The Real Campaign Issue Is Personality : Elections: Maverick incumbent Chris Valente vies with two first-time candidates for two City Council seats.

After two contentious elections, this year’s City Council candidates had avoided attacking each other. But the gauntlet was thrown down last week when challenger David Spence criticized incumbent Chris Valente for “making unthinking, irrational decisions” on the council.

“I think, frankly, there should be two new faces on the City Council,” said Spence, an eye-care products salesman.

Spence and Carol Liu are making their first bids for office in the April 14 election in seeking the council seats held by Valente and Ed Phelps, whose decision not to run again has left an open seat.

Liu said last week that the campaigns “have to be more assertive because no real issue exists.”

With the candidates agreeing this year on a number of main points about the future of the small foothill community, their campaigns may turn on style and personality.

During the 1990 campaign, the development of the Sport Chalet shopping center became the center of debate among seven candidates, culminating in the last-minute distribution of literature portraying one Sport Chalet opponent as an absentee slumlord.

The heated 1988 campaign became focused on accusations by Valente and Phelps that the incumbents then were fiscally wasteful, pro-growth and unresponsive. An anonymous letter distributed to many households during that campaign caricatured one unnamed incumbent as “the silver fox.” Valente received the most votes followed by Phelps.

In this year’s election, neither Liu nor Spence have official endorsements from other council members, but Councilman Jim Edwards showed up for Spence’s campaign kickoff party and Councilman Jack Hastings appeared at a Liu fund-raiser.

Liu has collected more than $5,000 in campaign donations, and Spence has received more than $6,000 in contributions.

Valente is promising not to take donations, paying for any campaign expenditures on his own.

Viewed as a maverick, the 49-year-old Valente has become an outsider on the council with other members refusing to follow his lead. In 1990, when Valente was next in line to become mayor, a largely ceremonial role, the other council members voted to change the rules that govern the mayoral rotation process. Another council member was selected.

“I think people in this community are pretty sick and tired of the way I’ve been treated,” Valente said.

Spence said that Valente maintains a confrontational style that has proved ineffective in City Council matters. For example, he criticized Valente for publicly blasting the city for being slow to maintain an equestrian trail. “Isn’t Valente part of the ‘city’ ?” he asked.

Valente acknowledged that he has made little headway with the other council members, but he wants to continue what he says is his advocacy role for residents not keyed into the city’s decision-making process.

The incumbent said he would continue to fight for freeway sound walls and more youth and senior citizen programs. Moreover, he said, the city needs to reconsider residential gray-water use, a proposal that the council rejected last September.

“I think I will always be an individual,” said Valente, who is the former executive director of the La Canada Youth House-Community Center. “I will always speak my mind.”

Spence, 55, contends that he can work effectively with the council to maintain the attractive qualities of La Canada Flintridge.

“I think I would be more cooperative with the whole City Council,” he said. “I specifically believe I can do a better job than the incumbent.”

Spence said he would seek to improve city services now under contract with Los Angeles County--such as fire protection--and he would “keep a close eye” on hillside developers and property owners who want to build large houses on small lots. “People like to have space around their homes in this town,” he said.

Spence, a 23-year-resident of the city, is a member of the Public Safety Commission and is also on the board of the La Canada Flintridge Tournament of Roses Assn.

Liu, whose campaign is co-chaired by former Mayor Warren Hillgren, would also like to review the city’s contract services and wants the council to take a more aggressive role in dealing with community issues.

“We have kind of a caretaker City Council” that is “not leading the city,” Liu said. “(The council) needs to be a little more proactive and visionary.”

As part of her campaign, Liu is starting to meet with community representatives to discuss the future of the troubled Sport Chalet development. The purpose of the meetings, she said, is to assess local feelings about the proposed shopping center, which has encountered difficulties in signing tenants and securing financing.

Spence said he met earlier this month with Sam Allen, chief executive officer of Sport Chalet Inc. and is confident that the project will move forward largely as planned, although company officials have publicly said they are reassessing the project and might reduce or abandon it.

Liu, 50, an eight-year resident of the city, is director of the 1992 Summer School sponsored by the Assistance League of Flintridge and heads the city’s Solid Waste Advisory Board. Liu also is a former teacher and school administrator.

She would not comment about Valente or state a preference between the incumbent and Spence. “I have a choice, but I don’t feel comfortable identifying one,” she said.

Valente said the other two candidates are “both nice people,” and he did not want to engage in a negative campaign against either one. “I don’t want to see that happen again.”