Valley Guys Gave Us More of the Same : Of all the candidates, no two were more politically alike than these two guys from the Valley. They canceled each other out.

“Do you think that exit poll could be right?”

Joel Wachs was almost giddy. The veteran city councilman was standing in a crowd of supporters at a Van Nuys storefront just off Victory Boulevard, waiting to go live on Channel 5. An early exit poll, he was told, had showed Mike Woo, Richard Riordan and Richard Katz all at 18%, Wachs at 12% and Linda Griego at 11%. He was trying to explain why this, to him, was terrific news--that he somehow might make the runoff after all.

“It’s going to be much closer than it appears to be,” he said into the microphone. For weeks, he explained, the pollsters had made it seem like a two-way race, but now the voters were going to make it a five-way race after all.

Political analysis moves like mercury on Election Night. Exit polls, absentee ballots, gut feelings--all are thrown into the blender. Wachs even found hope in a call from Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who said that both Wachs and Katz were running strong in his “trash can poll”--ostensibly a rummaging of absentee ballots that had been counted and tossed in the garbage. Even if Zev was joking, Wachs wanted to believe it.

Today, it seems like the polls were right. Woo and Riordan in a two-way race. A Chinese-American liberal councilman against a tough-talking white-guy multimillionaire Republican. Woo lives in Silver Lake, Riordan in Brentwood. And to think: This was supposed to be the year when the Valley decided the mayor’s race.

Well, the Valley still might. But two ambitious Valley boys, Councilman Joel Wachs and six-term Assemblyman Richard Katz, made sure the Valley wouldn’t produce the mayor this time.

They like to blame the big money, the early polls, the media coverage that gave all the momentum to Woo and Riordan. “There’s been more Woo, Woo, Woo in the L. A. Times than in a Three Stooges movie,” Wachs quipped as his supporters laughed. Wachs and Katz, battle-tested veterans, hated the way they seemed to be preordained as also-rans, meriting just a couple of paragraphs at the bottom of the story and precious few sound bites on TV. This self-fulfilling prophecy of the polls, they complained, stifled and simplified the debate.

There is, of course, validity to their complaints. Maybe you went to the polls Tuesday thinking this race was wide open. Or maybe thinking, “Gee, I wish this was at least a three-way race.”

That would have been nice, but two candidates made sure it wasn’t so. Those contenders weren’t Woo and Riordan, with all their money. They were Wachs and Katz.

For all their complaints, Wachs and Katz should have seen this coming. Everyone else did. Of all the gray cardboard candidates that appeared in Linda Griego’s TV ad, no two were more politically alike than these two guys from the Valley. They canceled each other out.

Not just Valleyites, but Valleyites who serve overlapping districts and overlapping constituencies. Not just white guys, but white Jewish guys. Both portrayed themselves as pragmatic moderates, an alternative to Woo on the left and Riordan on the right. Wachs and Katz--they almost rhyme. (There are, of course, differences: Katz is the one with the mustache. Wachs is the past grand marshal of the Gay Pride Parade.)

They waged a low-intensity campaign against each other. A lowlight came when Wachs sent a fund-raising letter to households a computer identified as Jewish. “What’s best for the Jews?” asked a question on the envelope. Inside was an appeal from his mother, Hannah.

A friend who lives in Woodland Hills was amused by this. His dad was Jewish, but his Catholic mother took the kids to church, not temple. Wachs says many Jews responded to the mailing with contributions. But it is no less true that many Jews, as well as non-Jews, feel he carried such ethnic appeals too far in a city already divided along cultural lines. If he had it to do over again, Wachs told me Tuesday night, he’d send his mother’s letter out in a different envelope.

A question like “What’s best for Los Angeles?” might be nice.

Katz had problems of his own. James Carville, the Cajun campaign wizard who helped put Bill Clinton in the White House, signed on to run Katz’s campaign. But the signature TV ad showed Katz in a leather jacket standing against a backdrop of phony graffiti and saying that the way to hire more police (and, presumably, wipe out graffiti) is to sell the Ontario Airport. My reaction wasn’t, “Gee, that’s a great idea. I think I’ll vote for Richard Katz!” It was, “You mean we own the Ontario Airport???”

Katz’s “victory party”--optimism reigns at times like these--was in the lobby of an office building on Van Nuys Boulevard. He was more subdued than Wachs, more analytical. Yes, he wished that Joel Wachs hadn’t entered the race. Yes, it was reasonable to assume that he would have picked up a lot of Wach’s votes and campaign contributions. Like Wachs, he expressed dismay that the election had come down to Woo on the left, Riordan on the right and “a big train wreck in the middle.”

Wednesday, the results showed Wachs finishing third with 11% and Katz fourth with 9.8%. In the Valley, according to a Times exit poll, Katz was stronger, grabbing 16% to Wachs’ 15%--both well behind Riordan’s 42% but ahead of Woo’s 12%. Together, Wachs and Katz accounted for almost 21% of the actual vote, which would have been a strong third to Woo’s 24.2% and Riordan’s 32.9%. But it’s logical to assume that one of them, alone, might have done even better because a strong centrist, particularly one from the Valley, would have siphoned votes from both Riordan and Woo--and might well have made the runoff.

It was interesting Tuesday night that neither man could remember who played the spoiler. Wachs was sure that Katz entered the race first, Katz was sure it was Wachs. In a way, both were right. Wachs announced on Oct. 5, but it was well known that Katz, who didn’t formally announce until January, was gearing up for a run for mayor.

Neither blamed the other. Neither faulted the other’s political acumen. And neither faulted his own.

That was sporting. Besides, they can always blame something else.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Readers may reach Harris by writing to him at The Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, CA 91311.