Feuer Wins Big Over Yaroslavsky in Runoff : Elections: In 10th District City Council race, incumbent Nate Holden leads Stan Sanders.

Barbara Yaroslavsky, an early favorite to win her husband’s former City Council seat, was overwhelmingly defeated Tuesday by political neophyte Michael Feuer in a bitter 5th District race that drew few voters.

Feuer’s 2-to-1 lead over Yaroslavsky for the seat left vacant when Zev Yaroslavsky was elected to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors effectively scuttled hopes of establishing a Yaroslavsky dynasty in local government.

Yaroslavsky conceded at 10:30 p.m., saying “it is time to congratulate Mike Feuer. He ran an excellent race, and I’m sure he’ll make a good council member.”

For his part, Feuer said he was elated by the victory. “It feels great. I think this is a district that wants new leadership and to vote on the merits.” To Yaroslavsky, against whom Feuer waged an aggressive campaign, he said: “It’s time for us to move on and work to make the district better.”

In the 10th District, meanwhile, incumbent Nate Holden appeared to be fighting off a challenge from lawyer Stan Sanders, who, despite an endorsement from former Mayor Tom Bradley, was trailing in late polling.

Although voter turnout was higher in the two districts with City Council races, it was among the lowest in city history, with early estimates showing only about 10% of eligible voters showing up to cast ballots on the two citywide measures. In the 5th District, roughly 15% of voters turned out.

“I knew it was going to be slow when I looked at the ballot and saw there was nothing on it,” said Barbara Dahms, a precinct worker at Lorne Street Elementary School in Northridge.

Feuer will take over an influential post, representing an affluent and politically active district that straddles the Santa Monica Mountains, stretching from West Los Angeles to the San Fernando Valley and including Brentwood, Westwood, Fairfax, Sherman Oaks and parts of Studio City, Van Nuys and North Hollywood.

The seat became vacant for the first time in 19 years when longtime councilman Zev Yaroslavsky resigned last year after winning election to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

It has been a race that has progressively gotten nastier as the candidates approached Election Day.

After Yaroslavsky drew only 26% of the vote in the April 10 primary, compared to 39% for Feuer, she hired veteran campaign consultant Rick Taylor and went on the offensive with a series of campaign mailers that accused him, among other things, of planting a spy in her camp, misleading voters in campaign literature, and wasting taxpayer dollars by accepting city matching funds--charges that Feuer vehemently denied. In each mailer, she accused Feuer of acting like “a typical politician.”

But the strategy was a dangerous one, according to campaign consultants, because it threatened to turn voters off to the candidate that appears to be slinging the most mud.

Shari Matzdorff, a Studio City resident, complained last week that she has been barraged with negative mail, particularly from Yaroslavsky’s camp. Although she was uncommitted early in the race, she said, “the literature has pushed me toward Mike Feuer.”

During the race, Feuer has fired back occasionally in public debates, charging that Yaroslavsky would, if elected, face a conflict of interest in dealing with the county due to her marriage to Zev Yaroslavsky--an accusation she rejects.

Feuer’s lead in the primary surprised many political strategists who early on anointed Yaroslavsky the front-runner due to her unmatchable name recognition, her hefty campaign budget, and her connections with powerful and influential politicians and business leaders in the county.

Feuer has tried to turn Yaroslavsky’s connections to his advantage by portraying himself as a representative of “a new generation of leadership” with no ties to the city’s current political power structure.

It has also been a race to test the influence of Mayor Richard Riordan, who in campaign literature and stump speeches has been cited most often as a supporter of Barbara Yaroslavsky. In May, Riordan even hosted a fund-raiser for Yaroslavsky at his Brentwood home, raising $150,000 for her campaign.

While Feuer has often raised the potential conflict-of-interest problem between Yaroslavsky and her husband, he has not publicly criticized the former councilman and influential county supervisor.

And Zev Yaroslavsky has not hidden his support for his wife. He has campaigned door-to-door for her on weekends and signed campaign literature.

As for qualifications, Feuer, 37, has often cited his eight years as the former director of Bet Tzedek, the legal aid clinic that last year alone served 50,000 elderly and poor clients.

For her part, Yaroslavsky, 47, has pointed to her many years of volunteer service with the Los Angeles Free Clinic, the Parent Teacher Assn. and other local nonprofit groups. She has also touted her vast network of friends developed citywide through her husband’s positions and through her own volunteer work.

Although the 5th District race got more contentious since the primary, the 10th District race, while hard fought, went the opposite direction.

Holden, the 65-year-old incumbent, in particular, cooled down his rhetoric, saying he was convinced voters were disaffected by the negative campaign he had run in the primary.

Thus, in the general election, Holden dropped his original political consultant, Harvey Englander, who was privately blamed for the tone of the councilman’s primary campaign.

The incumbent also tried to play up his strengths, including a long record as a public official with a meat-and-potatoes view of how to keep constituents happy and his deep ties to the 10th District’s older voters and to its church leaders, who play a powerful role in African American politics.

Responding to accusations from Sanders that Holden wasn’t tough enough on civil rights issues, the incumbent portrayed himself as a veteran of the 1960s struggles to win job and pay equity for blacks in the aerospace industry, in which he worked at the time.

Holden also got some breaks. A sexual harassment suit brought against him by a former City Hall employee--originally scheduled to unfold in the middle of election season--was postponed, with the plaintiff’s attorney assenting to the change. Holden also deflected the sexual harassment charge by surrounding himself with the endorsements of a number of elected officials who were women, ranging from U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) to county Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke.

While Holden struggled with the sex issue, Sanders had a cross to bear as well--a dual investigation by ethics agencies on whether or not he had improperly used campaign funds to pay off private debts stemming from his law practice.

Times staff writers Aaron Curtiss and Nancy Hill-Holtzman contributed to this story.