School Board Race Gets Nasty in Days Before Primary

So much for congeniality.

An otherwise civil race for a Board of Education seat on the Westside has turned ugly in the days leading up to Tuesday’s primary.

Candidate Marlene Canter has sent a mailer to voters, accusing incumbent Valerie Fields of being “absent or tardy to 36% of board meetings last year when our kids needed you the most.”

Fields has accused Canter of distorting her record and launching a smear campaign. Fields, meanwhile, has been digging into Canter’s voting record as a private citizen. In a news release this week, the incumbent said Canter failed to vote in all but three of 15 elections dating back to 1993--an assertion that Canter’s campaign did not dispute.

Canter’s camp stands by its mailer.

“We feel it’s important to be aggressive about communicating Valerie Fields’ record to voters of the 4th District,” said Julie Buckner, Canter’s campaign manager.

Until now, the race in District 4--which stretches from the Westside to the West San Fernando Valley--has been mostly bland, with the candidates sticking to the school district’s many problems and rarely generating any fire on the campaign trail.

All along, Canter has sought to make an issue of Fields as an incumbent on a school board criticized as ineffective and wasteful. The two other candidates in the race--real estate developer Matthew Rodman and retired teacher Rick Selan--have made the same case. But even those jabs have been delivered in mostly polite tones.

Canter’s mailer has turned up the heat. It shows a picture of Fields beneath a caption that reads: “If students missed class as much as incumbent Valerie Fields missed votes, they would get an F.”

It goes on to say: “With all of the problems facing our public schools today, don’t we deserve to have a full-time school board member?”

The mailer gives Fields three “Fs”--for her attendance record, ethics and fiscal accountability.

“It’s not accurate. It’s a lie,” said an angry Fields.

Fields acknowledged missing eight of 73 school board meetings last year. She also reported being tardy on 14 occasions. By that accounting, Fields was absent from or tardy at 30% of school board meetings last year. Fields said she objected to the implication that she was missing large segments of board meetings. She said that she was less than five minutes late each of the times she was tardy.

School board meetings often last hours, and board members often come in late.

Meanwhile, Fields has launched her own offensive. She has determined that Canter, as a private citizen, did not vote in 12 of 15 elections since November 1993.

Canter did not return phone calls seeking comment. Instead, she referred the matter to Buckner, who said Fields’ information was accurate.

Buckner said Canter voted in the general elections of 1994, ’96 and 2000 but missed primaries and municipal contests because she was traveling for business and raising her family.

“She indeed missed some elections,” Buckner said. “But we see a difference between an elected public official who misses votes on key issues versus a private citizen who may have missed votes at the election booth.”

Even as the candidates sparred with one another, they were raising and spending money at a record pace. Fields, Canter and Rodman--the three chief candidates--had raised $2.3 million through Thursday, according to campaign finance reports.

The money was for a slew of mailers, television advertisements and other publicity.

In the other hotly contested Board of Education race, for the seat covering the mid-Valley, two candidates also were raising large sums of money.

Challenger Tom Riley, who is backed by Mayor Richard Riordan, had received about $620,000 in contributions from the mayor’s campaign committee, Coalition for Kids. Incumbent Julie Korenstein managed to almost meet that. With contributions from the teachers union and other labor groups she had raised more than $475,000.

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Times education writer Doug Smith contributed to this story.