New Yaroslavsky Aide Takes Off Gloves and Comes Out Swinging

ON THE OFFENSE: If Rick Taylor knows one thing about political campaigns, it’s that a candidate who is always on the defensive, reacting to charges from an opponent, is rarely successful at conveying a clear message to voters.

Remember Michael Dukakis versus George Bush in 1988?

That is why ever since 5th District City Council candidate Barbara Yaroslavsky hired him last month to replace Sacramento-based consultant Paul Kinney, Taylor has taken every opportunity to go on the offensive against Yaroslavsky’s opponent, Mike Feuer.

Prior to the April 11 primary, Feuer and other contenders had Yaroslavsky on the ropes, fending off charges that she was trying to capitalize on the name recognition and influence of her husband, councilman-turned-county-supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.

They further accused her of ducking public debates, suggesting that she was basing her campaign on big-dollar contributions and name recognition alone.

The strategy appeared to have worked. Feuer drew 39% of the vote in the primary, compared to Yaroslavsky’s 26%. The two will square off in the June 6 runoff.

A veteran consultant with a wide repertoire of sound bites and seemingly endless energy reserves, Taylor promises to not let that be repeated during the runoff race.

For example, when talking to reporters, he usually refers to Feuer as the “slick Harvard lawyer” and not as the former director of a free legal-services clinic.

And when Feuer’s camp accused Yaroslavsky last week of having a potential conflict of interest with her husband, Taylor fired back, charging Feuer with having a conflict of interest with his own wife, Gail, because she works for a publicly funded organization that has routinely sued government agencies for failing to uphold environmental laws.

Typical of Taylor’s gloves-off style is his reaction to a letter his campaign organization received from Feuer complaining that Yaroslavsky’s camp was planning to use photos of the bombed-out Oklahoma City federal building on a mailer accusing Feuer of opposing the death penalty.

In the letter, Feuer said he wanted to set the record straight: He would support the death penalty for the convicted bombers.

Taylor promised that he had never intended to use the Oklahoma City bombing picture in a mailer but said he would reserve the right to attack Feuer on the death penalty because he believes Feuer has changed his position on the issue during the course of the race--a charge Feuer’s camp denies.

“It seems to me, he is a typical politician,” Taylor says. “He says one thing to one person and another to another person.”

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STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES?: While House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) has proposed setting aside a special day once a month to correct the most stupid things in government, but two San Fernando Valley-area Democrats question whether Gingrich’s “Corrections Day” may be a bit stupid itself.

At a joint hearing of the House Rules and Government Reform committees this week, veteran Reps. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills) and Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) led the charge in questioning Gingrich’s plan.

“I must admit that I am skeptical,” Beilenson said of the Speaker’s proposal, which has won applause from numerous audiences.

Under the Corrections Day plan, one day each month would be set aside to pore over the dumbest things in government and, in one fell swoop, change them. The man from Georgia offered the examples of a woman who was not allowed to plant roses and an Internal Revenue Service proposal to conduct random “lifestyle audits.”

Waxman said he sees two potential pitfalls in the proposal. Special-interest groups might receive special access on Corrections Day, enabling them to benefit from preferential legislation. And the “corrections” might be based on isolated anecdotes rather than comprehensive reviews of the issues.

“We’ve noticed both problems so far this year,” Waxman said, citing lobbyists who enjoyed what he called “unprecedented” access and anecdotal evidence that later turned out to be wrong.

Said Beilenson: “There is some suspicion among some members that the process for Corrections Day will entail short-cutting the legislative process . . . that it will enable parties which have a grievance with the government to obtain something they seek without a full airing of the issue.”

Stay tuned.

SPEAKING OF NEWT . . .: The Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. will meet with the most powerful man in Washington during the group’s annual lobbying trip to the nation’s capital next week--and that doesn’t mean a stop at 2000 Pennsylvania Avenue.

VICA members will grill Gingrich, whom many politicos say has seized the agenda from President Clinton, in an attempt to assess the Republicans’ budget priorities and other plans for the coming months.

During the Washington visit, VICA members say they intend to determine the fate of supplemental emergency disaster aid requested by the White House and inquire about congressional plans to overhaul Medicare and rewrite the tax code.

Other stops on VICA’s itinerary include breakfast with Reps. Howard (Buck) McKeon (R-Santa Clarita) and Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) and meetings with California Sen. Barbara Boxer, White House aide John Emerson and Gov. Pete Wilson’s chief of staff, David Wetmore.

WASTE NOT . . .: Learning a lesson from the O.J. Simpson trial about the importance of evidence gathering, a group of Tujunga residents have sent City Councilman Joel Wachs a packet of photographs that clearly identify the culprits that have plagued their neighborhood.

The culprits, as the photos show, are neighborhood dogs, and their crime has been doing what dogs tend to do on lawns and driveways.

The crimes are well-documented. Maybe too well-documented.

The packet sent to Wachs includes 46 photos, half of which show dogs sniffing around front lawns as well as dogs in the process of leaving little surprises for the homeowners.

The other half are close-up photos of those little surprises. Very close up.

In fact, as the photos show, the little surprises are identified with numbered markers, just like the ones used to mark the blood spots found at the murder scene in the Simpson case. Furthermore, next to each dog dropping, small rulers have been thoughtfully added to provide scale.

Wachs called the photos the “best” evidence he has ever received.

Let’s see Johnnie Cochran, et al., try to pin this one on the LAPD.

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SAYING THEIR PRAYERS: Although the speakers were Elizabeth Dole, a potential First Lady, and conservative columnist Alan Keyes, a long-shot candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, the annual Valley Prayer Breakfast on Thursday was less political in tone this year.

One reason may have been that the event, coinciding as usual with the National Day of Prayer, was run by the Valley Pastors Fellowship, a holdover group from an evangelistic crusade last year, and not by its former longtime organizers associated with a small ultraconservative group.

The rhetoric was predominantly religious, and the few swipes at the Clinton Administration were vague at best during the 7 a.m. breakfast for 500 inside the Los Angeles Baptist High School auditorium in North Hills. A somewhat smaller crowd attended the repeated program at a 10 a.m. brunch.

Dole, wife of Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, whom many see as the GOP front-runner, compared herself to the biblical figure Esther in recounting her realization that she needed to make time for faith despite her secular vocations--Cabinet posts under Presidents Reagan and Bush and her current role as president of the American Red Cross.

Keyes, alluding more directly to the state of American morality, stirred the crowd with such assertions as “Church-state separation is turning into separation of God and country,” and “What grieves my heart is that some people are determined to put sin on the throne of power and worship it.” Keyes did not go on to say specifically what he meant, but the appreciative crowd gave him a standing ovation.

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FAR ABOVE CAYUGA’S WATERS: Lee Teng-hui received his doctorate in economics from Cornell in 1968. When the university invited the alumnus back to give a speech last year, he accepted. Then U. S. foreign policy got in the way.

The problem is that Lee is president of Taiwan, and ever since the United States formally recognized the People’s Republic of China in 1979, Taiwan’s rulers have been barred from visiting this country.

Rep. Howard Berman wants the policy changed.

He joined with his colleagues on the International Relations Asia subcommittee in urging the Clinton Administration to allow Lee to receive a visa, despite objections of officials in Beijing.

“On the surface, it doesn’t seem particularly important,” said Berman, the subcommittee’s ranking Democrat. “But here is a country, Taiwan, that has made massive, dramatic changes over the last 10 years. It is democratic. It protects human rights. It is a major trading partner of ours.”

When a letter to the Clinton Administration from Berman and Rep. Doug Bereuter (R-Neb.), who chairs the Asia subcommittee, did nothing to change White House policy, the lawmakers opted for a House resolution, which was passed this week. Although non-binding, it is aimed at putting public pressure on the State Department to allow Lee to visit his alma mater.

Martin and Dart reported from Los Angeles and Lacey from Washington, D.C.