Democrats Go Negative for Finale

You wouldn’t know from their freshly pressed clothes, well-mannered public appearances and smooth talk that mud has flown between the Democratic rivals in the 39th Assembly District race.

But the outward civility is history.

Less than two weeks before the March 26 statewide primary, the political and personal sniping that until now has remained behind the scenes in the northeast San Fernando Valley is about to spill into the open, despite the candidates’ professed aversion to negative campaigning.

Attack literature is in the mail. Accusations of dirty tricks and even anti-Semitism are being aired in public. And rumors that have swirled in the undercurrent for months are bubbling toward the surface in a heated primary that all but assures the winner a victory in November.

“Everyone’s been pretty well-behaved” so far, said Sue Burnside, political consultant for Valerie Salkin, a leading contender. “I don’t think that’ll hold true the rest of this week. This week will probably be the head-banging week.”

Salkin’s campaign is prepared to fire one of the opening salvos in the contest’s homestretch with a mailer that focuses on the personal finances of another well-positioned candidate, Jim Dantona.

“We’d be stupid not to. They’re not personal. They’re very factual, very plain, no hysterics,” Burnside said.

The mailer, sent to the district’s male voters, notes that Dantona, who runs an anti-drug youth organization, declared bankruptcy four years ago with debts of nearly $1 million.

“This is something voters should know,” said Salkin, an attorney on leave from her job as counsel to the state Board of Equalization.

Citing public charges of carpetbagging from opponent Tony Cardenas, Salkin defended her campaign’s aggressive approach as the vote nears.

“Given that Cardenas has already hit me, I think that everything is fair game at this point,” she said. “This is not a below-the-belt, innuendo kind of hit. It’s a very fair hit.”

But its intended target lashed back angrily.

“I wouldn’t expect anything else from a spoiled little rich kid who never really knew what it was to have hard knocks,” Dantona said of Salkin, 29, whose family has donated liberally to her campaign. Salkin has also lent herself $60,000 to help finance her race.

Dantona blamed his former wife’s spiraling medical costs and the recession’s impact on his consulting firm as the reason he decided to file Chapter 7.

“I had no other out. Am I happy about it? Absolutely not. I feel bad I had to do it. . . . I am not proud of my bankruptcy, but people go through these things--working people. Only a spoiled little rich kid would interpret this kind of serious family problem as an issue in the race,” said Dantona, adding: “I don’t do personal attacks.”

The pointed comments come near the end of a hard-fought primary season in which the candidates have privately accused one another of smear tactics as they vie to succeed outgoing Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), a victim of term limits.

Most of the wrangling has been between Salkin and Dantona, the two best-funded candidates in the race, although Cardenas, a North Hills real estate broker with an impressive array of endorsements, has also gotten entangled. The two other candidates in the Democratic race, legislative aide Michael del Rio and activist Jose Galvan, have not been involved.

Dantona, 47, accuses Salkin of systematically trying to defame him through a whisper campaign that includes rumors that he failed to make child-support payments for his three children and had ties to the Mafia.

Last fall, Dantona’s attorney fired off a letter to Salkin telling her to stop spreading “patently untrue accusations” about the candidate. Salkin wrote back denying she had ever suggested Dantona was a deadbeat dad or had Mafia connections.

“Zero truth,” she said of the allegations against her. “Dantona is still saying that I’m saying negative stuff about him, but I’m not.”

Adding to the imbroglio has been a mysterious packet of letters and other documents purporting to show Dantona as a malicious husband and lackadaisical employee when he served as chief of staff to former state Senate leader David A. Roberti. The packets have been mailed to Dantona’s political opponents, high-profile members of the community, local elected officials and even his parents.

The anonymous packet inspired enough consternation and anger that Dantona sent out his own letters--some to Salkin supporters--to refute the allegations.

His campaign now believes the packets came from outside the political arena. Neither Salkin nor Cardenas has publicly referred to their contents.

“There’s not any time to get involved in personal issues that don’t have anything to do with the voters,” said Cardenas, 32. “It doesn’t have any place in the campaign, as far as I’m concerned.”

But his own campaign has not escaped allegations of dirty tricks, particularly from Salkin’s camp, which accused Cardenas’ campaign manager, Alex Padilla, of telephoning one of her supporters recently and denigrating her Jewish background.

Padilla scoffed at the accusation.

“I did not make any disparaging comments in terms of religion, in terms of ethnicity, in terms of gender, anything,” he said. “I never have and never will.”

Added Cardenas: “I wouldn’t have anything to do with anybody who would do something like that.”

His campaign literature was among the first to inject the names of his opponents in the race, taking Salkin and Dantona to task for moving into the district relatively recently.

“It’s not so much mudslinging as pointing out some facts,” Cardenas said. “I’m neither calling them any names or accusing them of any wrongdoing or of being slanderous or racist.”