Elections ’92 : Sparks Flying in Reiner-Garcetti Race : Campaign: Sniping already begins between the D.A. and his former chief aide as they gear up for runoff vote in November.

Sparks were already flying Wednesday between Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner and his former chief aide, Gil Garcetti, as they faced a runoff election for the job as the county’s top prosecutor.

Sniping that began primary night continued as Garcetti, who gained 34% of the vote, called Reiner the year’s dirtiest word, a “politician,” and Reiner, who won only 26% of the vote, dismissed his former chief deputy as a man who “makes a good first impression” but will not hold up under public scrutiny.

Setting the tone for what is likely to be a nasty campaign leading up to the November election, each portrayed the other during comments Wednesday as lacking qualifications for the job. Garcetti, 50, who now runs a branch of the district attorney office, said his boss was “using the office to become governor one day.” And Reiner, 56, with eight years in the post, said Garcetti is a “secretive” person who “is not to be trusted in a position of power.”

Reiner said in an interview that he named Garcetti as his second-in-command but after four years found “it was necessary to remove him for very serious personal reasons.”

He declined to elaborate, saying information would emerge in “face-to-face . . . joint appearances and debate” during the coming campaign “rather than in a piecemeal way through the media.”

During the primary, Reiner accused Garcetti of authorizing excessive overtime pay for himself.

Garcetti, who denies any impropriety, said after a press conference Wednesday that he has “173 spiral notebooks” that he kept while he was Reiner’s chief deputy, summarizing conversations with his boss and actions taken in his behalf.

“I can document a lot more than he can,” Garcetti said.

Garcetti, who has spent 23 years with the district attorney’s office, also challenged Reiner to detail his suggestions of wrongdoing, saying: “I can slam-dunk anything and everything he brings up.”

Garcetti promised that his campaign would hammer at the issues of “professional competency, professional integrity and positive leadership,” all qualities he said the current district attorney lacks. Voters have a choice between a “professional prosecutor,” he noted, and Reiner, a man constantly “shooting from the lips.”

Garcetti accused Reiner of missteps during his tenure, citing the district attorney’s decision to file attempted murder charges five years ago against a male prostitute accused of selling AIDS-contaminated blood, a case believed to be the first of its kind in the nation.

“I and every other senior staff member told him that we could not do it, that we didn’t have a case ethically and legally,” Garcetti said. “But the case was filed and he was on ‘Nightline’ that night. The case was ultimately kicked out.”

A Superior Court judged ruled that there was no evidence the prostitute specifically intended to kill anyone by selling his blood.

Garcetti cited a 1988 incident that he called “a precursor to the Karlin case,” when Reiner refused to let a Glendale Municipal Court commissioner hear cases after the commissioner used a racial epithet in court. But Reiner later backed down after bar officials found the commissioner was not guilty of racism.

Reiner said he was surprised by the criticisms because in both cases he had followed Garcetti’s recommendations. In the Glendale case, he said, Garcetti himself launched the investigation of the commissioner “without informing me the incident had ever occurred.”

“This was his action presented (to me) as a completed investigation,” Reiner said.

“That tells you everything you need to know about Gil Garcetti,” Reiner said after learning that Garcetti was using the case against him.

Garcetti said Reiner told him he had done a “superlative” job.

But Reiner said such praise was “just one of the accommodations you make” in personnel moves. And he recalled how Garcetti insisted on moving his furniture from his downtown office to his new one in Torrance and also kept a car radio in “an effort to hold on to some kind of status.”