Money Talks in the Race for D.A.

In the first debate of his reelection campaign, Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner treated his opponents with a condescension that verged on contempt.

“I’m sorry, I forgot your name,” Reiner told Beverly Hills City Councilman Bob Tanenbaum midway into the Mexican-American Bar Assn. debate last Thursday night.

He was just as disrespectful to two of his subordinates who are running against him. Whenever head Deputy D.A. Gil Garcetti and Deputy D.A. Sterling Norris attacked him, Reiner smiled disdainfully and gazed skyward. He delivered a final measure of scorn in his concluding remarks, dismissing all three as superficial rabble-rousers.

“There’s not one of them that couldn’t have given a serious answer to virtually every question that was asked,” said Reiner. “And they turned over most of their time to foolish invective.”

Why must I do this, his body language seemed to say, when I could be working late at the office prosecuting crooks?

This was delivered in a clear and concise speaking style, with none of the rambling sentences and incomplete thoughts that mark the orations of most L.A. politicians. Experience, gained in many campaigns, gave him a distinct edge over his foes.

Watching Reiner perform his giant-among-pygmies act, it was easy to forget that, just two years ago, the D.A. was defeated for the Democratic nomination for attorney general by one of the most inarticulate statewide candidates in recent years, Dist. Atty. Arlo Smith of San Francisco.

That’s when challengers began to smell blood. They figured that if Reiner couldn’t beat Arlo Smith, he couldn’t beat anybody. It’s the same old story, familiar to anyone who follows news about sports, politics or war. You sense weakness and attack.

The debate gave a rough idea of how the challengers plan to assault the two-term D.A.

Garcetti raised a question about Reiner’s campaign contributions. But inexperience took the edge off his blast.

One of Reiner’s big donors and lenders in past campaigns was a commodities broker named Mark Weinberg, who was recently convicted of defrauding clients. Reiner still owes Weinberg $206,000, and Garcetti demanded that the D.A. repay the loan so Weinberg could give it to defrauded clients. To emphasize the point, Garcetti and an aide held up a big mock-up of a check.

But Garcetti blew the punch line by running out of his allotted time just as they were waving the check. Then Tanenbaum, the next speaker, made the sparse audience in the Arco building meeting room laugh by saying, “that looks like a rubber check.”

While the carefully groomed and stylishly dressed Garcetti delivered his assault in a cool manner, Tanenbaum was all outrage. He’s a big, former basketball player from New York who sat through Reiner’s speech with his mouth downturned, boiling inside, especially when the D.A. forgot his name. When Tanenbaum spoke, he sounded like someone arguing with a cab driver or with the superintendent of his apartment house.

The third challenger in the debate, Sterling Norris, is a red-faced, gray-haired veteran prosecutor, half attorney and half cop, well known for his large number of death penalty convictions. He was a leader in the victims’ rights movement and the drive that unseated former Chief Justice Rose Bird.

Norris is the crusty old pro who has seen it all--and who no doubt has made his views known at hundreds of office gripe sessions where the D.A.’s crew complained about soft-headed brass. You could sense that during the debate when he said, “I have been a . . . prosecutor, a trial prosecutor, not an armchair administrator or a hall walker, but a real prosecutor.”

In the end, debating skill may not be enough to carry the election.

Monday, Tanenbaum showed how helpful money can be.

He was endorsed by South L.A. political power Mervyn Dymally at a press conference at the Compton courthouse. The congressman’s endorsement was delivered after Tanenbaum agreed to pay Dymally’s political organization a substantial amount of money--still to be negotiated--for a place on a slate mailer and a mention and picture in the Community Democrat, a campaign newspaper that appears a week before election day in South L.A.

Tanenbaum bought a place on the Dymally slate to counter Reiner’s strength in South L.A.’s Latino and African-American precincts. Reiner is expected to pay heavily to be on the slate mailers distributed by the Berman-Waxman political organization and its South L.A. ally, Assemblyman Willard Murray.

A move such as this is what counts. The campaign will be determined largely by whether the challengers can out-hustle Reiner for campaign funds.