Runoff Expected in 5th District : Election: Feuer takes lead over early favorite Yaroslavsky in balloting marked by low turnout. Wachs, Bernson appear to win handily.

In an election marked by one of the lowest turnouts in Los Angeles history, political novice Mike Feuer held a wide lead in the hard-fought race for the 5th City Council seat, raising the possibility of a runoff election against early favorite Barbara Yaroslavsky, who is running for her husband’s former office.

Councilman Nate Holden, meanwhile, seemed headed toward a runoff against attorney Stan Sanders, and early returns showed voters finally embracing a measure to make it easier for the mayor to fire top bureaucrats.

Six other council incumbents who faced no substantial opposition--including Joel Wachs and Hal Bernson--appeared bound for reelection.

However, in the 5th District, which has been without a voting representative on the City Council since Zev Yaroslavsky joined the County Board of Supervisors in December, the battle was fierce.

With more than half of the votes counted, no candidate held the required 50%-plus-one margin needed to win outright, but Feuer held a healthy lead over his better-known rivals.

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.”

If necessary, a runoff will be held June 9.

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 the city’s general managers. He also was a presence in the 10th Council District contest, where both Holden and Sanders sought to distance themselves from the mayor.

“I have said from the outset that Mayor Riordan’s endorsement was not going to make a difference,” Feuer said about the 5th District race. “It sounded like politics as usual to most voters.”

The 5th council seat race was a battle to represent an influential area whose constituents from Westwood, Bel-Air and Sherman Oaks play a disproportionately large role in shaping the city’s political and economic landscape with their financial weight and voting clout.

Combined, the four candidates vying for the seat raised more than $1 million--the highest total for any campaign.

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 by trekking alongside his spouse on a precinct walk, sometimes overshadowing her with his seasoned pitch to voters.

The Yaroslavsky connection carried its own liabilities, however, with some observers complaining that the couple was trying to establish a his-and-her 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 garner enough signatures to have her name placed on the ballot.

Even so, candidate Roberta Weintraub, a former Los Angeles Unified school board member, criticized Feuer for attacking her late in the campaign. “That didn’t help,” she said.

The other candidates strived to stake out their own unique constituencies. Feuer targeted the district’s liberal, Jewish voters, trumpeting his experience as director of the acclaimed Bet Tzedek legal-services clinic. Roberta Weintraub leaned on her reputation as a former Los Angeles Unified school board member who 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 become increasingly identified with more progressive causes, including women’s issues. She was endorsed by liberal Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, a former school board colleague.

Jeff Brain, a Sherman Oaks realtor, was the most conservative candidate among the four and the only one residing in the Valley, which includes more than 40% of the district’s residents. Brain has been the driving force behind an annual street festival in Sherman Oaks and a critic of a city plan to control growth along Ventura Boulevard.

Despite their divergent constituencies, all four made crime their top campaign issue--but offered individual solutions.

Feuer, for example, suggested establishing a series of police substations staffed by reserve officers who are paid a nominal stipend. Yaroslavsky said she wants to add more bicycle and foot patrols and expand after-school programs to keep youths out of trouble. Weintraub and Brain both talked about strengthening the city’s efforts to keep officers from leaving Los Angeles for police jobs in other cities.

Although Riordan was not on the ballot Tuesday, his political reputation was. In addition to endorsing Barbara Yaroslavsky, Riordan was the key backer of the eight City Charter amendments on Tuesday’s ballot. He was the measures’ chief spokesman and the principal figure in raising $400,000 to finance the campaign for their passage.

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

The most significant was Charter Amendment 2, which proposed to strip the city’s top bureaucrats of their civil service protection so the mayor, with City Council approval, could fire them more easily. Similar measures have been rejected by L.A. voters four times in the past 15 years.

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

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

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

Holden, however, had a tougher fight in the 10th District. Although he was challenged by Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin Ross, his main competition was provided by Sanders. During the campaign, Holden and Sanders took shots at each other’s integrity and character.

Sanders 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 and tried to suggest that the incumbent had sympathized too much with former LAPD Chief Daryl F. Gates during the Rodney G. King beating controversy.

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

Sanders, the incumbent noted, was under investigation to determine if he had improperly used $53,490 from his 1993 mayoral campaign 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 in 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 vocal criticism from the city’s African American leadership.

The mayor stayed neutral in the 10th District race.

But Holden was endorsed by many of the city’s African American leaders. His supporters included U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, the Rev. Cecil Murray of the First African-American Methodist Church and Bishop Charles Blake of the West Angeles Church of God in Christ.

Sanders was backed by state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles.)

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

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