Soboroff Urges Rivals to Shun Public Financing

Striking first to maintain his financial edge in the mayor’s race and put his opponents on the defensive, wealthy businessman Steve Soboroff challenged his rivals Friday to forgo up to $667,000 in public financing available to candidates under city law.

Soboroff called the voter-approved matching funds a waste of taxpayer money and vowed to spend no additional personal money on the race if the other five leading candidates refuse public financing.

“Let’s send a clear message to the taxpayers of Los Angeles,” he said in a letter to other mayoral candidates Friday. “Their money is precious and needs to be spent on better schools and safer streets, not political campaigns.”

By not accepting matching funds, the candidates would not be bound to the city’s $2.2-million spending cap for the April election. Soboroff, who had already raised more than $2 million as of June, is the least likely to benefit from the public financing law, so his challenge to other candidates is an easy one for him to make. On Friday, some of his opponents dismissed it as a ploy.

But even as Soboroff was attempting to take the offensive, the tricky cross-currents of the campaign were playing out across town.

Mayor Richard Riordan, who has endorsed Soboroff, spent Friday morning touting the leadership of one of the candidate’s opponents, Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles). Becerra co-sponsored a new law that will give businesses tax deductions for donating computers to schools and libraries. Riordan is a passionate advocate of putting computers in schools and libraries; even before becoming mayor, he and his foundation had delivered tens of thousands of computers to students across the nation.

Standing with Becerra in a computer lab at Monte Vista Street Elementary School in Highland Park, Riordan led a chant of “Viva Xavier Becerra!” among a group of fifth-graders he assembled in front of the lectern.

“Steve Soboroff is my candidate, and he’s a tremendous candidate,” Riordan said later. “But when somebody like congressman Becerra or any of the other candidates do a great job for our city, I’m going to be there and I’m going to praise them.”

While the mayor was saluting his rival, Soboroff was emulating a tactic Riordan used in March 1993, when he ran a television advertisement denouncing his opponents for taking public financing. Riordan eventually put millions of dollars of his own money into his successful mayoral bid, the most expensive in the city’s history.

Soboroff--a millionaire, though not nearly as rich as Riordan--so far has donated $20,000 of his own money to his campaign, according to him and his most recent disclosure statement. (His wife, Patti, gave an additional $1,000 in December 1999.)

On Friday, his consultant, Ace Smith, said Soboroff’s campaign would return that money if the other candidates insisted on it as part of accepting his pledge not to spend personal money in the race.

But few of Soboroff’s opponents showed signs of taking him up on his offer.

“It’s pretty disingenuous for some multimillionaire to ask other candidates to allow him to spend as much money as he wants,” said Parke Skelton, consultant to former Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, who will be accepting public financing. “Soboroff is asking that reform be chucked out the window.”

Top aides to Becerra and state Controller Kathleen Connell also indicated that they would turn down Soboroff’s challenge and accept public financing.

Voters passed a campaign finance package in 1990 that provides partial public financing to candidates who are willing to limit their spending and their use of personal funds. Candidates have to file their intention to participate in the public finance program, along with their intention to run, by Jan. 16.

City Atty. James K. Hahn, who had raised the second-largest amount of money by June, would go along with Soboroff’s proposal if all the candidates agreed, said campaign manager Matt Middlebrook.

However, Middlebrook dismissed Soboroff’s challenge as “an insincere political trick” designed to “deflect attention from the fact that he is willing to spend millions of dollars to win the mayor’s race.”

Councilman Joel Wachs also said he would be happy to forgo public financing as long as Soboroff agreed to abide by the $2.2-million spending cap.

“This is a real test of whether he’s willing to live by the spirit of the law,” Wachs said. “The public wants to limit spending, period.”

Soboroff’s consultant Smith rejected that suggestion.

In his letter to the other candidates, Soboroff said that the total of $4 million in matching funds that could be used by the top six candidates would be better spent on police and parks.

“You’ve got career politicians who want to spend public money on their campaigns, and it just turns my stomach,” he said in an interview.

In fact, the money set aside for campaigns is not available for those other civic priorities. Matching funds are placed in a trust fund earmarked for public financing and could not be spent on other programs, according to LeeAnn Pelham, acting executive director of the city Ethics Commission.

At the time of the last campaign finance filings in June, Soboroff led in the money race, with $2,005,089 raised and $765,718 spent. If he breaks the city’s $2.2-million spending cap, other candidates who have agreed to abide by it and accepted public financing could also break the cap. As a result, any candidate who accepted Soboroff’s challenge would then have more ground to make up in his or her scramble to match his war chest.

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Times staff writer Jeffrey L. Rabin contributed to this story.