Villaraigosa Backers Decry Hahn Ad as Unfair

Mayor Richard Riordan and other supporters of Los Angeles mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa strongly denounced a television ad Monday by rival James K. Hahn, even as new radio spots began airing that also challenged Villaraigosa’s trustworthiness.

The radio ads, paid for by the Police Protective League, say that Villaraigosa voted against tougher laws on sex offenders and that he helped secure freedom for a convicted cocaine trafficker. Both radio ads end with the tag line: “It’s a matter of trust.”

Hahn’s most recent television commercial, which began Sunday, also focuses on Villaraigosa’s support for the commutation of a federal prison sentence. The ad, which shows grainy photos of the candidate and a crack cocaine pipe held to a flame, ends with: “Los Angeles can’t trust Antonio Villaraigosa.”

Both sides accuse the other of beginning and continuing the negative tone of this spring’s mayoral campaign. The Hahn camp says its ads focus on illuminating Villaraigosa’s record, while the Villaraigosa camp contends his record is being misrepresented.

The Villaraigosa campaign is airing ads this week in response to what consultants say is a continuing stream of attacks.

“Since Jim Hahn lost to Antonio Villaraigosa in April, all Hahn’s done is sling mud,” the narrator states. “On June 5th, you have a choice--between a candidacy of hope and a candidacy of fear.”

The Los Angeles Police Protective League, meanwhile, paid about $35,000 for two radio ads that will air through election day on several stations. In one, union President Mitzi Grasso says Villaraigosa voted against tougher laws on sex offenders and “helped” a drug trafficker win freedom.

“I could have been a lot harder,” Grasso said Monday. “The point is to get Jim elected. We feel very trusting of [Hahn’s] positions.”

The negative tone in the campaigns has come from other outside interests as well, including nearly a quarter-million mailers sent by the Soboba Band of Mission Indians in support of Hahn.

Negative campaigning is not new to Los Angeles mayoral elections. In 1993, Riordan ran several hard-edged commercials in his effort to defeat then-City Councilman Mike Woo. In one ad Woo was blamed for an increase in the murder rate in the Hollywood district he represented. In another, a narrator, speaking over scenes of gritty streets, graffiti-covered walls and a body on a coroner’s gurney, said: “Councilman Mike Woo’s Hollywood district: crime, drugs, unemployment, homelessness, graffiti. Mike Woo, eight years on the L.A. City Council, eight years of decline.”

On Monday, Riordan sharply criticized Hahn, the city attorney, for his ad’s implication that Villaraigosa supports drug use or drug sales.

“To take one minor, minor mistake and to make it into the kind of moral sin, to try to imply he’s in favor of drug use to me is just outright wrong,” Riordan said. “Mr. Hahn is not ready to lead the city of Los Angeles.”

Villaraigosa wrote a letter in 1996 to the White House pardon office on behalf of Carlos Vignali, a convicted drug trafficker whose father is a campaign contributor to many Latino elected officials, including Villaraigosa. Carlos Vignali’s sentence was commuted by former President Bill Clinton in his final hours in the White House.

The former assemblyman at first denied writing to the White House, saying he had sent a letter to the judge overseeing Vignali’s appeal. Later, when presented with a copy of the letter to the president, he said that writing it had been a mistake but that he had written from the heart, as a father would for a son.

A visibly angry Villaraigosa said Monday that the ad shows “what’s horribly wrong with politics” and that his rival has “sunk to a new low.” Surrounded by about 18 supporters, including former Councilman Marvin Braude, Father Gregory Boyle, state Sen. Richard Alarcon and county Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, Villaraigosa said his opponent is running a campaign of fear rather than hope.

The ad “begins with someone cutting cocaine, smoking out of a pipe, trying to imply cynically and wildly that I’m somehow for those things,” Villaraigosa said. “I’m not and he knows it, and to imply that with an ad like this is way beyond the pale.”

Alarcon added: “You know, the Hahn name is a good name, but sadly that name is tarnished today because I can tell you that Jim Hahn is not his father.”

Hahn said that he stands by the ad and that he is attempting to distinguish between the two candidates’ public records.

When a reporter said that Villaraigosa has regretted writing the letter, Hahn shot back: “And so we should forget about it?

“Your record is your record,” Hahn said. “There is nothing about this that isn’t straightforward. He has to answer for his record; I have to answer for mine.”

In a letter to Villaraigosa sent Monday, Hahn campaign manager Matt Middlebrook said the ad is “totally factual” and well documented. Middlebrook was responding to a letter sent Sunday from Villaraigosa, who urged the campaign to pull the ad.

Middlebrook wrote that Villaraigosa launches “negative attack after negative attack and then [tries] to mislead the voters into believing that you are somehow trying to stay above the fray. Voters are not that easily fooled.”

Kam Kuwata, Hahn’s campaign consultant, declined to say how much the television ad cost but said it was a significant buy. He said the ad will run all week.

The election is a week from today.