LOCAL ELECTIONS : 8 Candidates Try to Woo Voters in 13th District : City Council: A newcomer definitely will capture the open seat in Hollywood. In two other Westside districts, longtime incumbents Zev Yaroslavsky and Marvin Braude are favorites.

Beyond the bombast of Los Angeles’ most freewheeling contest for mayor in two decades, Westside voters on Tuesday will decide the future of two powerful city councilmen and select the finalists in a hard-fought race for an open council seat in Hollywood.

Longtime councilmen Zev Yaroslavsky and Marvin Braude--better known and far better financed than their challengers--are favored to retain their hold on the affluent Westside/San Fernando Valley districts they have represented for many years.

The suspense lies in the 13th Council District, where eight candidates are waging an expensive campaign to capture the seat being vacated by councilman Mike Woo in his quest to become mayor. In precincts from Los Feliz and Silver Lake to Hollywood and Eagle Rock, council candidates are bombarding voters with last-minute mailers and appeals for support.

Also up for grabs Tuesday is a seat on the Los Angeles school board in a district that includes most of the Westside and part of the Valley. Incumbent Mark Slavkin is getting a spirited challenge from teacher Douglas Lasken and union negotiator Judy Solkovits.

Here is a recap of each contest:

5th Council District

In a replay of a 1989 race, environmental activist Laura Lake is seeking to deny Yaroslavsky a sixth term on the council. City building inspector Mike Rosenberg of North Hollywood also is on the ballot.

The district stretches from the Fairfax District to Bel-Air and across the Santa Monica Mountains to Sherman Oaks and North Hollywood.

If money and endorsements are keys to a successful campaign, Yaroslavsky is the heavy favorite. The powerful chairman of the council’s Budget and Finance Committee has amassed support from a broad array of neighborhood leaders, environmentalists, and political activists. And he has raised nearly four times as much money as Lake, a former UCLA professor.

After a slow start, Yaroslavsky’s fund raising took off between March 7 and April 3, the latest period for which records are available. He collected $184,735 in campaign contributions--much of it from special-interest groups. By comparison, Lake raised only $9,400 during the period.

Although the two rivals appeared jointly on several occasions, Yaroslavsky ignored Lake’s invitation to debate, and the political discourse between them has been unexciting.

The campaign’s dramatic high point occurred in February, when a brief car chase involved Lake’s husband and a Yaroslavsky aide. Lake later accused Yaroslavsky of spying on her home in Westwood to see if she was living there.

The house is located in a neighborhood dropped from the district when the City Council redrew the boundaries last year. In order to run against Yaroslavsky this year, Lake and her family took up residence in a rented Westwood Village apartment, but kept their house nearby.

Yaroslavsky dismissed the spying allegation as ridiculous, saying his aide merely went to the neighborhood to deliver a planning document. It was another sign of a long and intense rivalry between the two adversaries.

Lake has received her share of endorsements from activists in womens groups and environmentalists. As one of the founders of Heal the Bay, she has tried to emphasize quality-of-life issues.

But as someone with a record of fighting overdevelopment in the 1980s, her slow-growth credentials have been a harder sell in tough economic times when development has slowed and unemployment has risen sharply.

For example, Lake has attacked Yaroslavsky for supporting Fox Studio’s planned $200-million expansion in Century City, saying he has not done enough to protect surrounding neighborhoods.

The councilman supports the project, which the studio promises will mean 1,600 new jobs, and has used the issue to portray Lake as being anti-growth and anti-jobs.

The two prime contenders have traded charges about crime. Yaroslavsky is backing a ballot measure to raise property taxes to finance 1,000 additional police officers. Lake opposes the idea, preferring to abolish the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency and use the savings to hire more police. Rosenberg also opposes the tax increase.

11th Council District

The questions of crime and police personnel led all other issues in the 11th District, where Braude is running for an eighth term.

The district includes parts of Palms and West Los Angeles, all of Brentwood and Pacific Palisades and extends across the Santa Monica Mountains to Encino, Woodland Hills and part of Van Nuys.

Braude has opposition for the first time in 12 years, but nonetheless appears to be in little danger. His challengers, West Los Angeles attorney Daniel W. Pritikin and Brentwood restaurateur John B. Handal II, are making their first bids for office. They have sharply criticized Braude’s performance, particularly on the crime question.

But Braude, who chairs the council’s Public Safety Committee, has reminded voters he has the backing of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union that represents the city’s police officers. And he counts among his supporters U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, the chairman of a commission that investigated the use of force and racism in the Los Angeles Police Department after the beating of Rodney G. King.

Unlike his opponents, Braude has been an outspoken supporter of Proposition 1, the ballot measure that would increase property taxes to pay for additional police officers. Handal and Pritikin oppose the measure because of its financial impact on homeowners and businesses. Instead, they call for leasing Los Angeles International Airport to a private operator and using the funds to hire more police. Braude rejects the concept as unrealistic.

With 28 years on the council, Braude is no fan of term limits, calling them anti-democratic. But both Handal and Pritikin back the idea, saying a two-term limit would bring new leadership to City Hall.

The power of an incumbent to tap special interests coupled with a hefty personal loan have propelled Braude to a commanding lead in fund raising. By early this month, he had raised $178,408 for his reelection drive compared to $41,439 for Pritikin and $14,320 for Handal.

Braude’s total was bolstered by a $58,500 personal loan that the councilman made to his campaign last month. The loan triggered the first lifting of campaign contribution limits in a City Council race.

Late in the campaign, it was disclosed that Handal and his business have been in bankruptcy for the past two years and have hundreds of thousands of dollars in debts, including unpaid state and federal taxes and city utility charges.

13th Council District

By far the most expensive and competitive contest has been in the 13th District, where Woo’s decision to run for mayor sparked a furious fight for the open council seat. With such a crowded field, a June 8 runoff between the top two vote-getters is considered likely.

Four of the candidates--former school board member Jackie Goldberg; veteran City Council aide Tom LaBonge; Tom Riley, a former aide to U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer’s campaign, and AIDS health care foundation President Michael Weinstein--each have raised $100,000 in contributions. Not surprisingly, they are most often mentioned as front-runners.

But two other candidates with fewer political contributions--television executive Conrado Terrazas and businesswoman Virginia Stock Johannessen--also have mounted spirited campaigns.

Also vying for the seat are executive marketing consultant Gilbert Carrasco and health care consultant Sal Genovese.

As in many other races citywide, the contest for the 13th District seat has focused on the issues of crime, unemployment and development. And in local debates and campaigning door to door, the candidates have outlined various proposals to increase the size of the LAPD, bring new jobs to Los Angeles and build new housing.

Although all agree that the city needs more officers, the candidates offer varying proposals for increasing police presence to combat crime.

In addition to repainting many unmarked police cars black and white, Goldberg has called for reassigning more officers from stations to the streets. LaBonge has proposed moving 180 civilian traffic officers to patrol duty. Riley suggests giving more station jobs to civilians to free up officers for other chores, and Johannessen has said she would use part of her office fund to pay for more patrolling by private security firms within the district. Weinstein’s ideas include encouraging police to move to certain communities by establishing a special city fund that would assist officers in purchasing homes.

The contest is being closely watched by gay- and lesbian-rights activists because it includes three candidates--Goldberg, Weinstein and Terrazas--who could become the city’s first openly gay or lesbian council member.

With a population of 232,000, the district’s mix is 57% Latino, 21% Anglo, 19% Asian and 3% black. But with a large number of recent immigrants--from Central and South America, Asian Pacific nations and the Middle East--the district has only 53,000 registered voters. And its voter registration contrasts sharply with its population: 61% of registered voters are Anglo, 24% are Latino, 9% are black and 6% are Asian.

School Board District 4

In a district stretching from Westchester to Chatsworth, the three candidates have offered varying remedies for the problems confronting the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Incumbent Mark Slavkin, 31, of West Los Angeles, was elected to the board in 1989. A former aide to Los Angeles County Supervisor Ed Edelman, he favors an extensive restructuring of the school district. He would abolish the central school board and create complexes of high schools and feeder campuses that would run themselves in each area. The central district would still provide certain services, such as busing.

Slavkin advocates automatic expulsion of students who bring guns to school and supports the use of metal detectors on campuses.

Challenger Douglas Lasken, 47, lives in Woodland Hills and teaches second grade at Ramona School in Hollywood. He says low teacher morale is the district’s biggest problem. He vigorously supports proposals to break up the school district into smaller components.

On the matter of campus safety, Lasken wants school-based management committees to have the right to review the records of bused-in students and certain others who transfer from other schools, and to refuse admission to any child with a police or school record of violent behavior or who cuts classes. He favors enactment of laws making parents of minors responsible for their actions.

The other challenger is Judy Solkovits, 58, of Northridge, a former teacher and former teachers union president, who now handles negotiations for clerical unions at Walt Disney and Paramount studios. She contends that the most important issue before the school board is restoring the public’s faith in schools and ensuring that available funds are being properly spent.

Solkovits opposes breaking up the school district, saying the process would be costly and would not necessarily generate educational reform. She criticizes the present board for inattention to campus violence until it got out of control. She says she would revamp the district’s “opportunity transfer” policy in which troublemaking students are often allowed to switch schools.

None of the three has received the endorsement of United Teachers-Los Angeles, the district’s powerful teachers union.

Times staff writers Greg Krikorian and Lois Timnick contributed to this report.