ELECTION : Long List of Candidates but Not Many Issues

The Nov. 3 election to fill a City Council vacancy attracted a diverse selection of candidates but hasn’t produced many issues.

Seven political newcomers are bidding to fill the vacancy left by Councilman Ray T. Watson’s death of a heart attack in June. The winner will serve the remaining three years of Watson’s four-year term, which ends Nov. 7, 1995.

The candidates include an African-American, an Asian-American and a Latino, mirroring the city’s continuing shift over the last decade from a mostly white rural enclave into an ethnically diverse suburb.

Without an incumbent or heavily favored contender, the race is shaping up as a wide-open contest, with three or four identifiable front-runners.

All the candidates agree on the major issue of this bedroom community of 30,000: the development of the commercial site known as Snow Creek Plaza on the southwest corner of Grand Avenue and Valley Boulevard.

The project, which is still in the formative stages, would be anchored by a Target store and has spurred concerns from residents who fear that it will create traffic and noise problems.

The candidates all say the city badly needs the development to broaden its sales tax base, especially as the community approaches the saturation point for new housing development. Without the revenue from developer fees, the city is going to be hurting for money to fill that void, they said.

The only flare-up in an otherwise low-key campaign has focused on candidate Mei Mei Ho-Hilger, a Chinese-American accountant, who has drawn criticism for a lavish fund-raising dinner in August that raised an unprecedented $20,000.

Ho-Hilger, who hopes to become the first Asian-American to win a seat on the City Council, has also been the target of an anonymous mailer alleging that she is unqualified for political office and the pawn of special interest groups.

The flyer, rife with errors of spelling and grammar, lists her business phone number so recipients can get “the hard facts” of her campaign funding.

The letter was described as a ‘hate piece’ by City Manager Linda Holmes, who added that she didn’t believe it was a racist attack against Ho-Hilger. Holmes said two other council candidates are members of minority groups and were not singled out for similar assaults.

Ho-Hilger said she has no plans to investigate the matter. “We’re too busy to look into things like that,” she said.

Ho-Hilger, who said she will spend about $15,000 in the race, disputed the suggestion that her big-money campaign is inappropriate in a small-town election.

“I’m a newcomer to the city, and there’s a lot more that I have to do to introduce myself,” she said.

“You raise money from whatever sources you can as long as you do it within legal parameters,” she said. “People are making up stories because they can’t do it themselves.”

Although Ho-Hilger considers herself among the front-runners, some council watchers are tabbing Ernest Aguilar, Karen Carr-Crawford and Jack Isett as the leading candidates because of their established support networks and organized volunteer staffs.

Aguilar, who would be the council’s first Latino if elected, is counting on backing from fellow members of St. Lorenzo Catholic Parish, which is seeking city approval of an unusual church design that critics say resembles a futuristic spaceship and is incompatible with Walnut’s rural atmosphere.

Aguilar, a manufacturing executive with Lancaster Uniform Cap Inc. in Los Angeles expects to spend $2,500 on his campaign. One of his opponents, Jack Isett, who is considered one of the city’s “old guard” is a member of the Planning Commission that rebuffed the original design in April.

Isett, a teacher at Walnut High School, said his campaign effort includes a network of more than 20 volunteers who continue to work the phones and hand out literature as the election moves into its stretch run. He expects to spend $1,500 on the campaign.

Karen Carr-Crawford, who is seeking to become the first African-American woman on the council, said she has a 10-member volunteer staff directing her $1,200 campaign.

Carr-Crawford, a crime analyst for the Hawthorne Police Department, has served on the city’s cable advisory board for the past year and was a key player in last year’s successful drive to ban fireworks in the city.

The three other hopefuls--Ronald Aames, Thomas King and Richard Saretsky--generally acknowledge that their lightly financed campaigns place them at a disadvantage.

“It’s an uphill battle,” said Saretsky, a right-of-way agent for CalTrans. “When I (entered the race) I was not aware that people would be raising thousands and thousands of dollars.”

Like Saretsky, Aames, a transportation planner, and King, a detective supervisor for the Los Angeles Police Department, are running their campaigns without the benefit of campaign managers or volunteers. They’re hoping for grass-roots support from voters who also feel alienated from city government.

“It’s a very closed town,” King said. “The city hasn’t been responsive to the needs of all the people.”