Police Union Assails Barbara Yaroslavsky : Politics: Labor group plans to demonstrate against her campaign for the City Council seat left vacant when her husband was elected to Board of Supervisors.

Saying that they fear she will be a “political puppet,” officials of the union that represents the Los Angeles Police Department’s rank-and-file workers said they plan to demonstrate against Barbara Yaroslavsky as she kicks off her campaign to gain her husband’s vacant City Council seat.

The Police Protective League is targeting Yaroslavsky because union leaders blame her husband, Zev Yaroslavsky, for delaying labor contract talks last year when he was on the council. They also fear she will continue what they call his anti-police policies.

Union officials said they will send at least 50 off-duty officers to picket in front of a fund-raising event tonight at the Century Plaza Hotel.

Bill Harkness, director of the league, said that Barbara Yaroslavsky does not have the experience to fill the seat.

“We are not going to tolerate her running for office,” he said. “We don’t want to do business with people who turn their backs on us.”

Barbara Yaroslavsky called union leaders sexist for assuming that she is unable to have a political opinion independent of her husband.

“To assume that a woman would follow blindly in the footsteps of her husband is outrageous,” she said. “This is the ‘90s. The 1990s.”

The planned protest signals the beginning of a heated race to represent an affluent and politically powerful district that stretches from Sherman Oaks to the Westside. The primary is scheduled for April and a runoff election would be held in June.

The union already has backed Deputy Dist. Atty. Lea Purwin D’Agostino for the post. Also running for the seat are Michael Feuer, the former head of Bet-Tzedek, a legal services agency; Jeff Brain, former president of the Sherman Oaks Chamber of Commerce, and Roberta Weintraub, a former Los Angeles school board member.

Harkness said Barbara Yaroslavsky has never approached the union to offer an explanation of her positions on various city issues, and he criticized her campaigning as a police supporter.

The union will continue protesting her candidacy at political events, he said.

“I don’t have any problem following her around the city of Los Angeles when she tries to convince people she supports the Police Department,” Harkness said.

But Barbara Yaroslavsky said she has approached union President Danny Staggs to explain her ideas and has yet to get a response from the union.

“I am more than willing to talk to anyone on the leadership of the league,” she said.

Despite the union’s opposition, Barbara Yaroslavsky said she supports the department and backs Mayor Richard Riordan’s plan to bolster its numbers.

Zev Yaroslavsky, who clashed with police during his 19 years on the council, assumed his new post Monday as a member of the County Board of Supervisors.