Hayden Takes Brunt of the Attack From Opponents at Debate

Despite campaign finance reports that show him trailing several rivals in a jampacked race, Tom Hayden remained a popular target Saturday at a forum for 5th City Council District candidates.

The sharpest attacks on the former state senator came from businessman Steve Saltzman, who opened his remarks with a sarcastic jab at Hayden’s recent move into the district. He went on to criticize Hayden’s rejection of matching public funds, a complaint echoed by other candidates in the 11-way race.

Hayden was the only one to turn down the money, freeing him from a $330,000 spending cap.

The candidates are vying to succeed Councilman Mike Feuer in an affluent district that stretches between the southern San Fernando Valley and the Westside.

“I’m a little confused,” said candidate Jill Barad, a Sherman Oaks businesswoman. “When Tom Hayden was in the Legislature, he complained the loudest about campaign spending. And yet, every campaign he’s run, he’s outspent his competitors by two or three times. That’s not a level playing field.”

Hayden said he did not intend to exceed the limit that binds his opponents but plans to keep his wallet open in case any independent expenditure campaigns launched an eleventh-hour blitz against him.

“If they do nothing, I’ll do nothing,” he said. “But I want them to understand they’ll be fought if they decide to do any last-minute assault.”

Hayden, the goateed liberal icon who evolved from an anti-Vietnam War protester to a longtime California lawmaker, is by far the best-known name in the race. But his lagging fund-raising--four candidates had outpaced him, according to reports released last week--indicates a tight race ahead.

Sponsored by the Southern California Americans for Democratic Action and a host of other progressive groups, the forum was a lesson in participatory democracy. Audience members, many of them elderly women, frequently shouted at candidates to speak up (or, occasionally, to pipe down).

The format--driven by a series of questions on affordable housing, the gap between rich and poor, and the like--resulted in a stream of sometimes indistinguishable answers from rivals as they popped up and down in their seats.

Responses ranged from sweeping statements about the nature of government (“I have an old-fashioned belief that government can be a force for good, if the right people hold office,” said former federal prosecutor Jack Weiss) to specific goals (“I’d like to ban the diesel engine,” said Laura Lake, a community activist. “It’s a big contributor to air pollution.”)

One contender, gun safety advocate Constantina Milonopoulos, got a big round of applause describing her grass-roots campaign, in which she personally collected hundreds of signatures to get on the ballot.

“When I was out there collecting signatures, I was thinking, I can’t believe everyone else is doing this,” she said. “I was wrong. There were people [with paid staff and volunteers] that have five petitions out there at a time!”

But perhaps the question that generated the most divergent answers--and the most cheers and jeers--was one about a months-old event: the Los Angeles Police Department’s handling of the Democratic National Convention in August.

“I’m not going to knock the LAPD,” said Joe Connolly, an anti-graffiti activist, as several listeners hissed. “There are 200,000 criminals in our city, and 7,000 cops.”

Barad said the police were “polite and friendly” when she encountered them at the convention.

Robyn Ritter Simon, a former television news reporter, said while she supported the LAPD, she thought her experiences, as a white woman, may be different from those of minorities who encounter police.

“It’s easy after the fact to say maybe there were too many police” at the convention, said Victor N. Viereck, an accountant. “But the fact is, there were not big problems.”

Two candidates, Ken Gerston and Nathan Bernstein, did not attend the forum at the Van Nuys State Office Building, although Gerston sent his wife in his place.

Afterward, several listeners said they had trouble distinguishing between the many candidates.

“When they’re speaking before a group, they just say what they think people want to hear,” said Helen Hartman, a retired office worker from Sherman Oaks.

Bernice Tollefson, a 75-year-old Green Party activist wearing rhinestone-studded spectacles, said she was impressed with the civic-mindedness of the candidates and had managed to pare her list of favorites down to three.

“It’s too bad they can’t all run as a junta,” she said.