Picus, Chick Get Personal as Runoff Fight Begins

The upcoming runoff election in the southwestern San Fernando Valley between Los Angeles Councilwoman Joy Picus and her former aide, Laura Chick, took a turn for the personal Wednesday.

Picus received 36.8% of the vote in Tuesday’s primary, while Chick got 29.4%, setting up a runoff election June 8. The remaining votes were divided among four other candidates.

“When the voters take a look at Laura’s character, they’ll have second thoughts,” Picus said in an interview at City Hall, saying she plans to make Chick’s character a key element of her fight for a fifth term representing the 3rd District.

“She moved into the district for political reasons and then she runs against her former employer,” Picus snapped. “When she left she told me I was her role model, her mentor.”

Chick, Picus’ deputy from 1988 to 1991, later replied: “My loyalty was always to the 3rd District and the city of Los Angeles--they were my employers and that’s why I left my job with Joy. I could not stay on longer in good conscience because I saw first-hand that Joy was not doing the job the public deserved.

“All she cared about was playing it safe and getting reelected.”

Chick also denied ever telling Picus she was her role model.

“Never, ever did I say that,” Chick said. “That’s totally manufactured. She was never my role model or mentor. I told Joy I had lost my energy and enthusiasm for doing the job and she never asked why that was.”

Some of the same themes were debated in a more muted fashion during the just-completed primary campaign. In one political mailer, Picus reproduced a copy of a $500 donation Chick made to her 1989 reelection campaign which asked the question: Why, if Picus were such a bad lawmaker, did Chick give her money?

“This is going to be a pretty gloves-off kind of race,” political consultant Rick Taylor predicted. “Sort of like getting a divorce in front of 120,000 voters. I imagine it’s inevitable when you have a council person and her former aide running against each other.”

In the 20 years before Tuesday’s election, only seven Los Angeles City Council incumbents had been forced into runoffs. Harbor-area Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores also was pushed into a runoff Tuesday.

Picus’ reelection bid was vexed by general voter unhappiness with the City Hall status quo, by Chick’s ability--surprising for a challenger--to compete with the incumbent in fund-raising, and by Chick’s dogged precinct-walking schedule.

“I’ve never had a challenger who was so competitive in fund raising,” Picus said Wednesday, offering a post-mortem of why she found herself in a runoff. “It’s also effective to walk precincts. But I have a job at City Hall that keeps me from campaigning.”

Tuesday, Chick quipped that she had bought a new pair of sandals to wear for the runoff because she had worn out her old pair walking precincts in the primary.

Picus and Chick now contend for the endorsement of candidate Dennis Zine, a Los Angeles police sergeant who received 20% of Tuesday’s vote.

“I think Dennis and I have a common goal of getting new and better leadership for the 3rd District,” Chick said. “I want his support.”

But it was Picus, not Chick, who first got Zine on the phone Wednesday and made her pitch. Picus later said she was encouraged by their talk. “I have a proven record on crime and I share many of the same views as Dennis on this issue,” she said later.

But political consultant Harvey Englander, who represented Chick, theorized that Zine’s supporters would not be amenable to voting for Picus.

“Theirs was the biggest protest vote in the campaign,” Englander said. “It was an anti-business-as-usual vote.”

Zine urged, for example, that the Valley secede from the city.

When contacted by The Times, Zine said he has not made a decision who, if anyone, he will support.

While conventional political wisdom holds that incumbents are more likely to be defeated in a runoff, in fact, Los Angeles council incumbents lost only three of the last seven City Hall runoff elections.

But Picus must overcome a big deficit to win reelection. Of the incumbents in runoffs over the past two decades, only Councilman Hal Bernson in 1991, with 34.7% of the vote, had a worse showing in the primary than Picus’ 36.7%.

Also in Tuesday’s primary were candidates Robert Gross, a Woodland Hills homeowner activist, who got 7.7% of the vote, and businessmen Mort Diamond and Charles Nixon, who got 3.9% and 2.6% of the vote, respectively.

Voter turnout Tuesday in the 3rd District was 35%, slightly higher than the 32.3% average citywide.