CITY COUNCIL ELECTION 6TH DISTRICT : Galanter Goes on Offensive in the Final Days : Politics: Mailers accuse Gray of owning a development company and accepting ‘gifts’ from the Summa Corp. Gray denies charges and says tactic shows Galanter is ‘desperate.’

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Ruth Galanter went on the offensive in the waning days of her reelection campaign, blanketing the 6th Council District with a barrage of mailers attacking her opponent, Mary Lee Gray, on several fronts.

Gray angrily accused the mailers of misrepresentation and denounced what she called the Galanter campaign’s “sleazy” tactics. “It shows Ruth Galanter is desperate,” said Gray. “I think the voters will see through the lies and mudslinging.”

Galanter is seeking a second four-year term in office on Tuesday, after falling just short of winning the seat in an April primary against six opponents. Though Gray, a senior deputy to Los Angeles County Supervisor Deane Dana, ran a distant second in the primary, Galanter’s failure to win 50% of the vote set up Tuesday’s runoff.

Four years ago, when Galanter unseated then-City Council President Pat Russell, she was the one who had to sit back and watch an incumbent’s well-funded campaign churn out the last-minute mailers. Now the tables are turned--Galanter is the candidate with money to finance a last-minute blitz.

Among the charges made against Gray in the slick mailers is that she owns a development company, an apparent bid by the Galanter campaign to taint Gray among the slow-growth forces that are an important constituency in the district.

Gray said the charge is untrue. “I have never owned a development company,” she said. The ownership allegation stems from Gray’s financial disclosure statement for 1989-90 which lists a partnership interest in Crestview Ltd. The main business of the company is listed as development.

But Gray insists she is not now, nor never has been a developer or a developer’s partner. Her only interest in the company, Gray said, is that she loaned the owner money and holds a promissory note.

Another charge in a mailer accuses Gray of receiving “gifts” from the Summa Corp., former owners of the land where the controversial Playa Vista development is scheduled to be built. The “gifts” were received eight years ago. They were reported on Gray’s 1983 disclosure forms as the value of dinner tickets to two political fund-raisers she attended. Gray sat at the Summa Corp. tables. Summa has since sold the Playa Vista property to Maguire Thomas Partners.

Gray said there was nothing improper about her acceptance of the tickets. She said that since then, those types of events have been reclassified and that officials do not have to report accepting them from corporate sponsors.

A third charge against Gray, contained in a Galanter mailer targeted for the Crenshaw community, attempts to paint Gray as supporting Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates. That is a potentially damaging statement in the largely black area where anti-Gates sentiment is high in the wake of the Rodney King beating incident.

Gray blasted the mailer as misrepresenting her position.

In fact, at several community forums Gray has espoused a position on Gates and the Rodney King matter that is strikingly similar to Galanter’s. Both candidates have said they deplored what happened to King, but wanted to wait for a full investigation before deciding whether Gates should stay as chief.

Galanter campaign manager Marc Litchman justified the mailer statement by referring to a sentence in an article in a Santa Monica paper that paraphrased Gray as wanting Gates to stay as chief. “The mail pieces are factual,” Litchman said.

Gray countered that the Galanter campaign is “doing this to inflame Crenshaw.”

Gray said she has no plans to retaliate with her own attack mail. “There will be no hit pieces on Ruth Galanter. I feel we should talk about issues.”

Her campaign also lacks money for “hit pieces,” or much other mail. Indeed, money has been a major problem for Gray.

Galanter, meanwhile, has raised more funds since the primary than any other council candidate in the city. The contributions have come from developers, their attorneys and consultants, construction-related companies, cable companies and environmentalists.

Galanter raised $143,073 since April 24, while Gray’s tally was $43,342. More important, Gray had only $6,000 in the bank last week. Campaign statements also showed that since April 24, Galanter’s campaign spent about $50,000 on mailers and stamps--more than the total Gray raised.

Gray’s statement showed several small donations, plus larger contributions from some familiar Republican names, including Dana, Supervisor Mike Antonovich and Karl Samuelian, an attorney who was Gov. George Deukmejian’s fund-raiser.

Galanter press secretary Rick Ruiz charged that Gray broke her vow not to accept money from developers. But Gray said the people he named are small entrepreneurs from the area, not the major developers she vowed to stay away from.

The hot issue in the 6th District race, as it was four years ago, is development, and the militant opposition to it from citizens across the political spectrum. Gray has criticized Galanter’s record on development, saying she has not fulfilled her promise of four years ago to curb it.

Instead, Gray charges, Galanter has become a downtown insider whose campaign coffers are being fed by the same groups she was supposed to fight.

Galanter has countered by portraying Gray as a “clone” of Dana and his pro-development positions. Thus, Galanter says, Gray hardly can be counted on to hold the line on growth.

Gray calls herself a moderate Republican with a strong interest in social services who has never played a role in Dana’s development policies. That characterization got a boost when slow-growth activist Salvatore Grammatico, who finished a strong third in the April council candidate, endorsed Gray.