Feuer, Holden Win in City Council Races

Political neophyte Mike Feuer was elected to the Los Angeles City Council and veteran lawmaker Nate Holden held on to his job as voters Tuesday made their choices in a pair of freewheeling and contentious local races.

In a city election that attracted only 13.3% of eligible voters to the polls, a ballot measure aimed at streamlining the handling of police misconduct cases passed easily, but a bond measure to build two police stations was unable to muster the two-thirds approval needed to pass.

Feuer, the 37-year-old former director of a public service law organization, leaped to a quick, commanding lead over community volunteer Barbara Yaroslavsky in the race for the politically influential 5th District seat, a post held by Yaroslavsky’s husband for almost two decades.

“It feels great,” Feuer said. “I think this is a district that wants new leadership.”

In the 10th District, Holden ended up on top after a bruising battle with former city parks commissioner J. Stanley Sanders.

“We did it, we did it, I’m declaring victory!” a jubilant, relieved-sounding Holden told supporters at an election night party at his Crenshaw district campaign headquarters. “It’s a sweet victory,” he said in an interview minutes later. “We withstood all the hits, and we had an amazing coalition of unions, the Police Protective League, volunteers and ministers.”

Sanders said he “called Nate and congratulated him and offered to heal whatever wounds had been opened by the campaign. He was very gracious. I told him I thought I had made him a better city councilman.”

The battle for the 5th District, long a high-profile bastion for liberals, quickly evolved into an outsider-versus-insider contest, with Republican Mayor Richard Riordan backing Yaroslavsky.

Even that endorsement--and a famous last name--failed to do the trick for Yaroslavsky, who conceded at 10:30 p.m.

“It’s time to congratulate Mike Feuer,” she said. “He ran an excellent race and I’m sure he’ll make a good council member.

“I am really disappointed with the outcome of this race,” Yaroslavsky said. “But I think this race has always been about trying to make government more responsive.”

Feuer, whose victory came in a special election to fill a vacancy created when Zev Yaroslavsky left to become a county supervisor last year, will serve out the two years remaining on the term.

The race to represent the district, with its politically active and affluent voters on the Westside and in parts of the San Fernando Valley, was costly and grew increasingly bitter. Barbara Yaroslavsky, 47, the primary election underdog, was persuaded that she needed to get tough on Feuer.

Feuer, on the other hand, proved to be a tireless campaigner with a good knack for raising money.

Yaroslavsky’s fortunes got a boost from Riordan, who not only endorsed her early in the race but also hosted a fund-raiser for her at his Brentwood home. It brought in $150,000. After her weak second-place showing in the April 11 primary election, she switched campaign consultants, hiring Rick Taylor, a well-known political infighter and Yaroslavsky family friend, to give a new hard edge to her campaign. She also won the endorsements of the other two primary election contenders, former Valley school board member Roberta Weintraub and Sherman Oaks realtor Jeff Brain.

Zev Yaroslavsky hit the campaign trail on behalf of his wife, going door to door with her on weekends to meet voters.

With a $230,000 bankroll for her runoff campaign, Yaroslavsky painted Feuer as a left-wing extremist who supported a plan by state Sen. Tom Hayden to extend rent controls to single-family homes.

She also portrayed Feuer as an agent of old-time, Watergate-style politics, claiming that his spies had stolen her campaign polls. Riordan picked up this line, signing mailers accusing Feuer of being deceitful and playing politics-as-usual. Feuer denied such charges, claiming that he was being victimized by his opponent’s negative campaign and urging that their dialogue stick to a higher plane.

Seeking to define herself to voters, Yaroslavsky grappled with the seemingly ubiquitous suspicion that she was a political subsidiary of her husband, who held the seat for 19 years.

Feuer raised $251,000 in the general election and hoped to build on his success from the primary. In particular, he seemed confident that voters would compare his accomplishments with those of Yaroslavsky and conclude that he was a person who had had larger and more demanding job experiences.

“I think Barbara has done some good volunteer work in the community,” Feuer said. “I just don’t think that work qualifies her to represent the 5th District.”

By contrast, he touted his accomplishments as director, for eight years, of Bet Tzedek, the legal aid clinic serving elderly and poor clients.

Although the 5th District race got more contentious in the general election, the 10th District race, while hard fought, struck a generally more positive note than it had in the primary. The district, home to some of the city’s most influential black community leaders and institutions, includes the Crenshaw and Leimert Park neighborhoods and Koreatown.

Holden, the 65-year-old incumbent, cooled his earlier campaign rhetoric, saying he was convinced that voters were turned off by the attack campaign he had run in the three-way primary.

Thus, in the general election, Holden dropped his original political consultant, Harvey Englander, who was privately blamed for the abrasive tone of the councilman’s primary contest. The councilman 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, 52, that Holden was weak on affirmative action 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 lawsuit brought against him by a former City Hall employee--originally scheduled to unfold in the middle of the 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 female elected officials, ranging from Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) to Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke.

While Holden struggled with the harassment issue, Sanders was under investigation by two ethics agencies looking into allegations that he had improperly used campaign funds to pay off private debts stemming from his law practice. Those investigations are continuing.

Sanders, who had endorsed Riordan for mayor two years ago, found himself unable to get the favor returned when Riordan decided to remain neutral in the 10th District race. Sanders said he shared the mayor’s goal of hiring more police but also said he wanted City Hall to pay more attention to the black community.

Sanders hoped to pull off an upset with a big boost from former Mayor Tom Bradley, who in the 1960s had represented the 10th District and emerged from retirement to anoint Sanders as the youthful, inspired leadership the district needed for the future. In virtually every piece of political mail from the Sanders campaign, Bradley was prominently featured.

Also on the city ballot were two measures, the most prominent being Proposition 1, a proposal to float a $171-million bond issue to finance construction of new LAPD facilities, including two new police stations, one in the mid-Valley, the other in the Wilshire area. The second measure, which was not opposed, called for streamlining LAPD procedures for handling police misconduct cases.

Both measures had the backing of Riordan and Police Chief Willie L. Williams. Ballot arguments favoring Proposition 2, the misconduct measure, were signed by the Police Protective League as well.

But the bond measure, needing approval by two-thirds of the voters, was opposed by some homeowner and taxpayer groups, who feared that this bond measure, like one approved in 1989, would not produce all the projects it promised. The average cost to homeowners was estimated at about $9 per year, a levy that would appear on property tax bills for 20 years.

City Councilman Richard Alarcon, who spearheaded the drive to put Proposition 1 on the ballot, stressed that the measure won well over half of the vote. “By any other standard this is a landslide. I take that as a vote of confidence,” Alarcon said.

In the San Gabriel Valley, voters in the 59th Assembly District on Tuesday chose Republican Bob Margett over Democrat Brent A. Decker in the race to succeed Richard Mountjoy.

Times staff writers Jean Merl, Nancy Hill-Holtzman, Aaron Curtiss and Henry Chu contributed to this story.

* MORE ELECTION RESULTS: A17

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

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. 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, Lilia Beebe, Roshawn Mathias and James McCaffrey.

Sources: Election returns provided by Los Angeles County registrar of voters, Los Angeles city clerk and individual cities.

Southland Election Returns

California Assembly

DISTRICT 59

Parts of Arcadia, Claremont, Covina, Duarte, Glendora, La Verne, Monrovia, Pomona, San Dimas and Sierra Madre Partial Term 100% Precincts Reporting: Votes (%) Bob Margett (R)**: 21,019 (71%) Brent A. Decker (D): 8,447 (29%) ***

City of Los Angeles, City Council / District 5 Partial Term 100% Precincts Reporting: Votes (%) Mike Feuer: 19,701 (69%) Barbara Yaroslavsky: 9,073 (32%)