ELECTIONS / L.A. CITY COUNCIL : Picus Adviser Predicts Runoff in Valley District : The incumbent and her main challenger, former field deputy Laura Chick, trade barbs in new mailers.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joy Picus’ top political adviser said this week that he expects his client will fail to win reelection outright April 20 and will be forced into a runoff against one of her challengers.

“It’s hard for me to see how we avoid a runoff,” Picus strategist Bill Carrick told The Times. Carrick said it’s his “hunch” that Picus would be facing Laura Chick, her former field deputy, in a runoff.

If no candidate in the April 20 election gets a majority of the votes, the two top vote-getters must face each other in a June 8 runoff election.

Picus “has a contrary view to me--she’s very optimistic” about winning reelection in the first round, Carrick said. Picus could not be reached for comment Friday.

Meanwhile, the tempo in the 3rd District race quickened this week as political mailers, including pieces that attacked Chick as a carpetbagger and Picus as a fat-cat politico, were sent to voters.

As she seeks a fifth term, Picus has encountered several formidable obstacles. Chick, a former Picus aide, is running an unusually well-financed campaign for a challenger while two other challengers, Los Angeles Police Sgt. Dennis Zine and homeowner activist Robert Gross, have grass-roots constituencies.

Campaign finance reports released this week show that Chick has raised $148,000 to Picus’ $164,000.

Zine and Gross “are such personalities--they are not no-names who won’t get any votes,” Carrick said.

Carrick predicted Picus “will clobber Laura (Chick) in a runoff” because Chick’s campaign has consisted mostly of attacking Picus. Chick has not given voters positive reasons to vote for her, Carrick charged.

As for Carrick’s expectation for a runoff, Rick Taylor, consultant to Zine, said: “It’s sure taken them a long time to come around to this reality.”

Amid admissions of trouble, the Picus camp lashed out at Chick in a mailer that began reaching voters Friday.

Chick “never even lived in the West Valley until she decided to run for City Council,” said the Picus mailer. “For years, she’s been about as far away from our community--from our problems and our needs--as anyone could possibly be.”

The flyer includes a photo of a house Chick and her husband, Robert, an insurance executive, own in Sherman Oaks.

The Chicks lived in Sherman Oaks--but in a portion of that community west of the San Diego Freeway--from 1987 until last year.

In July, 1992, the Chicks moved to Reseda, which unlike Sherman Oaks, is located in Picus’ 3rd District. City law requires candidates for council seats to live in the districts they seek to represent. Their Sherman Oaks home is for sale.

“By my definition, anything west of the 405 Freeway is in the West Valley,” Chick said.

Maintaining she has lived in the Valley since 1977, Chick said Picus’ attempt to paint her as being unfamiliar with the West Valley fails because the “problems of the Valley cut all across the Valley, the problems east of De Soto or west of it, east of Sepulveda or west of it are the same.”

Moreover, Chick said that if she did not know the West Valley well or represent its interests well, “why did Joy hire me to be her field deputy?”

The Picus mailer also suggests that Chick has lived recently in Santa Barbara. In fact, Chick said, she and her husband own a vacation home in Carpinteria, not Santa Barbara.

Earlier in the week, 3rd District voters received a mailer from Chick accusing Picus of having become a “Charter Member of the ‘Old Boys & Girls Network’ in City Hall” after 16 years in office.

Picus, the flyer alleges, enjoys numerous taxpayer-funded perks, including the right to use a city-owned “luxury car” and “junkets around the world.” Picus, the piece also states, is chauffeured in her car.

While Picus enjoys such advantages of office, the mailer alleges, the 3rd District now “has fewer police to fight crime and our basic neighborhood services have been neglected.”

Chick, the mailer says, will “demand that the perks end” and will donate $100,000 from her council office budget to pay for more police.

City records show Picus is currently assigned a 1990 Olds Cutlass and that previously her city-owned car was a 1984 Olds Cutlass. Asked if these were really luxury cars, Chick said: “For people in the West Valley, getting a new car free is a luxury.”

Carrick also accused Chick of being a late-blooming critic of the city car perk. Chick herself was assigned a city car when she worked for Picus, Carrick noted. City records confirmed that Chick drove two city-owned 1984 Olds Cieras when she worked for Picus between 1988 and 1991.

Although the Chick mailer alleges Picus spent more than $100,000 “in taxpayer funds, taking junkets around the world,” Chick’s campaign consultant, Harvey Englander, could not immediately name any trips Picus took outside the United States.

Englander, however, did identify numerous trips Picus has made in the United States and pointed out that the councilwoman, who lives in Woodland Hills, booked a room for several nights in a downtown Los Angeles hotel at city expense to make it easier for her to attend a local convention of urban officials.

As for the chauffeur, city garage officials say Picus frequently has members of her staff drive her to city meetings. Most council members drive themselves.