Picus, Chick Turn Political TV Debate Into Personal Feud

In their first post-primary election debate, Los Angeles City Councilwoman Joy Picus acidly attacked opponent Laura Chick, reshaping what has been a political battle into a virtual personal feud.

Only moments into a TV debate that will air today, Picus launched her boldest effort to date to portray Chick--who worked for Picus from 1988 to 1991--as an insider who is really part of City Hall, not an agent of change.

Engaged in the toughest reelection fight of her career, Picus is heeding the advice of political mentors who are telling her she must fit the incumbency shoe on Chick’s foot to win a fifth term representing the southwest San Fernando Valley.

Picus and Chick took swipes at each other during candidates forums leading up to last month’s primary, but in the televised debate the animosity between the two reached new levels of stridence.

Picus quickly went on the attack, contending Chick is part of a downtown-based clique of moneyed interests led by Mayor Tom Bradley that is seeking a “hostile takeover of the 3rd District.”

The 62-year-old Picus also made it clear that Chick’s husband, Robert Chick, a former Bradley appointee to the Airport Commission, is exhibit number one in her indictment of Chick as one who is “supported by Tom Bradley and downtown insiders.”

Exhibit number two, Picus alleged, is Chick’s campaign contribution list, which contains a large number of politically powerful people--including several current and former presidents of city commissions. Chick responded that she was proud of her wide base of financial support.

The 90-minute debate sponsored by West Valley Cablevision will be shown on Channel 6 at 6:30 p.m. The show will also be broadcast three more times before the June 8 election.

Meanwhile, Chick, 48, stung at times by the sharpness of Picus’ attacks, tried to stay focused on her message that Picus, a 16-year council veteran, is to blame for a declining quality of life in the 3rd District.

“Sadly I see those very things that I moved to the Valley for slip through my fingers,” Chick said as she ticked off a list of contemporary urban ills--rising crime, congested streets, unworkable schools and erratic development.

The interests of West Valley residents have been so badly mishandled and misrepresented by Picus that “I don’t think City Hall even knows what the 3rd District is,” Chick complained. “I represent someone who’s in touch with the people now, with the issues now.”

Chick also denied Bradley was an ally and defended her husband. “In no way, shape or form is Mayor Bradley supporting my candidacy,” she said. If there’s any similarity between Bradley and one of the candidates, it is between Bradley and Picus, both of whom have served too long at City Hall, Chick added.

“I think it’s in very poor taste to talk about spouses,” Chick added. “Especially for a feminist to be attacking a candidate for her husband.”

In a bid to lower the white-hot rhetoric, cable TV host Lee Alpert at one point asked the two candidates what good they could say about each other.

“I respect that she’s tried hard,” Chick said of her former boss. “And she’s nice.”

But Picus, replying to the same question, immediately likened Chick to a trusted employee who sets up her own business by “taking your secrets, your customers and employees. . . . If you’d think highly of people who do this, then you’d think highly of Laura Chick,” Picus said.

Prodded by Alpert to say something good about Chick, Picus finally said: “I’m certainly not going to advertise her good traits, thank you, Lee.”

Taking another tack, Alpert asked the women to talk about their own weaknesses. “Certainly one of them was hiring Laura and trusting her,” Picus replied testily.

Later, Picus fired some of her most vitriolic shots at Chick’s husband, Robert, saying the city’s Airport Commission, on whose managing board Robert Chick had sat for a decade before resigning earlier this year, ran the airport in “the most obscene fashion.”

The Airport Commission’s selection of an LAX food concessionaire that had as its partner a number of well-to-do and politically well-connected African-Americans was “scandalous--bordering on corrupt,” Picus said. “The Airport Commission can’t pass the smell test.” In fact, disclosures in 1989 that the minority partners were doing little work and making large profits prompted criticism of the commission and efforts to reform its minority contracting policies.

Robert Chick also was on the commission when it recently came under fire as it apparently planned to award a lucrative parking contract to a firm that had not offered the highest bid and had “Bradley’s cronies” as partners, Picus noted. That plan was scuttled after it was reported by The Times.

Meanwhile, Laura Chick replied that “it’s important to remember that I’m the candidate, not my husband.” Chick’s husband is the chief executive of a company that sells malpractice insurance to attorneys.

“Quite honestly, I’m incredibly proud of my husband,” Chick added.

Chick also accused Picus of borrowing “tactics and techniques” from Ronald Reagan’s playbook by attacking her husband. In the 1984 presidential race, the GOP national ticket roundly attacked the questionable business dealings of the husband of Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro.

Going on the offensive to fend off insinuations that she is part of a “downtown crowd,” Chick criticized the incumbent for supporting the expenditure of more than $20 million to fund a failing theater on Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles “while the Valley sits hungry and crying for theater and cultural activities.”

In a kiss-and-tell moment, Chick also said Picus once told her in the late 1980s that she would welcome term limits for council members. Picus opposed the term limits plan enacted by voters last month.

Picus had said term limits would free her to do the right thing for the community, including putting an above-ground light-rail transit system following Burbank and Chandler boulevards, Chick said. “ ‘I’d put light rail down the Burbank-Chandler route--where it should go,’ ” Chick quoted Picus as saying. Today, Picus supports a subway system.

“Laura, you have an outrageous imagination to say blatant outright lies in public,” Picus retorted. “I can’t believe you said that.”

Picus and Chick face each other in the runoff election because neither of them scored better than 50% of the vote to win outright in the April 20 primary. Picus received 36.7% of the vote in the primary, Chick 29.5%. Four other candidates got the remaining votes.

Picus, Chick Square Off in Televised Debate

A 90-minute debate between 3rd District council candidates Laura Chick and Joy Picus will be shown on West Valley Cablevision at 6 p.m. today. The debate will be repeated at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 7 p.m. May 23 and 7:30 p.m. May 29.

A live debate between Picus and Chick, sponsored by the West Hills Property-Owners Assn., will be held at 7:30 p.m. May 25 at Justice Street Elementary School, 23350 Justice St., Woodland Hills. The candidates will appear again at 7 p.m. May 26 at United Methodist Church, 5650 Shoup Ave., Woodland Hills.