ELECTIONS POMONA : Protest, Suit Mark Closing Days of Races : Campaigns: A cartoon in a Republican club bulletin draws pickets to the mayor’s State of the City address. Her opponent is sued over the leaking of a report.

Mayor Donna Smith was picketed by activists charging racism and her opponent, Councilman Tomas Ursua, was sued for slander and invasion of privacy last week as they prepared for a showdown in Tuesday’s municipal election.

Ursua and Councilwoman Nell Soto, who is also on Tuesday’s ballot, were sued by four people who claim they were harmed by the leak earlier this year of an investigative report on alleged city corruption.

Ursua and Soto dismissed the lawsuit as politically motivated.

Meanwhile, Smith had to drive past picket signs to attend a luncheon Thursday at the Pomona Valley Mining Co. restaurant, where she gave her annual State of the City address.

About 50 people marched at the restaurant entrance to protest a cartoon that appeared in the monthly bulletin of the Pomona Valley Republican Women Federated. The club bulletin, which invited members to the mayor’s speech, ran a cartoon, reprinted from the American Immigration Control Foundation, showing a man in a sombrero, a pregnant woman and nine children lined up for U.S. medical benefits.

In her luncheon address, Smith mentioned the protesters briefly, saying she was “flattered” they think she is powerful enough to control what appears in the bulletins of the club, of which she is a member. In an interview afterward, she said the cartoon was “in bad taste.”

The Pomona Jaycees sponsored the luncheon, which was attended by about 100 people, including Republican club members. Pomona Jaycees President Steve Halligan told the group that it would have represented “better judgment” if the cartoon had not appeared, but he also criticized the picketers for trying to draw Smith into a controversy.

Pomona Planning Commission Chairman Eddie Cortez, an associate member of the Republican club, criticized Smith for failing to denounce the cartoon at the luncheon. Cortez called the cartoon a degrading and disgraceful attack on Latinos. “I’m offended that the mayor only made light of it,” he said.

Cortez, who is Latino, raised the issue after he received the club bulletin in the mail. He called it to the attention of former mayoral candidate Abe Tapia, who organized the protest.

Both Cortez and Tapia support Ursua in his campaign to replace Smith as mayor. Smith said the issue would not have come up if not for the election.

Ursua and Soto, meanwhile, blamed politics for the timing of the lawsuit filed against them by D. Rodney Tapp and his landscape firm, Land Design; Dan McIntire and his wife, Joan, and Sanford Sorenson, an urban planner who formerly ran the city redevelopment agency.

The suit parallels a claim filed April 4 by the same people against the city of Pomona. They seek $5 million in damages for allowing the leak of investigative reports that mentioned them.

The controversy started more than a year ago, when the City Council hired private detective Howard Emirhanian and his firm to investigate allegations of irregularities in the award of contracts to Land Design and other firms.

Emirhanian produced at least two interim reports, one dated last May and another in November. Both were circulated in the community, even though city officials had labeled them confidential.

One was obtained by Tapia, then a candidate for mayor, who gave copies of it to reporters. Because of that, he, too, is named in the suit, filed Tuesday in Pomona Superior Court.

In the lawsuit, Tapp, the McIntires and Sorenson said that the allegations that had prompted the detective’s investigation were false, and the release of fragmentary information harmed their reputations.

The suit says that Soto, who is running for reelection to the council, allegedly slandered the plaintiffs by stating at a political forum April 3 that they had been involved in “unethical deals.”

It claims slander by Ursua for telling newspaper reporters that the report by the detective agency showed “a whole pattern of friends and insiders taking care of one another” and also indicated that “special interests were at work in Pomona.”

Emirhanian and Tapia are accused of libel for allegedly producing or disseminating information falsely accusing the plaintiffs of dishonesty and illegal and unethical conduct.

Tapp said the lawsuit is not political, even though it was filed in the week before the city election. He said he was simply tired of being slandered. “I don’t consider it political at all,” he said.

Tapia, Ursua and Soto rejected the suit’s allegations.