Contributors Stick With Incumbents

From entertainment to trash-hauling, real estate development to cable TV, the people and corporations that do business with City Hall have placed their bets in the Los Angeles City Council races.

To the shock of no one, they are backing the incumbents.

Fueled by an outpouring of such special-interest contributions, Los Angeles City Councilmen Zev Yaroslavsky and Marvin Braude have amassed the financial resources to vastly outspend their challengers in the closing days of their reelection campaigns.

Final pre-election campaign finance reports late last week underscored the power of incumbents to raise money from those with an interest in what happens at City Hall. At the same time, the reports highlighted the difficulty that challengers face in raising the money necessary to make their case to voters in the crucial days leading to the April 20 election.

The gap was particularly evident in the race between Yaroslavsky and environmental activist Laura Lake in the 5th Council District, which extends from the Fairfax district to Bel-Air on the Westside and over the Santa Monica Mountains to Sherman Oaks and North Hollywood.

By the end of the latest reporting period last weekend, Yaroslavsky had raised $234,003 to finance his bid for a sixth term on the council. In her second bid to oust him, Lake had raised $64,000, half of it last year.

But a more telling indicator of their respective abilities to reach voters is the cash in their campaign treasuries. Yaroslavsky reported having $132,779 on April 3. Lake had $12,715, which will be supplemented by several thousand dollars in public matching funds. Yaroslavsky has declined to accept matching funds for his campaign.

The report of the third candidate in the race, Mike Rosenberg, a city building inspector, was not immediately available.

Between March 7 and April 3, Yaroslavsky, chairman of the powerful Budget and Finance Committee, collected $184,735.

Lake reported raising only $9,400 during the latest period. In a brief statement accompanying the release of her campaign records, Lake, a former UCLA professor, sought to emphasize the positive. “It is clear that voters are becoming excited and are willing to commit their own money to change the City Council,” she said. “Many small checks add up.”

But her contributions were hardly a match for the long list of contributors willing to give $500 apiece--the maximum allowed by law--to Yaroslavsky.

He drew heavily from real estate developers, cable television executives, construction companies, real estate agents and attorneys.

Among television and motion picture interests, for example, Yaroslavsky picked up $3,950 from a dozen executives and others associated with the Prime Ticket cable network.

The councilman, who co-authored Proposition O, the “No Oil” measure prohibiting coastal oil drilling, nevertheless picked up $500 contributions from the head of Occidental Petroleum and from Arco.

The story was much the same in the adjacent 11th Council District, where Braude is running for an eighth term on the council. For the first time in a dozen years, the veteran councilman has opposition, although both rivals are running far behind in fund-raising.

Campaign finance reports show Braude has raised $178,408 for his reelection drive since last July.

By contrast, West Los Angeles attorney Daniel Pritikin has collected $41,439 to finance his campaign. Brentwood restaurateur John B. Handal II listed $14,320 in contributions.

Braude’s total was bolstered by a $58,500 personal loan that the councilman made to his campaign last month.

The loan, which Braude said was necessary to ensure his campaign had adequate resources, triggered the first lifting of campaign contribution limits in a City Council race.

The city’s new ethics law, intended to limit special-interest influence, usually restricts contributions to a council candidate to $500 per election, unless one candidate has given more than $30,000 to his or her own campaign.

Having raised more than his rivals, Braude has far more money available to make his closing pitch to voters in the district, which stretches from Palms to Pacific Palisades on the Westside and from Van Nuys to Woodland Hills in the San Fernando Valley.

Braude had $96,132 in cash on hand at the close of the reporting period. Pritikin had $9,405 before he received $21,238 in matching funds from the city. Handal had $12,820 on hand.

Like Yaroslavsky, Braude’s report reflected the ability of an incumbent to tap the special interests.

Braude has received four checks for the maximum $500 from developers Robert Maguire and James Thomas and their wives. Their company, Maguire Thomas Partners, will soon seek city approval for the first phase of the massive Playa Vista project near Marina del Rey. Several attorneys that advise the developers also contributed.

Fox Inc., Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. wrote $500 checks. So did Southern California Edison, Pacific Telesis, Pacific Enterprises, AT&T;, Arco, BankAmerica Corp. and the political arm of the AFL-CIO.

Challenger Pritikin received a significant amount of his campaign funds from family members and relatives. He also lent the campaign $6,500.

Staff writer Greg Krikorian contributed to this report.