Last-Minute Appeals, Mailings Heat Valley Council Races

With less than two weeks left before voters go to the polls to decide Los Angeles City Council races in the San Fernando Valley, the contests are heating up with last-minute appeals from high-profile politicos and a blizzard of mail, some of it weighed with mud.

In the 5th District, Jack Weiss is hoping a last-minute endorsement by Mayor Richard Riordan will help him rise above the field of 11 candidates vying for the seat. Riordan announced Tuesday he is financing an independent expenditure campaign to back a slate of candidates, including Weiss.

“I’m honored the mayor has seen fit to endorse me--a Democrat--as the candidate who is best able to represent this district and serve it effectively,” said Weiss, a former federal prosecutor.

But others suggested Riordan’s entry into the race has more to do with his dislike for front-runner Tom Hayden than his close feelings for Weiss.

Hayden challenged Riordan in the 1997 mayoral election, losing to the incumbent with only 34% of the vote, but not without drawing blood with sharp attacks on the Republican mayor’s record and ties to corporate America.

Steve Afriat, a political consultant for 5th District candidate Ken Gerston, downplayed the importance of the Riordan endorsement.

“Didn’t he endorse Barbara Yaroslavsky?” Afriat asked, referring to Riordan’s backing of a losing candidate against incumbent Mike Feuer. “While he is personally popular, his popularity doesn’t transfer to other candidates,” Afriat said.

Hayden said Riordan’s entry into the race was surprising but added it might help him.

“Weiss will benefit, but I think it will activate my supporters,” Hayden said.

Others are sending mail with their own high-profile endorsements. Hayden sent voters a letter from his popular replacement in the state Senate, Sheila Kuehl.

“Tom Hayden fights for Valley neighborhoods,” Kuehl writes in a mailer sent to voters in the San Fernando Valley portion of the district. “Tom Hayden fights for Westside neighborhoods,” Kuehl writes in a version sent to voters in the rest of the district.

“His experience doing things for the Valley is different from what he has done for the Westside,” says Steve Gray-Barkan, a political consultant for Hayden.

The two-sided nature of the district, which straddles the Santa Monica Mountains, half in the Valley and half out, has other candidates also sending two versions of mail. That is particularly awkward for candidates such as Gerston, a Sherman Oaks resident trying hard to capitalize on his Valley ties without alienating Westsiders.

“It’s time for the San Fernando Valley to have its own representation,” Gerston writes in a mailer to Valley residents. Another mailer targeting Vals cites data from the secession group Valley VOTE in asserting, “The San Fernando Valley receives less than its fair share of services.”

Not surprisingly, those mailers do not go to residents who live south of Mulholland Drive.

“He really is trying to play both sides,” challenged Jill Barad of Sherman Oaks, another candidate in the race.

Westwood candidate Laura Lake had the opposite problem. Advisors said her mailers focused too much on her work in West Los Angeles, so she revised it to cite issues in the Valley portion of the district.

In the West Valley’s 3rd District race, the targeting has turned a little nasty. Former City Council deputy Judith Hirshberg sent a fund-raising appeal to supporters in the predominantly Democratic district questioning whether rivals Francine Oschin and Dennis Zine have the right political alliances for the district.

Zine, she notes, is a registered Republican, while Oschin, she points out, has worked many years for Republican Councilman Hal Bernson. “It’s a nonpartisan race, but people ask me all the time what party I’m with, so I think it matters to voters,” Hirshberg said.

Oschin counters that she is a registered Democrat and Bernson has a moderate’s record on the City Council.

VOTE FOR MOM: As a scattershot array of gun-control proposals hits the Los Angeles City Council, a certain pair of teenage brothers in matching leather jackets are becoming nearly an everyday sight in council chambers.

Not only are Theo and Niko Milonopoulos two of the youngest lobbyists trolling for votes at City Hall, but the 14-year-old fraternal twins are also running the campaign of one of the lesser-known candidates in the 5th Council District race: their 48-year-old mom, Constantina Milonopoulos.

For several years, the Studio City boys have been calling for a citywide ban on sales of gun ammunition. Alarmed by the fatal shooting of Ennis Cosby and the North Hollywood bank shootout in 1997, the youths founded the nonprofit group Kidz Voice-LA and gathered about 7,000 signatures from other youths to support the ammo ban.

But when their proposal stalled for eight months before reaching a council vote, the brothers hatched another scheme to further their gun-control ambitions: Let’s recruit Mom to run for City Council.

“We sort of forced her to do it,” Theo said. “We said, ‘Mom, you have to run to help get this issue out there.’ ”

Now, gun control has become a pillar of the elder Milonopoulos’ campaign. Her election pamphlets tout her role as the “founding director” of Kidz Voice.

Milonopoulos, who teaches English as a second language, readily admits it was her sons who got her into politics: “There was never this burning desire to run for City Council. That came of the frustration of seeing what it takes for an individual person to have their voices heard.”

The twins, meanwhile, are busy helping the candidate shape her message. When she was choosing a color for her campaign signs, they approved pink because, as Theo put it, “She sort of wants to have this woman attitude, she wants to put a woman into office.”

If he was older, Theo said, he might have simply run for council himself. But hey, Mom’s not complaining.

“She sort of has to take the brunt of it,” he said. “But she seems to be having a great time.”