Valley Will Benefit From New Mayor, Leaders Say : City Hall: Officials predict the election will bring someone who is more familiar with and friendlier toward the suburbs.

Tom Bradley’s decision not to seek a sixth term will probably result in the election of a new mayor more familiar with and friendly to the San Fernando Valley, local leaders predicted Thursday.

“I only see opportunities for the Valley to get more attention by a change in administrations,” said Robert Scott, president of the San Fernando Valley United Chambers of Commerce, after Bradley announced Thursday that he will step aside when his current term expires June 30.

Largely because his political base has been dominated by blacks, downtown business and Westside liberals, Scott and others say, Bradley has routinely neglected the Valley when it sought protection from plant closures or its proportionate share of grants and commission appointments.

“Tom never did well in the Valley politically and as a result he’s never seen the Valley as important to him,” said Councilwoman Joy Picus, a West Valley lawmaker.

Picus has sharply criticized Bradley in the past for giving fewer than 20% of his appointments to city commissions to Valley residents although the area has 35% of the city’s population. Especially galling, Picus and others say, is that some of the most powerful citizen panels, such as the police and public works commissions, have no Valley representatives.

Bradley “lost the map on how to get to the Valley,” veteran Northridge-based political consultant Paul Clarke said, predicting a new era of political potency for the Valley under the next mayor. “It’ll be political suicide for any of those trying to succeed Bradley to write off the Valley like he has,” Clarke said.

Already, the makings of a strong Valley strategy are showing up in the mayoral campaigns being put together by Joel Wachs and state Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar). Both have filed the documents required to raise money to run for mayor.

“The Valley will play a bigger role in determining who’s the next mayor than at any time in the past 20 years,” speculated political consultant Rick Taylor.

“We’ve been saying for three years that the Valley’s going to pick the next mayor,” said Benjamin Reznik, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn.

Such speculation is based on the fact that 40% of the city’s registered voters reside in the Valley, and Valley residents are more likely to vote.

Almost all the prospective mayoral candidates and frequently-mentioned wanna-bes have more experience with the Valley than Bradley, who was an inner-city councilman before being elected mayor in 1973.

Katz has represented only the Valley during his political career, as has Picus, who is known to be considering the possibility of running for mayor. Wachs has primarily represented the Valley during his 20-year political career.

In addition, Councilman Michael Woo, an affirmed candidate, represented parts of Studio City and Sherman Oaks for four years, and Councilmen John Ferraro and Zev Yaroslavsky, who are keeping their options open, now have districts that--due to demographic forces--were moved deeper into the Valley during the recent redrawing of council district boundaries.

Ferraro represents North Hollywood, including the area’s community redevelopment project, and parts of Studio City. Yaroslavsky now has parts of Van Nuys and Sherman Oaks in his district. Yaroslavsky even considered running for a Valley-based congressional seat earlier this year.

Transit Commissioner Nikolas Patsaouras, another possible candidate, lives in Tarzana and his engineering firm is headquartered in the Valley.

Councilman Nate Holden, who has taken out papers to raise money for his mayoral bid and represents a Central City district, has assiduously courted the Valley as he has tried to build a citywide political base.

Katz and Wachs, in particular, are trying to translate their Valley backgrounds into a powerful political punch.

As a Valley-based candidate, he can identify with the city’s other have-not communities, like South-Central, the Eastside and San Pedro, Katz said. Bradley and the “entire downtown briefcase brigade of elected officials at City Hall have failed the Valley and these other areas,” Katz maintains.

“I know what it’s like to be from a have-not community.”

If he had been mayor, for example, City Hall would have responded more aggressively to keep the Van Nuys General Motors plant from closing, Katz said. “Bradley should have been taking a lead to stop this.”

Scott, the Chamber of Commerce leader, said the lack of Valley influence at City Hall was especially evident to him when he and others led a fight to block a school board reapportionment plan that they believed would be detrimental to Valley interests.

“We were sitting in Bradley’s office minutes after the council backed the anti-Valley plan and trying to get a meeting with the mayor to urge him to veto it,” he said. The group was “wondering why the mayor’s aide in the Valley, Richard Alarcon, appeared to be backing it, when we learned the mayor had already signed the plan into law,” Scott said.

That “was emblematic of how disenfranchised we are,” he said.

Although many believe the Valley can’t help but gain clout from the election of virtually any of the candidates now eyeing the mayor’s race, Wachs and Katz are not so sure.

“It depends on who gets elected,” Wachs said, suggesting that Woo and Yaroslavsky, although they have had Valley constituencies, are not really time-tested Valley loyalists.

Nor do Wachs, Scott and others see a contradiction in their quest to gain power for the Valley and the city’s concern for inner-city minority residents in the wake of last spring’s riots.

“The demographic makeup of the Valley is incredibly diverse,” said Wachs, who believes that Valley candidates can represent a multiethnic city. “The Valley has urban problems like crime, gangs and housing shortages. It’s a misperception that we don’t have them.”

But others, like Bonny Matheson, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn., are not so sure that Valley candidates would really be able to deliver if elected on their promises of a brave, new world for Valley interests.

“I just see the city resources continuing to go more to the underserved groups, who are more vocal and more shrill,” she said. “They’ll get served first.” And she is not sure this should not be the case. “People who are bleeding, you take care of first; then those with headaches.”

* MAIN STORY: A1