LOCAL ELECTIONS / L.A. MAYOR : Wachs Raps Riordan on Gifts to Democrats

Fighting on two fronts to energize his bid for mayor of Los Angeles, City Councilman Joel Wachs on Wednesday sent out the first “attack” mailer of the campaign and sued the city’s Ethics Commission in an effort to free up $200,000 in disputed public campaign funds.

The campaign mailer takes aim at Republican Richard Riordan for contributing to liberal Democrats over the years. A multimillionaire businessman, Riordan is a leading contender for mayor, in part because of a media onslaught financed by $3 million of his own money.

“If Richard Riordan isn’t tough enough to say ‘no’ to liberal Democrats, how can he be tough enough to be mayor?” asks the mailer, playing off Riordan’s slogan of “Tough Enough to Turn L.A. Around.”

The mailer--sent to GOP voters in the San Fernando Valley--lists more than a dozen Democratic politicians who have received contributions from the multimillionaire lawyer/businessman, including three of Riordan’s opponents in the mayor’s race--Assemblyman Richard Katz and Councilmen Nate Holden and Michael Woo. At the top of the list is outgoing Mayor Tom Bradley, who has received more than $500,000 in loans and other contributions from Riordan.

Riordan and his law firm have made donations across the political spectrum, giving more than $2 million to candidates and initiatives over the past decade. Riordan has given another $3 million to his own mayoral campaign and to a local term-limit initiative he is championing.

Wachs, who trailed Woo and Riordan in a recent poll, is competing with Riordan for the Valley vote.

Jadine Nielsen, Riordan’s campaign manager, said Wachs’ charges do not matter to the voters. “The people are not interested in party affiliation,” she said. “They’re interested in who’s tough enough to make the city safe, create jobs and deal with the $500 million deficit that the City Hall politicians have created.”

Wachs’ mailing comes several months after the councilman changed his party registration from Republican to independent because he wanted to disassociate himself from the partisan bickering that he said has made government the object of public scorn.

Meantime, Wachs also sought Wednesday to shore up his finances during a final media advertising push, suing the Ethics Commission on grounds that it improperly withheld about $200,000 in public matching funds from his mayoral campaign.

The dispute involves Wachs’ lucrative fund-raising gimmick of offering to those who contribute $1,000, limited-edition, signed lithographs made from designs donated by famous artists such as David Hockney and Ellsworth Kelly.

The arrangement, which has brought an infusion of more than $300,000 in donations in the final crucial weeks of Wachs’ primary race, has been attacked by rivals as illegal and is under legal review by the Ethics Commission.

Wachs, however, insists the fund-raising effort is legal and the “cleanest money” in the mayoral race. “There is no cleaner source (of political contributions) than artists doing something creative,” Wachs said Wednesday night.

In seeking to defend his fund-raising effort, Wachs criticized the fund-raising successes of the only three candidates so far to have surpassed the $1-million mark in contributions.

“We have one candidate trying to buy the election with enormous sums of money and two other candidates who are receiving huge sums of money” from contributors “who want something from government,” Wachs said.

(Wachs’ first reference was to Riordan, and the other was to Woo and Katz, whose campaigns have raised $1.7 million and $1.3 million, respectively, as of the latest reporting period. Both of their totals include public matching funds.)

The lawsuit centers on a request Wachs made two weeks ago for a large amount of public matching funds, including approximately $150,000 tied to income from the art sales. The Ethics Commission held back some of the funds, ruling that the income from the art sales might not be contributions at all because the donors may be receiving something worth at least the value of their donation.

Wachs’ suit challenges the commission’s stand, saying such fund-raising arrangements have been legal in federal elections. State laws do not directly deal with the issues involved.

Times staff writer Greg Krikorian contributed to this story.