Challenger Far Outstrips Holden in Fund Raising : City Council: Stan Sanders has raised $81,656--not counting matching funds--to incumbent’s $47,725 in 10th District race.

It defies the political laws of gravity at City Hall when a challenger does a better job of raising money than the incumbent he is trying to oust.

But it’s an anomaly that has reared its head in the contest between incumbent Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden, the feisty, often maverick lawmaker from the 10th District, and his main rival, attorney Stan Sanders, a former Rhodes scholar.

Sanders’ campaign finance report, belatedly filed Tuesday, shows that the challenger raised $81,656.26 from private contributors during the first two months of this year and picked up another $23,767 in matching funds under the city of Los Angeles’ public financing program.

Holden, by contrast, raised only $47,725 during the same period--of which $20,000 was a personal loan from Holden to his own campaign.

News of Holden’s financial situation attracted interest at City Hall, where money is believed to have an inviolable affinity to incumbency.

“That’s unusual,” said Bob Stern, a veteran observer of campaign practices as co-director of the Center for Governmental Studies. “Normally the money goes the other way.”

Stern also said it was unusual for an incumbent to loan personal money to his campaign.

Sanders and Holden face each other in the city’s April 11 election. A third candidate, prosecutor Kevin Ross, is not as well-known as the incumbent or Sanders.

Sanders clearly has benefited from the name recognition and fund-raising base he gained when he ran for mayor in 1993, Stern conjectured. “It’s got to be a carry-over from that campaign,” Stern said. Sanders finished sixth in that race, with 4.23% of the vote.

Holden finished seventh, with 3.40% of the vote. In the mayor’s race, Sanders bested Holden in the 10th District, drawing 3,218 votes to Holden’s 2,679.

Signs of Holden’s financial trouble first emerged last week--before the current campaign finance reports were filed--when it was learned that the 67-year-old councilman had asked if his campaign could take advantage of the city’s public financing program.

But the city’s Ethics Commission staff told him he was not eligible to participate in the program because the deadline had passed.

Initially, Holden had decided not to participate in the matching funds program, believing that due to a technical provision of the law his non-participation would actually deny Sanders access to any matching funds.

Only later, however, did Holden learn that his campaign had erred and that Sanders was on track to get the matching funds.

“I don’t believe it,” Holden said when told of Sanders’ fund-raising numbers. “He’s trying to embellish his report” to show a sense of momentum that isn’t there, Holden said, but did not elaborate.

Meanwhile, Sanders was crowing loud and strong. “He’s choked, out of gas,” Sanders said of Holden’s fund raising.

Others sensed a Holden vulnerability last Friday when the councilman appeared to violate a cardinal rule for incumbents--”Thou Shalt Ignore Your Rival”--by disrupting a Sanders news conference in the hallway outside his City Hall office, turning the event into a brawl-in-the-hall.

But in L.A. politics, raising money may be more important than stirring up controversy.

In 1993, for example, Laura Chick won the bankbook battle in her bid to unseat incumbent Joy Picus and then beat her at the polls as well.

One of Sanders’ political angels is Nelson Rising, chief executive officer of Catellus, the company now seeking to develop a 5-million- to 7-million-square-foot office-hotel project between Terminal Annex and Union Station. At a fund-raiser sponsored by Rising in late 1994, Sanders received $8,000 to $10,000, the candidate said.