrolman in the Rampart division. As an undercover vice officer in 1973, he arrested a man in a downtown theater restroom on charges of lewd conduct.

The man, he said, turned out to be the Rev. Jim Jones, the leader of Peoples Temple. Five years later, Jones and more than 900 of his followers committed mass suicide at a jungle redoubt in Guyana.

Kagele said he and his partner also arrested Theodore Frank, the man later convicted in the torture-murder of a 2-year-old Camarillo girl.

Frank had been sought by Los Angeles police for picking up another child at a Van Nuys school. After arresting him at an Agoura gas station, Kagele said he informed Ventura County sheriff’s detectives, who linked Frank to the killing of Amy Sue Seitz.

Kagele said he is not troubled by the residential portion of the $2-billion Porter Ranch project, although he favors scaling back the commercial end of it.

He rejects Bernson’s argument that the campaign contributions from the builder had no influence on his decision to back the project.

“I find that hard to believe,” he said. “I think people out there are not going to be fooled by that.”

Kagele said he wants more police officers in the 12th District, but could not say how many more are needed.

He said he believes that it is shortsighted for the city to cut back on spending on parks and recreation to balance its budget, because such reductions only serve to encourage delinquency and crime.

His long service on the police force, he said, has prepared him to be a councilman.

“I’m an aggressive person,” said Kagele. “I believe in people. I believe in honesty.”