LOCAL ELECTIONS / L.A. CITY COUNCIL : Challengers Swamp Contests for 8 Seats

If you don’t like the Los Angeles City Council--and polls show that fewer and fewer people do--stick around. Things are about to change.

Voters this spring will elect at least two newcomers to the council: Incumbents Ernani Bernardi and Michael Woo, who are running for mayor, are leaving behind open seats. And unusually large fields and stiff competition confront several of the six council members who hope to keep their jobs.

In all, an overflow crowd of 54 challengers has lined up for eight seats on the 15-member council, although some may drop out by a petition filing deadline this month. And with the stream of challengers has come the potential for unprecedented diversity in the city’s leadership--expanding representation for Latinos and, for the first time, homosexuals, with three openly gay candidates among the most viable contestants in the race to replace Woo.

Underlying other races is a sense of pay-back time. A San Fernando Valley councilwoman will face a onetime aide she has accused of “betrayal” and a South-Central lawmaker will compete against a challenger whom she defeated two years ago by fewer than 100 votes, denying his longtime dream.

But the council’s low approval rating--37% according to the Times Poll last week, the lowest of three surveys in the last eight years--may mean little in the face of the powers of incumbency.

“Incumbents only get turned out,” said one veteran council member up for reelection, “when they have alienated a sufficient number of people in their district on specific issues.”

17th District

Nobody knows the power of incumbency better than Bernardi, who has held onto this council seat for 32 years. The 81-year-old councilman, the body’s oldest and longest-serving member, is retiring from the council and taking a late flier at the mayor’s race, leaving behind a district redrawn in last year’s reapportionment to increase the proportion of Latino voters.

The district is now 70% Latino, but only 31% of the registered voters are Latino, leaving Anglos with a near voting majority of 48%. Of the dozen candidates who have declared for the seat, half are Latino. Several Latino hopefuls have experience in government: Richard Alarcon, Mayor Tom Bradley’s liaison in the Valley; Rose Castaneda, an aide to Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City), and Raymond Magana, a Sylmar lawyer and former Bernardi aide who has taken an early fund-raising lead.

But political experts said the Latino vote could be so diffused that none of the six qualify for an expected June runoff.

Still, representatives of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund said they remain hopeful that the district can elect the council’s third Latino member. “This is the beginning of a stronger Latino political base in the northeast San Fernando Valley,” said Arturo Vargas, MALDEF’s vice president.

If the Latinos do not break through, two familiar Anglo candidates could succeed. Fire Capt. Lyle Hall and former produce wholesaler Al Dib ran second and third to Bernardi, respectively, four years ago.

Also running is Anne V. Finn, widow of the late Councilman Howard Finn, who represented the east Valley. The others are Sharon Lee Humphrey-Peterson, Jose P. Galvan, Irene Tovar, Henry Reyes Villafana, Sandra Lynn Hubbard and LeRoy Chase Jr.

13th District

The city’s most ethnically diverse district will choose from the largest field--15 candidates vying to replace Woo. The district, which includes Hollywood, Silver Lake, Glassell Park and Eagle Rock, is 21% Anglo, nearly 20% Asian-American and 57% Latino in population.

At one end of the political spectrum is former school board President Jackie Goldberg, a lifelong activist for liberal causes who has stressed the importance of the district’s cultural diversity. She has built a platform on social policy--pledging to create a “youth policy” for the city to guarantee the care of children and promising to preserve affordable housing.

At another pole is Tom LaBonge, a longtime City Council aide, who has taken a cue from his boss, council President John Ferraro, in focusing on cleaning streets, filling potholes and removing graffiti. He is expected to appeal to conservatives with a pro-police stance.

Drawing on his alliance with Ferraro, LaBonge has taken a lead in fund raising--collecting more than $74,000 from consultants, real estate interests, business people and others. That makes him the most prolific early fund-raiser in any of the council contests and gives him more than double the cash reserve of his competitors.

Goldberg and LaBonge face competition from Michael Weinstein, executive director of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation; Conrado Terrazas, a television development executive, and Tom Riley, a onetime Teamsters organizer.

Goldberg, Terrazas and Weinstein are fighting to become the first openly gay council member in the city’s history, and their candidacies have sparked conflicts in the district’s large gay community. The membership of the prominent Stonewall Democratic Club was so divided in its endorsement vote that the gay political group endorsed all three.

The other candidates are: William Thomas Martin III, Virginia Stock Johannessen, Elizabeth Michael, Gilbert Carrasco, Lily Yeelam Lee, Sal Genovese, David Davis, Theodore Neubauer, Adelina Ruth Sorkin and Efren Litimco Mamaril.

15th District

Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores faced only token opposition in her two previous reelection bids, but that was before she lost contests for the state treasurer’s office and, in November, for a coastal congressional seat that some experts had said was hers for the asking.

Flores then waited nearly two months before declaring that she would run again to represent a council district that reaches from the harbor area to Watts. “That encouraged other people to get in,” said one of Flores’ council allies.

Several of Flores’ six challengers have either formidable name recognition or service in the community in their favor. Janice K. Hahn is a marketing consultant and daughter of the venerable, recently retired county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn. Warren Furutani has represented the area as a member of the Los Angeles Unified School District board and Rudy Svorinich Jr. is a lifelong San Pedro resident, small business owner and Chamber of Commerce official. Also running is Diane Middleton, another longtime San Pedro resident who is a maritime lawyer and director on the boards of several social service organizations. The other candidates are Louis Leopold Dominquez and James Paul Thompson.

Already, the big-name challengers have charged that Flores is more interested in higher office than in her district. Hahn and Furutani have been hit for moving into the district just months before filing their election papers.

But Flores said she is still dedicated to her district. “I’ve got very high name identification and it’s very positive,” she said.

3rd District

Councilwoman Joy Picus faces one of the toughest and most emotionally wrenching races as she seeks to hold on to the southwest San Fernando Valley seat she has held for 16 years.

Picus faces eight rivals--the largest field that has challenged her. The cruelest blow came when her former chief field deputy, Laura Chick, called to announce that she would run against her old boss. Picus said she was “astonished” by what she called a “betrayal of trust” by Chick, her aide of three years.

Chick conceded that her candidacy bucks unwritten City Hall protocol, in which aides do not try to step up until their bosses retire. But she said her candidacy is nothing personal. “I was dismayed and frustrated at seeing problems not taken care of,” Chick said.

Chick has made her challenge more formidable by grabbing the early fund-raising lead, taking in $52,000, compared to the less than $40,000 Picus has collected.

Robert J. Gross, former president of the Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization, and Los Angeles Police Sgt. Dennis P. Zine are also well-known figures in the district. The other contenders are Michael McGarrity, Morton S. Diamond, David M. Moles, Glenn Christopher Trujillo Bailey and Charles Dana Nixon III.

Political analysts say Picus may have lost doubly in her failed attempts to block Warner Ridge, a 21.5-acre condominium and commercial project opposed by many neighbors. The city’s efforts to block the project were lost in a court challenge--alienating not only the homeowners opposing the project but the well-connected developers who wanted to build it, observers said.

Picus argues that, despite the loss in court, the Warner Ridge case proves to homeowners that she is ready “to go to the mat” for their interests.

9th District

Bob Gay did wait for his boss to step aside in this South-Central Los Angeles district, but Councilman Gilbert Lindsay died in office in 1991 without anointing his longtime aide as his successor. The result was that Gay found himself locked in a bitter struggle with former school board member Rita Walters to replace Lindsay.

When Gay fell 76 votes short of his long-held dream, he cried.

Gay has been waiting nearly two years for redemption in the district that Lindsay called the “Great 9th,” which draws together the downtown power elite with some of the poorest residents of South-Central.

Some downtown business people say they have been disillusioned by Walters’ performance--accusing her of being antagonistic toward their interests. It remains to be seen whether they will abandon a sitting council member--a taboo among most monied interests in the city, who prefer to curry favor with incumbents.

Walters has been meeting with community groups and trying to shore up community services that she says suffered under Lindsay’s nearly 30-year reign. Many activists say they are pleased with her performance, but Gay claims others are silently stewing and waiting to support him.

A third candidate in the race, business consultant Donald Lumpkin, has attempted to depict Walters and Gay as part of the entrenched bureaucracy at City Hall.

Lumpkin has taken an early fund-raising lead, with more than $50,000, while Walters trails with $34,000. Gay has not filed a finance report.

“Rita has not done what she needs to do to look invulnerable--get engaged and get control of the two parts of her district,” one colleague said.

Walters said she is confident that voters will recognize her for taking care of basics. “Cleaning alleys, trimming trees, getting streets paved,” she said. “I’m working very hard.”

5th District

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky will face three challengers, with his most serious competition expected to come from Laura Lake, his opponent four years ago and an outspoken critic of development practices in a district that stretches from the Fairfax district and Westwood to Van Nuys. However, Yaroslavsky won 62% of the vote and reelection the last time the two faced off. The other contenders are Robert Neil Marcus and Michael Loren Rosenberg.

11th District

To earn an eighth term in his Westside-Valley district, Marvin Braude will face five challengers, including West Los Angeles lawyer Daniel W. Pritikin, 27. Pritikin claims distant kinship to the diet and fitness maven of the same surname, draws on the Republican fund-raising talents of his mother and touts an endorsement from former baseball star Steve Garvey. Braude did not face any opponents the last time he ran, but most analysts expect him to win reelection. The other candidates are Jerry Reid Douglas, John B. Handal II, Patrick Michael Blackburn and Mary Lou Holte.

1st District

Freshman Councilman Mike Hernandez is also expected to win a return to the office to which he was elected less than two years ago to replace the much better known Gloria Molina. He faces three little-known challengers: Juventino M. Gomez, Esther M. Long and Jean Marie Durand.