Yaroslavsky, Feuer Can’t Deny the Positives of ‘Going Negative’

NEGATIVE VIBES: She was considered the front-runner, the heir apparent to the 5th District City Council seat that was left vacant last year, when her husband Zev Yaroslavsky resigned to fill a post at the County Board of Supervisors.

But when Barbara Yaroslavsky came in second in the April 11 primary--13% behind top vote-getter Mike Feuer--the political consultants who had anointed her the favorite blamed her campaign strategy.

The only way to come back and win in the June 6 runoff is to “go negative,” they said. In other words, it’s time to sling mud.

As evidenced by recent Yaroslavsky campaign mailers, the advice has been taken to heart. In two similar pieces--one sent to Democratic voters, another to Republicans--Yaroslavsky accuses Feuer of being, you guessed it, a “typical politician.”

Among other charges, the mailer says Feuer portrays himself as being tough on crime, yet is opposed to the death penalty and the “three-strikes” law. The mailer also asserts that Feuer promotes high-minded ethics, yet admits to having a spy in Yaroslavsky’s camp.

Feuer’s camp said the mailers are bogus and chock-full of lies and half-truths. He said that if he were put in a position to impose the death penalty, he would. Feuer’s aides added that he has no problem with the “three-strikes” law. As for the spy charge, Feuer says he has benefited from leaks from Yaroslavsky’s camp but insists he placed no spy there.

Cynthia Corona, Feuer’s campaign manager, called the mailer “dementia.”

But Feuer’s camp can’t complain about the turn the campaign has taken. After all, he fired off some of the hardest-hitting literature when he took aim at former school board member Roberta Weintraub during the primary. She did not make the runoff.

Weintraub still remembers the hits she took from Feuer. She made note of it Monday, when she endorsed Yaroslavsky. In particular, she was upset about a letter that went out to Republican voters on Feuer’s behalf that tried to knock Weintraub for being supported by “liberal City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg.”

“I was not happy with things that were said about me in the campaign,” Weintraub said.

*

RUN AGROUND: True to his reputation for forging bipartisan alliances, Glendale’s Republican Assemblyman James Rogan nailed down a key Democratic endorsement for his bill to limit the number of legislative proposals lawmakers can introduce.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that the bill’s launching this week went less than smoothly.

Rogan wants to slash by about half the number of bills state legislators can carry each two-year session. In the Assembly, that means lowering the ceiling from 50 to 25; in the Senate, from 65 to 30.

The bill got stuck Monday in the Assembly Rules Committee, where Democratic members voiced strong objection to what they viewed as an attempt to limit the tools of democracy.

Unfortunately, Rogan’s key Democratic endorser and co-author, the widely respected Assemblyman Philip Isenberg of Sacramento, is not a member of Rules, so he wasn’t in a position to bail Rogan out.

Rogan’s chief beef is that the Capitol is so bogged down with legislation that he and others can’t make informed decisions before voting on proposed laws.

In the Rules Committee, Rogan’s friend, Chairman John Burton (D-San Francisco), withheld the bill from a vote to keep it from sinking altogether. The maneuver gives Rogan more time to win converts or, failing that, to park his bill on a back burner until Republicans gain a better foothold in the Assembly.

Burton also suggested that Rogan might stand a better chance if he narrowed his target to just the Assembly, rather than including the state Senate, and nudged his limits up from 25 to 35.

But Rogan’s not buying compromises, at least not yet. “That’s not much of a reform,” he said, vowing to try again later. “I don’t intend to let this die.”

*

MARCHING LOYALISTS: Although some Democratic state Assembly members have in the past tried to distance themselves from Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), the San Fernando Valley’s Democratic representatives are among his most loyal backers.

That was evident Tuesday when Assembly members Richard Katz, Sheila Kuehl and Wally Knox headed to Los Angeles from Sacramento to get out their party’s vote in the recall election of Paul Horcher.

It was Horcher who saved Brown’s hold on the leadership post in January by breaking with Republicans to vote for Brown as Speaker.

Joining Katz, Kuehl and Knox, of course, in repaying Brown’s debt to Horcher were hundreds of precinct-combing foot soldiers. Many are staff members for Assembly Democrats who, one wryly noted, were “strongly encouraged” to take vacation days to help Horcher’s campaign, which ended up failing.

“Some vacation,” the worker said. “We were on our feet from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.”

*

IN MEMORIAM: The family of Christy Brondell Hamilton, a Valley LAPD officer shot and killed in the line of duty in 1994, was in Washington this week to see her name added to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, a marble wall containing the names of 13,814 slain officers.

Hamilton’s name was one of 157 added this year. Her family had stern words for the members of Congress who seek to overturn the federal ban on assault weapons.

“There will be blood of citizens on their hands,” said Hamilton’s brother, Kenneth Brondell Jr., in an interview. “Damn them.”

Hamilton’s niece, Susan Brondell, said she would like to question her congressman, Howard P. (Buck) McKeon (R-Santa Clarita), on the issue face to face.

“I would like for him to explain his position to me,” said Brondell, a college freshman who went to high school with some of McKeon’s nieces and nephews. “Why are weapons of war needed in our society?”

In Brondell’s eyes, the issue is straightforward: Tighter restrictions on automatic weapons are needed to give police officers like her aunt a better chance to survive on the streets. It was a teen-ager armed with an AR-15 who killed Hamilton four days after she graduated from the Los Angeles Police Academy.

In Washington, the family visited California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who authored the assault weapons ban and is fighting its repeal. They also stopped by the offices of Handgun Control Inc., the group led by Sarah Brady, whose husband, James Brady, was disabled during the 1981 assassination attempt on former President Ronald Reagan.

*

THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE: If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

If a political candidate holds a news conference and the subject of the news doesn’t show up? Does it make news?

Ironically, both 5th District City Council candidates know the answer.

Two weeks ago, when Mike Feuer held a news conference on the steps of City Hall to announce his endorsement by the union that represents the rank and file of the Los Angeles Police Department, the union representatives failed to show up.

It turns out that due to a last-minute change of location, the union leaders went to the wrong site. Still, the endorsement made news. And just to make sure, police union leaders called media representatives later to explain the mishap and reaffirm their endorsement.

On Monday, Barbara Yaroslavsky called a news conference near City Hall to announce that she had won Roberta Weintraub’s endorsement.

However, this time it was Yaroslavsky herself who didn’t show up for the event until most reporters had interviewed Weintraub and left. Her campaign strategist, Rick Taylor, who was seen pacing and speaking frantically into a cellular phone outside City Hall as the meeting was about to begin, explained that she was simply running late. Yaroslavsky showed up later, just in time to be interviewed by a television crew that also showed up late.

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