Mayoral Race May Be Won in Trenches of Valley

The San Fernando Valley promises to be the great battleground of this spring’s mayoral election.

With at least 45% of the electorate, the Valley contains enough voters to swing the contest. And as a commercial and manufacturing center, it has enough businesses to finance the winner’s campaign.

Strategists are trying to figure out how to capture the huge basin, surrounded by those mighty mountain ranges, the Santa Monica, the Santa Susana and the San Gabriel.

The political aces are looking for likely supporters, checking voting records, ethnic backgrounds, income levels, home ownership and other factors that provide clues to how Angelenos will vote.

Campaign strategists try to make this work sound too complex and mysterious for us to understand. Above all, they don’t share their thoughts with reporters. But since I began writing about campaigns when some of today’s strategists were in grade school, I can reveal to you what they’re doing to win the Valley.

The process, by the way, is far less complicated than the political geniuses say--much easier than building a subway or making bread from scratch.

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Since I only have room to go into detail on about two of roughly 20 mayoral candidates, I’ve picked Richard Riordan, a prominent lawyer-businessman, and Richard Katz, a northeast Valley state assemblyman. I chose them because, more than some of the other candidates, they badly need a Valley base.

Riordan needs it because he’s a Republican, and the Valley has the largest block of L.A. Republicans. He lives in the Westside splendor of Brentwood. But in the early hustling for votes, he’s reaching far over the Santa Monica Mountains to the middle-class and upper-middle-class residential neighborhoods of the northwest San Fernando Valley.

Riordan is one of the most conservative candidates in the race, and the upscale northwest Valley, encompassed by Councilman Hal Bernson’s 12th District, is the most conservative and Republican area in the city. This will be Riordan’s base as he begins his Valley campaign.

As his strategists look at the numbers, they’ll find more than 90% of the voters are Anglos, with some college education. Crime is their biggest worry.

That’s not surprising. A Times poll in October showed that crime is the major concern in every part of the city. As one political worker told me: “Nobody running for mayor will be promising to put an ACLU member on the Police Commission.”

But nowhere is the feeling stronger than in the Valley, especially among conservatives. Of conservative Valley residents polled by The Times in October, 55% said crime was their biggest concern. So, expect the Riordan brochures mailed to northwest Valley residents to have lots of pictures of him with cops.

Katz needs the Valley because it’s where he’s best known.

Democrat Katz will be as comfortable as Riordan with a law and order campaign and so will his blue collar Democratic followers, who range from the political center to liberal. The Times poll found that 45% of Valley middle-of-the-roaders and 41% of the liberals said crime was their major worry. As Katz reminded a KCRW radio audience Wednesday, he campaigned for the ouster of liberal, anti-death penalty state Chief Justice Elizabeth Rose Bird a few years ago when Speaker Willie Brown and other Democratic liberals supported her.

But Katz’s Valley base has more than crime for him to deal with. Times pollsters found that 52% of the Valley liberals and 49% of the middle-of-the-roaders said economic issues were important to them, compared to 37% in Riordan’s targeted group.

So Katz will have to hit the economy as much as crime. Expect the Katz brochures to show him talking to factory workers as well as to cops.

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Katz and Riordan aren’t the only candidates with strong chances in the Valley. Councilman Joel Wachs has represented neighborhoods extending from Sherman Oaks to Sunland for many years, and has worked hard to build a homeowner following. Councilman Mike Woo’s Hollywood district extends over the Santa Monica Mountains into the Valley. Former school board member Julian Nava is a Valley resident, as is transit district board member Nick Patsaouras.

In the months since the riots, most of the press attention has gone to L.A.’s urban core. You’d think the city’s northern boundary was Mulholland Drive.

But the insiders are looking northward, to the subdivisions that now extend to the base of the Santa Susana Mountains, and to the businesses and factories scattered throughout the Valley.

As candidates play to fears of crime and unemployment, this is where the election may well be decided.