Secessionists Taking Their Cues From Past

As the quest to break up Los Angeles nears a long-sought vote, the secession movement’s leaders are counting on support from a familiar group that stunned the establishment 24 years ago: middle-class San Fernando Valley residents whose alienation and resentment carried the property-tax revolt of Proposition 13 to victory.

The Valley secession campaign is taking several pages from the Proposition 13 playbook, from populist fund-raising methods to a reliance on homeowner groups for grass-roots organizing. That is no surprise, because Proposition 13 had its start in the Valley, and many of its early backers are now stumping for secession.

Breakup advocates say they expect to duplicate the tax rebellion’s strong finish in the coming weeks, as they take their message of smaller, more responsive government beyond their largely conservative core of supporters, most of whom live in the Valley.

In fact, the parallels between secession and Proposition 13 continue to give backers of Valley and Hollywood cityhood hope that they will pull off a victory on Nov. 5.

Proposition 13 confronted strong opposition from many of the state’s political elites, and yet it won by a huge margin on election day.

Secessionists have struggled to ignite a Proposition 13-style “prairie fire,” as then-Gov. Ronald Reagan described the effort, in a campaign lagging in the polls, in fund-raising and in volunteers, among other problems.

The movement’s appeal to the business community also is less direct than in the case of Proposition 13, which businesses supported with contributions because many were big property owners with money at stake.

Whether the secession campaign succeeds in capturing Proposition 13’s spirit during the next few weeks will, some say, come down to the payoff to voters that secessionists can realistically predict.

By promising to end a decade of rapid increases in property taxes, vowing to roll back rates and limit future hikes, Proposition 13 guaranteed property owners cash in the bank. It offered immediate relief in a climate of crisis.

Secession supporters argue a similar but less tangible case in the current campaign. They say smaller cities will deliver better, more efficient services, and therefore, breaking up Los Angeles will ultimately be a money-saver.

But the future of new Valley and Hollywood cities is filled with unknowns, such as whether taxes will rise or fall or whether political novices will be able to set up and run--in the Valley’s case--the nation’s sixth-largest city. The appeal of breaking up Los Angeles is based on a mostly intangible frustration with city government.

“Secession needs an issue--something the government has really messed up on, something people could say they were really mad about,” said John Matsusaka, a USC political scientist who has studied Proposition 13.

Richard Close, the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. president who helped spearhead Proposition 13 and a leader in the secession campaign, says people are angry. Voters will flock to support secession because city services are poor, the bureaucracy is remote and the Valley pays $127 million more per year in fees and taxes than it receives in services, he said.

“Prop. 13 was all about making government better, making it cheaper, smaller,” said Close, who was 32 when Howard Jarvis, the populist political gadfly who founded the tax-revolt movement, showed up at a meeting of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. to push his plans.

“All those arguments that you hear reverberate in the independence debate today had similar tones in the Prop. 13 debate almost 25 years ago,” Close said.

Beating the Opposition

Close and others say Proposition 13 overcame many of the same obstacles standing in the way of secession, including opposition by most politicians and business leaders.

Back then, state and local elected officials massed behind Proposition 8, an alternative that would have resulted in smaller tax cuts. Today, Mayor James K. Hahn and the City Council, in their fight against secession, have assembled a broad coalition of business organizations, labor unions, rent-control activists, and civil rights and religious groups.

The secessionists say that like Jarvis and Proposition 13 coauthor Paul Gann, they can beat the establishment. They are relying on precinct walkers, carefully targeted mailers and coffee klatches--a close-to-the-ground campaign to mine voters’ unhappiness with government in and outside the Valley and Hollywood. To pass, each secession measure must get a majority vote in both the breakaway region and Los Angeles as a whole.

“The level of upset about the way City Hall has managed the city’s business does exist throughout Los Angeles,” secession strategist Frank Schubert said. “Our job is to try to tap into that.”

Jonathan Zasloff, who teaches law at UCLA and has studied the tax revolt, said the parallels between secession and Proposition 13 are strong.

“The core sentiment of a lot of the supporters of Valley secession and the core sentiment of a lot of the Proposition 13 supporters was the same--a deep mistrust of government, a sense that government is very unresponsive, that they are not getting their money’s worth,” Zasloff said.

A number of Proposition 13 veterans are working for secession. Bob Scott, who serves as the Valley cityhood movement’s demographer and planner, still has the homemade political buttons made by Proposition 13 advocates.

Former Assemblywoman Paula Boland, a Proposition 13 activist in the West Valley, helped draft the law that made secession possible. She is running for a seat on the Valley city council that would be created if the measure passes.

Proposition 13 volunteers plotted strategy in a conference room of auto dealer Bert Boeckmann’s Galpin Motors in North Hills, now the secessionists’ unofficial headquarters.

Borrowing From Jarvis

The Proposition 13 links to the Hollywood campaign are fewer, though its leader, nightclub owner Gene La Pietra, said Jarvis, who died in 1986, is an inspiration.

“We watch his strategy very carefully,” La Pietra said. “I’ve watched the old news clips. He had very little money, but he was a personality. He got attention. He made excellent use of the press. He was fun to look at. He was fun to listen to. He made the campaign show biz, and I have learned from that.”

La Pietra has borrowed the Jarvis style of staging campaign events: “He always had kids. Always balloons. Always something happening. Hot dog cookouts.”

La Pietra said the homespun, festive feel of the Proposition 13 campaign made people comfortable--something he’s trying to do in Hollywood.

“People didn’t really understand Proposition 13, how it worked,” he said. “It was as convoluted as secession is. But they knew Howard Jarvis. They knew he was fighting for the little guy.”

The Valley campaign, La Pietra said, isn’t consulting the history books as closely. “There’s no show biz, no one leader to focus on,” he said.

Valley secessionists, however, say they are cribbing from Jarvis’ fund-raising tactics.

Just four weeks before the 1978 election, the Jarvis camp sent letters to property owners throughout the state, detailing how much money homeowners would save under Proposition 13. Within days, about $1 million had come in, nearly all of it in checks for $25 or less, said political strategist Stu Mollrich, who worked on the campaign.

Near the end, the tax revolt had $1.1 million to their opponents’ $1 million. The Proposition 13 campaign used the money for a late advertising blitz, which Mollrich said put the initiative over the top. Its radio ads featured Reagan, and its television spots showed Jarvis with Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman. “The other side never saw it coming,” Mollrich said.

The Valley cityhood campaign is sending mailers tailored to neighborhood constituencies in hopes of reaping a similar windfall.

Voters in Granada Hills will receive a letter highlighting concerns over the nearby Sunshine Canyon Landfill. Those in Sherman Oaks will get a letter from Close decrying overdevelopment and slow paramedic response.

“We’ve made money in every mailing we’ve done,” said Schubert, who declined to divulge specifics. The most recent figures available, before the mailers, showed secessionists had raised about $350,000. Hahn’s campaign against the measures has collected more than $3 million.

New money will help bolster their poll numbers, breakup proponents say.

They point out that Proposition 13 built its support slowly. Three months before the election, the proposition was viewed favorably by 35% of respondents in a Times poll. That was more than the percentage of voters who opposed the initiative, but less than the share of those undecided. Proposition 13 won by a 2-1 margin. In the Valley, it got 81% of the vote.

“Howard Jarvis was ridiculed,” said Richard Katz, co-chairman of the San Fernando Valley Independence Committee. “The pundits, the pollsters and everyone else failed to appreciate the depths of the feelings that Proposition 13 tapped into.”

According to a Times poll in June, 52% of Valley voters supported secession, 37% opposed it and the rest were undecided.

Citywide, 38% favored the measure and 47% were opposed. The Hollywood proposal trailed badly across the city, including in Hollywood.

Hitting the Streets

But Chuck Levin, field director for the secession campaign, said volunteers have yet to walk precincts and that they will make a difference. “There’s certain to be a couple hundred [people], maybe more than that,” knocking on doors, Levin said.

He refused to discuss plans in greater detail, other than to say that secessionists have begun to telephone voters.

Clarence Lo, a sociologist who has studied the tax revolt and the secession movement, said Proposition 13’s supporters also did not have a concrete plan for mobilizing volunteers. But voters in 1978 were so incensed about property taxes that they organized on their own, he said.

“Homeowners groups provided the infrastructure,” said Lo, whose book, “Small Property Versus Big Government,” examines the Proposition 13 crusade.

“They’d go and set up tables and they’d go to the shopping centers and gather signatures and give out literature.

“The secession leaders are imagining themselves at the head of a big movement storming the citadels again,” Lo said.

“But Prop. 13 was the heyday. It was the gold standard. Never will we see it again. This is an echo of it, but it’s definitely not as strong,” Lo said.

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Times staff writer Nita Lelyveld contributed to this report.