ELECTIONS / L.A. CITY COUNCIL 5TH DISTRICT : Candidates Go Into High Gear in Final Weekend of Campaign

The unsuspecting voter was caught Saturday morning as she walked out of a friend’s house in Sherman Oaks and began to get into her car.

“Hi, I’m Mike Feuer and I’m running to be your city councilman,” said the tall, mustachioed man approaching her with an outstretched hand and a box of campaign literature.

“You are?” answered the woman, giving him just the opening he needed.

And thus, another voter was cornered into hearing another candidate’s sales pitch.

Yes, it’s election time again, and in the 5th City Council District, which stretches from Sherman Oaks to West Los Angeles, Feuer and the three other candidates put the campaign into high gear as they began the final weekend before the Tuesday primary.

By Saturday, most campaign debates were over and it was too late to get new endorsements. All the candidates could do was walk door to door, pass out flyers, make phone calls and hope people will at least remember to vote.

Whether they let their feet or fingers do the walking, all heard similar complaints about crime and city services. And all expressed optimism about their chances of winning.

“I feel good,” Feuer, the former head of a legal services clinic, said as he checked his precinct map and approached another house. “I can’t work any harder than this.”

But Feuer’s opponents, longtime activist Barbara Yaroslavsky, Sherman Oaks businessman Jeff Brain and former school board member Roberta Weintraub, were also on the front lines, trying to squeeze as much campaigning as they could into the last few days.

Less than 10 blocks away from Feuer, Yaroslavsky was pounding the pavement, accompanied by one of her most enthusiastic supporters, husband Zev Yaroslavsky, the man who held the 5th District council seat for 19 years before resigning in December to become a county supervisor.

The two had gone door-to-door campaigning separately in recent weeks, but began to walk together on Saturday. The tag team seemed to work smoothly. He lugged a shopping bag full of glossy mailers while she checked addresses on her precinct map.

“Hi, I’m Barbara Yaroslavsky. I’m running for City Council,” she said as she approached a voter peering out from behind a screen door.

“Hi, I’m Zev Yaroslavsky,” he said, smiling. “I’m your county supervisor.”

On the other side of the district in West Los Angeles, Brain was using a different tactic: He had loaded volunteers into a shuttle bus decorated with red-white-and-blue streamers and huge campaign posters and was crisscrossing the district, cruising for voters.

About a block from the Fairfax District home of the Yaroslavskys, Brain’s bus pulled to the curb and out streamed about 10 children, all wearing buttons emblazoned with a cartoon character called “the Brain Man,” which has become the symbol of Brain’s campaign. Accompanied by adult volunteers, the youngsters fanned out along the street, handing out campaign literature.

The kids’ reward for their day of work: Brain Man Pogs.

Brain said he hoped to pass out at least 1,000 brochures by nightfall. “We feel good,” he said. “I think we are going to do well.”

Meanwhile, Weintraub was letting her fingers do the walking.

Within her Bel Air Estates home, Weintraub, former Dist. Atty. Robert Philibosian and four other volunteers were calling undecided voters throughout the district. The crew began making calls at 10 a.m. and were hoping to reach about 2,000 voters by 9 p.m.

Meanwhile, about 35 other Weintraub volunteers were doing the time-honored, door-to-door campaigning on the streets.

But the big push for Weintraub is scheduled for todaywhen she is planning to have about 100 volunteers staffing the phones again.

“We know it’s going to be a close race,” said Weintraub’s campaign manager, Sue Burnside. “The winner or loser is going to be decided on how well you get your voters out.”