Judge Says Roberti Can Run in 20th

A Los Angeles judge Wednesday rejected a legal effort to keep Democratic state Senate leader David A. Roberti out of the April 7 special election to replace former Sen. Alan Robbins.

A group calling itself Californians Against Corruption and several candidates for the 20th Senate District seat filed suit Wednesday morning to keep Roberti’s name off the ballot, saying he had not lived in the central Valley district for one year as required by the state Constitution.

But Superior Court Judge Stephen E. O’Neil threw out the suit in the afternoon, saying that ballots were already printed and that only the state Legislature has the authority to determine whether someone is qualified to be a member.

A spokeswoman for the secretary of state’s office said the one-year residency provision has not been enforced in California since the U. S. Supreme Court ruled such requirements unconstitutional in 1972.

She said California candidates qualify for the ballot if they are registered voters and reside in the district they are running in at the time they take out nomination papers. Roberti registered to vote in the district in February, using as his address a small Van Nuys house he rented the same month.

Roberti is campaigning in the 20th District because his old Hollywood-based district was collapsed in the recent reapportionment. If elected, he will serve out the remaining two years of Robbins’ term. Robbins resigned from the Senate last year after agreeing to plead guilty to federal corruption charges.

A veteran liberal and prodigious campaign fund-raiser, Roberti has for years maintained a large residence in the Los Feliz area. After deciding to run for Robbins’ old seat, he rented a small clapboard house on Hamlin Street in Van Nuys.

Manuel Fernandez, a spokesman for Californians Against Corruption, said his group will appeal the judge’s ruling and continued to argue that Roberti has not lived long enough in the 20th District to represent it.

“How can he represent the district when he’s never lived in the district? He doesn’t have the slightest idea of what the issues are in this district,” he said.

A few hours before O’Neil’s ruling, Fernandez and four candidates running for the 20th District seat staged a news conference outside Roberti’s rented home to publicize their suit. They said that even though Roberti rents the dwelling, he is not living there.

In Sacramento, Roberti insisted that he was legally qualified to run for Robbins’ old seat and angrily struck out at those who participated in the news conference.

“They were banging at my door this morning,” Roberti said. “This is another case of harassment by the gun people.”

He was referring to legislation he co-sponsored in 1989 with then-Assemblyman Mike Roos that generally bans semiautomatic assault guns in California--the nation’s first such law.

As the bill was being enacted into law, some gun owners mounted an unsuccessful effort to recall him. In 1990, Fernandez, who opposed the gun law, and an eclectic group of Roos’ opponents ran a self-described guerrilla campaign to defeat Roos’ reelection. They failed; however, Roos, a Los Angeles Democrat, resigned from the Assembly last year to take a new job.

As for charges that he still lives in a “palatial” Tudor-style home in Los Feliz and not the rented house in Van Nuys, Roberti said: “My wife is there right now. We sleep there. My 88-year-old father lives in the so-called palatial house. I cannot uproot him. I’m responsible for him.”

Roberti told a reporter that his wife, June, would have been on hand to confront the news conference, but she had left to take their dogs to a veterinarian.

“If they’d showed up an hour later, she’d have been there. They picked a day when they knew I was in Sacramento,” he said.