Voters Approving Mayor’s Bid for City Hall Reforms : Election: Councilman Nate Holden is forced into June showdown with Stan Sanders. Barbara Yaroslavsky will face Mike Feuer in runoff for her husband’s council seat.

After years of saying no, Los Angeles voters were finally saying yes to a measure that makes it easier for the mayor to fire top bureaucrats, according to nearly complete returns in Tuesday’s municipal elections, which also produced runoffs in two hotly contested City Council races.

Veteran 10th District Councilman Nate Holden was falling short of the 50%-plus-one margin required to avoid a June 6 runoff contest with his main challenger, attorney J. Stanley Sanders.

In the 5th District’s fierce battle to succeed Zev Yaroslavsky, now a county supervisor, Yaroslavsky’s well-financed wife, Barbara, had to fight for the second spot on the runoff ballot behind attorney Mike Feuer. Former school board member Roberta Weintraub was running third.

Six other City Council incumbents, who faced no substantial opposition, were loping easily to reelection.

The election was widely seen as a test of Mayor Richard Riordan’s influence with voters. The mayor endorsed Barbara Yaroslavsky and championed Charter Amendment 2 to make it easier to fire city general managers. He also was an important figure in the 10th District contest, where Holden and Sanders sought to distance themselves from the mayor.

With his support, all eight city measures on the ballot appeared to be passing, including one calling for the city to hire an independent inspector general to investigate complaints about the Police Department.

“People expressed confidence in reform, and it’s a slam dunk for taxpayers and for bringing greater accountability to city government,” said Deputy Mayor Robin Kramer, speaking for Riordan, who was recovering from the flu.

Still, turnout was so lackluster it figured in Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show” monologue. City Clerk Lee Martinez estimated that just over 16% of the eligible voters cast ballots--one of the lowest showings in recent years.

Turnout was slightly better in the 5th District. There, four candidates vied to represent an influential area, whose constituents in Westwood, Bel-Air and Sherman Oaks play a disproportionately large role in shaping the city’s political and economic landscape with their money and voting clout.

From the start the campaign was depicted as Barbara Yaroslavsky’s to lose because of her instant access to her husband’s name, political apparatus and campaign contributors.

The Yaroslavskys did nothing to camouflage their family ties. Zev Yaroslavsky mailed out solicitations--co-signed by Riordan--asking longtime supporters to contribute to his wife’s campaign and trekked alongside his spouse on precinct walks, sometimes overshadowing her with his own seasoned pitch to voters.

The Yaroslavsky connection had its liabilities, however, with some complaining that the couple was trying to establish a his-and-hers political dynasty.

Still, the campaign was relatively free of backbiting, a mood enhanced by the early departure of candidate Lea Purwin D’Agostino. D’Agostino appeared to be the most determined to target Yaroslavsky, but her campaign failed to get enough signatures to have her name placed on the ballot.

The other candidates strived to stake out their own constituencies. Feuer targeted the district’s liberal, Jewish voters, trumpeting his experience as director of the highly acclaimed Bet Tzedek legal services clinic.

A delighted Feuer said the results “confirm what we’d been seeing from going door to door. . . . People want new leadership in this city and it’s up to me to live up to that.” He said the voters were not impressed with the mayor’s endorsement of Yaroslavsky, seeing it as “politics as usual.”

Barbara Yaroslavsky said she was not disappointed with her showing. “I never said I was the front-runner. . . . The press has perceived me as (the front-runner) and they have to have a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“What you’re seeing is two high name ID women splitting the vote. I would venture to say that I would pick up a lot of Roberta’s support,” Yaroslavsky said.

For her part, Weintraub leaned on her reputation as a former Los Angeles school board member who had earned her political stripes leading a San Fernando Valley-based protest against mandatory school busing in the 1970s.

Weintraub, however, has mellowed in recent years and has become increasingly identified with more progressive causes, including women’s issues. She was endorsed by ultra-liberal Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, a former school board colleague.

Jeff Brain, a Sherman Oaks realtor, was the most conservative candidate of the four and the only one who lives in the San Fernando Valley, where more than 40% of the district’s residents are located. Brain has been the spark plug behind an annual street festival in Sherman Oaks and a critic of a city plan to control growth along Ventura Boulevard.

Although Riordan was not on the ballot Tuesday, his political reputation was.

The mayor’s presence was especially notable in the 5th District, with his backing of Barbara Yaroslavsky.

Riordan also was the key backer of the eight City Charter amendments on Tuesday’s ballot. He was the chief spokesman for the measures, and the principal figure in raising about $400,000 to finance the campaign to win their approval.

Passage of the measures was needed to keep his plan to reinvent city government on track, Riordan said.

The most significant was Charter Amendment 2, a proposal to strip the city’s top bureaucrats of their civil service protections so they could be more easily fired by the mayor, with City Council approval. Four times in the past 15 years, similar measures have been rejected by Los Angeles voters.

Critics said Charter Amendment 2 would turn the general managers of 30 city departments into political puppets.

The other measures of note were Charter Amendment 1--which proponents said would dismantle an aged purchasing system that costs city government $34 million a year in inefficiencies--and Charter Amendment 3, a proposal to hire an inspector general to investigate misconduct complaints against LAPD officers.

Six of the seven City Council incumbents on the ballot had an easy time of it. Reelected were council members Richard Alatorre, Hal Bernson, John Ferraro, Ruth Galanter, Mark Ridley-Thomas and Joel Wachs.

Holden, however, had a tougher fight on his hands. Although he was challenged by Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin Ross, his main competition came from Sanders. During the campaign, Holden and Sanders took shots at the other’s integrity and character.

On election night, a euphoric Sanders called on Holden to debate him on the issues before “every neighborhood association. I don’t want to sling mud, but I’m not going to walk away from a fight, either.”

For his part, a subdued Holden said that he believes voters were turned off by the negative nature of the campaign. “But I don’t regret sharing with voters information I had about Mr. Sanders,” he said. “And it was appropriate given the fact that he started smearing me first. I’m looking forward now to talking about the issues. I think that’s what the people want to hear.”

Sanders had sought to focus voters’ attention on two lawsuits alleging that Holden had sexually harassed two of his female employees. He also cited a Times report that Holden had once set up housekeeping in a Marina del Rey condo outside the 10th District. In addition, he tried to suggest that the incumbent had sympathized too much with former police Chief Daryl F. Gates during the Rodney G. King beating controversy.

But Holden, aided by consultant Harvey Englander, quickly seized on Sanders’ personal history.

Sanders, the incumbent noted, was under investigation to determine if he had improperly used $53,490 from his 1993 mayor’s race to pay off business debts, had a $200,000-plus judgment against him for non-payment of rent, had defaulted on his house mortgage in 1993, and had been sued because of conditions at rental units he owned or managed.

Holden also tried to suggest that Sanders--a Rhodes scholar and Yale law school graduate--was not in tune with the 10th District.

Holden mailers attacked Sanders for vacationing with the rich and famous at Newport Beach and for backing GOP candidates--a thinly veiled reference to Sanders’ endorsement of Riordan in 1993.

Sanders retaliated by charging that Holden had secretly allowed two of his City Hall staffers to help Riordan’s campaign in the black community, which the councilman denied.

The Riordan issue surfaced at the end of the campaign, with both candidates trying to keep a safe distance from the white, Republican mayor who in recent months has drawn increasingly vocal criticism from the city’s African American leadership.

The mayor stayed neutral in the 10th District race.

Times staff writers Peter Y. Hong, Henry Chu and Jean Merl contributed to this story.

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Key to Election Tables

An asterisk (*) denotes an incumbent candidate.

Elected candidates and approved measures--or those leading with 99% of precincts reporting--are in bold type. Runoff elections may be required in races where no candidate receives over 50% of the vote. Results are not official and could be affected by absentee ballots.

Party affiliation is indicated in parentheses:

(D) Democratic

(R) Republican

0% indicates returns were unavailable at edition time or only absentee ballots had been counted.

Uncontested races are not included in the tables.

***

Contributing to The Times’ election coverage:

Technical assistance: Deputy systems editor James D. Angius, systems architect Victor I. Pulver, systems analyst Jane Hwa.

Compiled by: Cecilia Rasmussen, Rossana Flores, Christina Kelch, Anthony Kelker, Roshawn Mathias, James McCaffrey, Ethan Thomas and Tomas Torres.

Sources: Election returns provided by Los Angeles County registrar of voters.

EDITION-TIME ELECTION RETURNS

Partial Term

100% Precincts Reporting Votes % Mike Feuer 11,753 40% Barbara Yaroslavsky 7,844 27% Roberta Weintraub 6,297 21% Jeff Brain 3,646 12%