Council Candidates Vie for Votes on Final Weekend

With only three days remaining before Tuesday’s election, the candidates for the hotly contested 11th District City Council seat stumped for votes Saturday in neighborhoods, bowling alleys, Little League parks and over the telephone lines, hoping to persuade voters to cast ballots in their favor.

In a race once viewed as a shoo-in for Cindy Miscikowski, former chief of staff to retiring 11th District Councilman Marvin Braude, has turned into a horse race between Miscikowski and Georgia Mercer, a longtime community activist and former aide to Mayor Richard Riordan. Both are registered Democrats. Also vying for the seat are Mark Isler, a Van Nuys businessman who in recent days is thought to have made inroads among Republican and conservative voters, and former science teacher Doug Friedman of Brentwood.

The 11th District seat, held by Braude for the past 32 years, straddles the Santa Monica Mountains, covering portions of Brentwood and Pacific Palisades, and dipping into Encino, Tarzana, Woodland Hills and parts of Van Nuys and Sherman Oaks. Unless Tuesday’s winner garners more than half the votes, the top two vote-getters will face each other in a runoff, a prospect considered increasingly likely by some political pundits.

The significance of the final weekend before the nonpartisan election was not missed by front-runner Miscikowski, who spent the morning at her campaign headquarters on Ventura Boulevard in Encino rallying campaign workers to deliver her message calling for safer streets, better schools and controlled development.

“When you walk up to someone’s door and they tell you that they have received a lot of information in the mail, tell them, ‘I’m here to tell you face-to-face why I’m supporting Cindy,’ ” Miscikowski told about 20 supporters armed with campaign literature.

Later, Miscikowski pressed the flesh with spectators sitting in the bleachers at the Encino Little League park on Hayvenhurst Avenue before heading out to knock on doors in Brentwood.

Like her opponent, Mercer used the final weekend to shore up support and try to sway undecided voters in her favor.

After rallying a group of volunteer precinct walkers from Local 630 of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters to get out the vote, Mercer, trying to show the common touch, climbed into a campaign volunteer’s 1979 Toyota Corolla for the short ride to a precinct where she went door-to-door soliciting votes.

Mercer struck pay dirt at the first two residences she approached in the 5200 block of Encino Avenue. She had barely introduced herself before homeowner Karl Falkenbach, waved her off, saying, “I’m gonna vote for ya.”

At the next house, Elaine Berg Willon, who shares mutual acquaintances with Mercer, told the candidate she could count on her support. Asked why she was backing Mercer, Willon said, “She shares the same values and the same views as my friends and I.”

But a few doors later, Mercer, who was tabulating voters’ responses on a clipboard, was checking the “undecided” and “not-at-home” columns more than she would have liked. At the last house in the precinct, however, a woman told Mercer she would vote for her and would encourage her husband to do the same. “Well, that was a good note to end on,” Mercer said brightly.

Isler, who has sought to appeal to Republican and conservative Democratic voters, spent the day working the phones at his campaign headquarters in Van Nuys.

“When I call potential voters, I’m telling them that whether they are Republicans or Democrats this is a winnable race for me,” Isler said, citing his campaign’s tracking polls.

Isler said he believes his message calling for a crackdown on crime and higher academic standards in public schools is beginning to resonate with voters.

“People are telling me that they have watched the mud-slinging between Miscikowski and Mercer and that I am the only one talking about the issues,” Isler said, citing mailers in which Mercer attacked Miscikowski over her purported close ties to developers and lobbyists.

The itinerary of longshot candidate Friedman, who has run his campaign on $100, included a Tarzana bowling alley among other campaign stops.