Linkmeyer Looks Beyond Challenging Roberti in Recall Election

PLANNING AHEAD: Randy Linkmeyer, the Canoga Park gun store owner running in the recall election against state Sen. David Roberti(D-Van Nuys), is cobbling together some political themes that he hopes will be useful beyond Tuesday’s balloting.

The themes: Valley representation and campaign finance reform. But more about that later.

Often lost in the cascade of news about the recall and guns is that there is life after the election. Political life. Indeed, on June 7, 20th District voters will be asked to gird themselves and go to the polls yet again to pick their party’s nominee to run in November.

Linkmeyer, 37, of Sherman Oaks is one of half a dozen candidates seeking the GOP nomination in June. Van Nuys realtor Dolores White, 59, a veteran GOP activist, is another, as is businessman David Honda. Unlike Linkmeyer and White, Honda is not running in the recall. Honda was the third-place finisher in the 1992 20th District special election but later alienated some by endorsing Roberti in the runoff that year.

On the other hand, the Democratic nominee this year is likely to be state Sen. Herschel Rosenthal. Rosenthal has spent the past two decades representing the West Side and Hollywood; running for the 20th District will be his first big Valley political venture. The 75-year-old senator, who owns a home in West Los Angeles, also has rented a Studio City apartment to establish his residency in the 20th District.

Sound familiar? Roberti, it will be remembered, had represented Hollywood for most of his political life until he decided in 1992 that it was opportune--due to reapportionment and the imprisonment of ex-Sen. Alan Robbins--to take his political gig to the Valley.

Now comes Linkmeyer, attacking Roberti this week for being the candidate financed by non-Valley campaign contributors. In fact, the campaign finance report for Roberti’s Beat the Recall campaign committee is heavily loaded with “outside money.” Linkmeyer also proposed reforms to make it illegal for candidates to get more than 50% of their campaign money from sources outside the district in which they are running.

His pro-Valley theme and his reform proposal, as Linkmeyer acknowledged Wednesday, are likely to do double duty for him.

First they can be used against Roberti. But, more importantly perhaps, they give Linkmeyer tools in the 20th District’s extended 1994 political season to hammer Rosenthal, who is also likely to bankroll his campaign with imported bucks and be vulnerable to Valley flag-wavers.

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LIGHTS, CAMERA, BUT HOLD THE ACTION: Looking for a dramatic backdrop for a campaign infomercial on crime fighting, state Sen. Tom Hayden was drawn this week to the towering stone walls of the legendary Folsom Prison.

So too was a representative from the state Department of Corrections, who tried to shoo Hayden and his entourage away.

It seems the senator failed to obtain the proper permits for commercial filming. Corrections officials require a written letter requesting access, which they then forward to the California Film Commission for a filming permit.

Duane Peterson, Hayden’s gubernatorial campaign spokesman, insists he received a verbal OK from Folsom Prison officials last week.

But on Monday when the Santa Monica Democrat arrived with his film crew, Peterson said: “We were surrounded by armed guards who told us that the political authorities in the Department of Corrections had disallowed access.”

Department of Corrections assistant communications director Tipton C. Kindel tells a different story.

“There wasn’t anybody armed,” Kindel said. “There was a representative who went out and explained they had not followed the necessary procedures to film on state property.”

Hayden was making one of several stops in Los Angeles, Sacramento and the Bay Area to film infomercial segments that his campaign hopes to air on network and cable TV before the June primary.

The aim, Peterson says, is to “describe how corruption affects people in their everyday lives, to explain why political reform is not some egghead, abstract concept.”

Ever the rebels, Hayden and his crew stalled around after being asked to leave, unloading and reloading their car and spreading out maps as if in earnest search of Plan B. Finally the guard(s) ran out of patience and left.

“ ‘No can do,’ is what they said about our filming,” Peterson said. “And we did it anyway. We were in a public parking lot.”

Says Kindel, “We hold anybody who wants to film on state property to the same standards. If they chose to ignore that, I’m not sure there is anything we can do about it.”

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BARE BONES: In an effort to grease the path for parents seeking to split up the mammoth Los Angeles Unified School District, Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills) is stripping a bill to the bare bones.

After all, in Sacramento, survival often depends on one’s willingness to compromise.

Boland’s bill would have reduced the number of signatures needed to put the question of a school district breakup on the ballot.

Now it won’t reduce the number of those signatures at all, but will keep them at the current mandated level--25% of registered voters in a school district.

What’s left is the part of the bill that removes a school board’s veto power over a voter-approved plan to reorganize its school district.

After Boland agreed to take out language to lower the signature threshold, Assembly Education Committee members who had just voted down the bill Wednesday agreed to give it another look. It is tentatively scheduled to come up again April 20.

Prior to the vote, Boland made an emotional plea to committee members to pass her bill: “I ask for an aye vote for the people . . . they sent me here. They ask me daily to come and bring this bill. I don’t go into my district one minute of one day that the people don’t ask me, ‘When are we going to be able to get our kids educated properly?’ ”

But Assemblywoman Juanita McDonald (D-Carson) quickly accused her colleague of overstating the matter: “Ms. Boland, you know all of the people are not telling you that. You know that. Some of the people are telling you.”

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A QUESTION OF FAITH: Los Angeles City Councilman Hal Bernson, who has one of the city’s largest mosques in Granada Hills as part of his San Fernando Valley-based district, has seconded a motion to spend $6,000 of city money to help local Muslims.

The motion--originally made by Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg of Hollywood, who also has a mosque in her district--would pay the Islamic Center of Southern California for its cost of renting the L.A. Convention Center three weeks ago to celebrate the end of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month.

But City Atty. James Hahn’s office has signaled that for the city to help underwrite the March 13 event, which drew about 15,000 Muslim participants, would involve an improper mixing of church and state matters.

Although Hahn’s views have given the council offices pause, the Muslims are reminding Goldberg and Bernson that in 1993, for example, the council voted to spend $35,000 to help subsidize the cost of a Baptist group that met at the Convention Center. “I’m sensing there’s some discrimination going on because Muslims are a misunderstood minority,” said Salam Al-Marayati, a spokesman for the local Islamic community.

But Veronica Gutierrez from Goldberg’s office said the problem is not bias, but just a simple misunderstanding and predicted quick council approval of the Goldberg-Bernson motion.