L.A. ELECTIONS / 5TH DISTRICT :...

For nearly 20 years, she has stood beside one of the most influential politicians in Los Angeles, at times representing former City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky when his schedule kept him from attending political events or charity dinners.

Now, Barbara Yaroslavsky, a longtime volunteer and activist on behalf of Jewish causes, wants to end her role as “Mrs. Zev” and enter the political limelight: She’s running for the 5th District council seat that her husband left in December to become a county supervisor.

A mother of two, Yaroslavsky, 47, hasn’t held a paying job for 18 years and boasts no political track record except for the lessons she has learned from sharing a home and family with a consummate politician.

“Basically, I’ve been going to the school of good government for the past 19 years,” she said, flashing a grin.

What she does have, however, is a last name that carries instant voter recognition and friends in high places who have provided her top-of-the-line endorsements and hefty campaign contributions, making her the campaign’s front-runner in the eyes of many political pundits.

Yaroslavsky prides herself on having a consensus-gathering approach to solving problems and strong connections within the city’s business and entertainment elite--connections she developed over the years through her husband and through her own volunteer work.

But critics, including her challengers, say her front-runner status comes because of her husband’s reputation, not her own qualifications. After all, they say, how else could a political neophyte raise more than $300,000 and win the endorsement of such influential players as Mayor Richard Riordan and Supervisor Gloria Molina?

“She hasn’t done anything more than any other mother in Los Angeles County,” said the head of a women’s political action group that interviewed her and the other candidates. “We have all volunteered for the PTA. That doesn’t qualify you to sit on the City Council.”

Otherwise good-natured, Yaroslavsky becomes defensive when asked about her husband’s role in her campaign, insisting that her money and endorsements are based on her work as a longtime volunteer at the Los Angeles Free Clinic and for other organizations.

“People know what I’m doing,” she said. “It’s not like I’m saying, ‘I’m Zev’s wife and I need your help.’ ”

Although it was not her intent, Yaroslavsky’s campaign has, for the most part, become a challenge to prove to her critics, and possibly herself, that she is more than just a committed volunteer and devoted politician’s wife. It is a crusade to show that she can carve her own niche in the political landscape.

The 5th District stretches from Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley to the Fairfax district in West Los Angeles. The primary election is April 11.

Yaroslavsky’s interest in politics arose long before she met a young rabble-rouser and UCLA student named Zev Yaroslavsky back in the politically charged ‘60s.

After her father died when she was 12, the green-eyed Barbara Edelston was raised by her mother, Ruth, a liberal activist and sometimes writer, who penned articles under a man’s name to circumvent the gender biases of the ‘30s and ‘40s.

“I just remember growing up with all these meetings going on in the house,” she said. “I remember Tom Bradley being at my mom’s house in 1956 when he was still a police officer.”

She recounted growing up in Beverly Hills, but with great hesitancy because she fears her challengers will wrongly portray her as a pampered blueblood out of touch with the common voter.

After graduating from Beverly Hills High School, she attended Santa Monica City College for two years but quit before obtaining a degree. In 1967, she took a job at UCLA as an administrative assistant. She has not held another paying job since.

Barbara Edelston and Zev Yaroslavsky met as volunteers for two separate Zionist youth organizations and dated for nearly four years before getting married in 1971. She quit her job at the university just before giving birth to her first daughter, Mina, in 1977. Her second child, David, was born five years later.

Once she became a mother, Yaroslavsky committed herself to volunteer work, mostly raising money and developing programs for Jewish education and health-care organizations. She also has been active in her children’s schools through the Parent Teacher Assn. and other groups.

Yaroslavsky said she is seeking the council post to increase her ability to address such issues as health care and education but also to tackle citywide problems such as crime and government inefficiency.

“Whenever I see the opportunity to get involved, I do that,” she said.

She believes that her greatest accomplishments have been as a 10- to 30-hour-a-week volunteer at the Free Clinic, the so-called “hippie clinic” that provides medical services at no charge to 60,000 patients a year.

Clinic workers credit her with helping develop a triage program in 1990 to more rapidly provide attention to the patients who need it the most.

“I’ve been struck by her sensitivity to making sure that everybody who wants to be heard can be heard,” said Mary Rainwater, executive director of the clinic.

In fact, Yaroslavsky’s most influential supporters cite her volunteer work as the main reason they endorsed her.

Riordan said he met the candidate when she approached him several years ago to donate to a San Fernando Valley organization for handicapped and abused children.

“Mainly, she is a doer,” he said. “She knows how to get things done. She knows how to network with other people to get things done.”

Riordan rejects speculation that he endorsed Yaroslavsky to strengthen political ties with her husband. “That’s not true. Half the time I love Zev, and half the time I want to kill him,” the mayor said.

City Controller Rick Tuttle has known Barbara Yaroslavsky for nearly 20 years, back to when he also worked at UCLA. But he said he supports her because she “has a big heart” and “a lot of backbone.”

Tuttle commends her for launching a program at the Jewish Federation Council to check the records of nursing homes for health and safety violations before referring senior citizens to those facilities.

“I remember back in 1975 when Zev was thinking about running (for the City Council) for the first time,” Tuttle said. “I said, ‘Gee, Barbara would be a good candidate.’ ”

Others came to know her through her husband.

George Vrandenburg, executive vice president of 20th Century Fox, said he met her in 1990 or 1991 when then-Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky worked with him to push through a zoning change that allowed Fox to expand its Westside studios.

But Vrandenburg said he has donated to her campaign because he admires the “high energy and enthusiasm” she has demonstrated as a community volunteer.

“I certainly met her because of her husband, but I support her because of her,” he said.

Although her long years of volunteer work are commended even by her critics, some of her campaign literature exaggerates her accomplishments.

In a biography she prepared for the campaign, she claimed she was a member of the PTA for North Hollywood High School who “independently negotiated with the city of Los Angeles to facilitate the sewer hookup that allowed for the overcrowded zoo magnet (class) to move to its present location.”

In fact, school officials say the zoo magnet never got a sewer hookup because the cost was too high, and the class must now rely on an underground septic tank. Yaroslavsky was at a loss to explain the discrepancy, saying only that she believed the hookup project was completed.

But so far, her challengers have targeted her husband.

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At one candidates forum, Lea Purwin D’Agostino, who is no longer in the race, challenged Yaroslavsky to run on her maiden name, thus forcing her to rely on her own reputation.

A Times analysis of Yaroslavsky’s campaign statements shows that about 18% of the $307,000 she had raised as of Feb. 25 came from businesses and individuals who also donated to her husband’s supervisorial campaign last year. Her biggest contributions came from law firms, banks, construction companies, restaurants and other assorted businesses.

Political pundits say her base of support appears to be strongest among liberal Jewish Democrats in Westside communities where her husband has had strong voter backing and where she has spent most of her time performing volunteer work.

While she boasts front-runner status, she acknowledges that her political skills need honing. “I’m not as good a speaker as I could be,” she said during a recent candidates forum in the Valley.

She shares many of her husband’s political ideals: Both are considered liberal Democrats and fiscal conservatives. But while Zev Yaroslavsky has been known as a cunning inside player who can verbally pummel his critics into submission, Barbara Yaroslavsky styles herself as a consensus builder who produces solutions through accommodation.

At candidates forums, she sometimes has had trouble taking a definitive stand on tough issues. In response to questions, she is inclined to suggest bringing together all parties involved in a problem to craft a solution.

At a forum in Studio City, for example, she was asked her position on a plan by media giant MCA Inc. to more than double its Universal Studios theme park and film lot--which nearby residents fear will create traffic nightmares in adjacent communities. Although the plan had been public for nearly a month, Yaroslavsky said she had not seen it and could not yet take a stand.

“We need to work together to make it work,” she said of the plan.

Her challengers and some political consultants speculate that such vague answers are part of Yaroslavsky’s “stealth candidate” strategy to stay clear of controversial issues and win the election based on name recognition--a theory she rejects.

Whatever the case, some residents who have watched Yaroslavsky speak at candidates forums have been disappointed by her performances.

“A lot of people were surprised that Barbara was not as knowledgeable on the issue as some of the others,” said Richard Close, president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn., which has sponsored two candidates forums. “But I think that knowledge can be obtained.”

The head of another homeowner group that held a forum said she was surprised to learn later that many political experts consider Yaroslavsky the front-runner. “Basically, she doesn’t seem to have a great command of the issues,” said the woman, who asked not to be named.

Yaroslavsky acknowledges that she is still trying to catch up on all the problems brewing in the district. But she said she is up to the challenge.

While her mother was forced to hide behind a man’s name, Yaroslavsky said she is determined to emerge from behind her husband’s name to cast her own image at City Hall.

“Give me a problem that you say can’t be fixed, and I’ll fix it,” she said. “Tell me something that can’t be handled, it will be handled.”

Times researcher David Brady contributed to this story.