LOCAL ELECTIONS / L.A. MAYOR : Riordan Ad Criticizes Rivals for Taking Matching Funds

In the first attack ad of the Los Angeles mayoral race, wealthy businessman Richard Riordan hit the airwaves Friday with a television commercial assailing rivals for accepting public funds to help finance their campaigns.

The 30-second spot--the second to be aired by Riordan this week--opens with the candidate saying: “I’m angry that $8 million of your tax money is being spent by politicians on their own campaigns.”

The ad prominently displays newspaper articles reporting that two major mayoral candidates--Assemblyman Richard Katz and City Councilman Michael Woo--applied for city public matching funds.

“With only 350 police cars on the street at any one time, it is wrong to take city money for politics,” Riordan says in the ad. (In fact, the $8 million is specifically set aside for public campaign financing and could not be used for more police.)

Voters approved partial public financing of City Hall campaigns in 1990 to curb special interest influence and limit campaign spending.

The only major candidate in the race who has declined the public funds, Riordan has said he will spend millions if necessary from his personal fortune to finance his race. Riordan has also declined to abide by a $2-million spending cap accepted by candidates who receive the funds.

He notified the city Ethics Commission on Friday that he had collected more than $2 million, after depositing a $1-million personal check in his campaign last week.

California Common Cause, a political watchdog group that backed the reform measure, responded quickly to Riordan’s ad.

“The voters passed the measure by 57% of the vote and public financing was central to the debate,” said Ruth Holton, the group’s acting executive director. “The public doesn’t just want independently wealthy candidates or candidates connected to wealthy special interests.”

Holton announced that the group is launching a campaign to defend the measure and public financing. All mayoral and City Council candidates are being asked to pledge to abide by the spirit of the ethics law, to refrain from attacking public financing and to adhere to the spending limits.

Candidates who decline to make the pledge will be publicized at news conferences, through mailers and to grass-roots community groups that supported the election reform measure.

A spokesman for Woo, who has received $484,276 in public financing, said Riordan is being hypocritical: “He supported (the ethics law), including giving $10,000” to the campaign to win approval of the measure.

Riordan campaign spokeswoman Annette Castro confirmed Riordan’s contribution, but said: “The city is facing a budget deficit, it is wrong right now” to take public funds.

Framing the public financing issue could be important in a crowded mayoral race where as little as 17% of the vote could land a candidate in the runoff.

A Times poll last month found 62% of voters believed that public financing was a bad idea at a time when basic city services are inadequate.

However, opinion reversed when voters were asked how they would view mayoral candidates who took public funds as part of an agreement to limit spending. Fifty-two percent of voters said they would think more highly of those who agreed to the limits.