Diamond’s Reform Proves No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

ANY REGRETS?: Back in 1972, when Roger Jon Diamond last ran for state Assembly, the Santa Monica attorney went to court to challenge California’s system of ranking candidates on the printed ballot.

Diamond felt it unfair that the incumbent was listed first and that other candidates followed in alphabetical order. Being on top of the list gave the incumbent an advantage that translated into extra votes, Diamond contended.

In fact, Diamond lost that election to then-GOP incumbent Assemblyman Paul Priolo, whose name was listed above his Democratic opponent’s on the ballot.

Diamond took his beef all the way to the California Supreme Court--and won, forcing the secretary of state’s office to discard the old system and come up with a random method of listing the candidates.

Hence, the secretary of state’s office dreamed up a way to reinvent the alphabet each election cycle. Officials now randomly draw letters and the candidate whose name starts with the first letter picked gets to appear at the top of the ballot.

On Thursday, Diamond became a victim of his own success. Now a candidate for the 41st District Assembly seat being vacated by Assemblyman Terry Friedman (D-Brentwood), he flew to Sacramento to attend the secretary of state’s drawing. Lo and behold, the letter D did not fare well in the pickings.

Had he left well enough alone, Diamond would have ranked first in a simple alphabetical listing of the six candidates running for the seat. (There’s no incumbent.) Instead, as a result of his pleadings before the Supreme Court, he came up last.

“I went from the top to the bottom--on my own case. It’s ironic,” Diamond noted.

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MOUNTAIN MAN: Rich Sybert protests that he’s only being a conscientious member of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. But others, including the office of U.S. Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills), have suspected that Sybert has concocted a taxpayer-funded dog-and-pony show to advance his plan to oust Beilenson from office.

Here’s the situation.

Sybert is running in the GOP primary and aiming for Beilenson’s seat, and he sits as Gov. Pete Wilson’s appointee on the 10-member governing board of the conservancy. Recently, Sybert, the president of a toy-design firm, has asked the parks agency staff to organize, publicize and pay for seven public hearings to be held throughout the west San Fernando and Conejo valleys. Sybert would preside over these hearings, which would be held on top of the conservancy’s normal bimonthly meetings.

The purported purpose of the meetings would be to give Sybert--who only recently moved to Woodland Hills from Pasadena--a chance to educate himself by soliciting the public’s views about the conservancy and its work. Parks agency staff members say such one-man hearings are apparently unprecedented.

Nor did the uniqueness of the hearings escape the attention of Susan Little, Beilenson’s environmental deputy. Little said she called conservancy staff to inquire about the hearings in part because, she said, there was a political concern. “He’s playing a role there that we’re keeping somewhat of an eye on,” Little said.

After reviewing the matter with conservancy officials, Little concluded that “it sounded legitimate (but) it was curious that (the hearings) were being held outside the well-attended bimonthly conservancy meetings.”

Laura Plotkin, conservancy press secretary, said the agency’s staff had been warned to be “very careful” that the meetings not be turned into political events. “It was all on the up and up,” said Plotkin, offering her view of the first meeting, held in Calabasas this week. Besides, only nine people showed up at the Calabasas confab.

Meanwhile, the campaign manager of another Republican primary candidate said he saw the whole thing as a transparent attempt to use a public agency to gain free exposure for Sybert’s candidacy. “I’m surprised the parks agency would allow itself to be used this way. I assumed it was more nonpartisan,” said Chris Carter, who runs the campaign of Mark Boos Benhard, a Conejo Valley businessman who was previously an aide to former U.S. Rep. William Dannemeyer.

Those questioning his motives are just “cynics,” said Sybert, who was a former Cabinet-level official in the Wilson Administration. His intent is only to educate himself, he said, on conservancy issues. “I’m actually taking time out from the campaign so I can do a better job on the conservancy,” he said.

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JOINING FORCES: Al Dib, community activist, retired green grocer and perennial candidate, said this week that he has hired the controversial Manny Fernandez to run his campaign to recall state Sen. David Roberti (D-Van Nuys). Dib is one of five candidates seeking to oust Roberti in the April 12 vote.

Fernandez was purged from the group that organized the recall because of his flamboyant and embarrassing statements. The most notable of these was his claim that the recall was nothing less than a bid by the gun lobby to avenge itself for Roberti’s authorship of the state’s 1989 ban on military-style semiautomatic weapons. It was, to say the least, a quote made in heaven for Roberti, who is trying to rally the gun-control movement behind his cause.

The leaders of the Coalition to Restore Governmental Integrity, the group that officially sponsored the recall, also have bristled at Fernandez’s boast that the recall movement is really his creature. In any event, the desire to distance itself from Fernandez reached the point where the coalition finally issued a press release effectively announcing its estrangement from Fernandez.

But Fernandez now has surfaced as Dib’s top campaign adviser. “He just called and said he thought I could win, so I’m running,” said Dib, who has run four times in 20 years for Los Angeles City Council seats. In 1989, he came in third running against then-Councilman Ernani Bernardi.

One of the inducements Fernandez offered him to run was the endorsement of the National Rifle Assn., Dib said. “This is what he promised.”

Has Fernandez delivered? Not yet, Dib said. Fernandez, on the other hand, denies that he gave Dib any reason to believe that if he ran, the NRA would get involved. “I couldn’t in good faith make such a promise because I’m not an agent for the National Rifle Assn.,” Fernandez said recently.

Despite Fernandez’s colorful history of involvement in gun issues, including a 1983 guilty plea to possession of a machine gun, Dib claims that his candidacy is not gun-driven. “I wish everyone would stop talking about guns,” Dib said.

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TEAM EFFORT: In pursuit of federal earthquake-relief funds, various Valley business groups have joined forces to form the nonprofit Regional Economic Development Council of the San Fernando Valley to help rebuild the area’s fractured economy.

The United Chambers of Commerce, the Valley Industry & Commerce Assn. and the Valley Economic Development Center Inc. got behind this venture at the recommendation of U.S. Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown. They have proposed a detailed program to retain and expand businesses in the wake of the Jan. 17 temblor as well as attract and establish new enterprises.

The proponents hope to win some of the earthquake contingency funds that Commerce is seeking through its Economic Development Administration. The earthquake aid bill passed by Congress contained $550 million to be dispensed at the discretion of President Clinton.

In the first $90.8 million released Thursday, Commerce received $5 million to assist municipalities in developing long-term economic development plans. Commerce is seeking as much as $200 million in such funds but is competing against other federal government agencies. The EDA funds cannot go directly to businesses but must be channeled through nonprofit vehicles.

The Valley coalition is one of many groups in Los Angeles and Ventura counties that have been asked to submit a comprehensive economic plan. It emphasizes the need to aid quake-damaged businesses that may not qualify for the usual government loan programs because they had already accumulated significant debt due to the economic downturn.

“We could lose a lot of good, high-paying jobs and see further decline,” said Benjamin Reznik, an Encino attorney and immediate past chairman of VICA. “We are making the pitch that we are the most important (applicant) and we’re putting together a more innovative program.”

A Commerce official said that the department is particularly interested in combining earthquake aid with creating new jobs through defense conversion. He said that this linkage could benefit the San Fernando Valley.

“The Valley, which is the epicenter of the earthquake, is also the epicenter of defense conversion because so many of the businesses in that area are defense-dependent,” the official said. “We see this as an opportunity to begin the recovery phase and begin the transition.”