As Election Nears, Races for Council Seats Heat Up

A month before the March 4 election, the races for Los Angeles City Council heated up Tuesday with a police complaint filed over misuse of city resources in one campaign and a burglary in another.

In the west San Fernando Valley’s 12th District council race, candidate Julie Korenstein, a Los Angeles Unified school board member, filed a written complaint asking the Police Department to discipline candidate Greig Smith for posing in a police reserve uniform next to an LAPD car in a campaign mailer.

Korenstein said Smith misused city equipment, badge and uniform and his position as a reserve officer in a way that implies he is supported by the LAPD and that might intimidate some voters.

“I hereby formally request that you immediately put a stop to Greig Smith’s unethical misuse of the Los Angeles Police Department for his own political gain,” Korenstein wrote to Chief William Bratton.

LAPD spokesman Jack Richter said department policy generally prohibits officers from appearing in uniform with official police cars in political campaign literature, and that any complaints would be investigated.

Smith, chief of staff to outgoing 12th District Councilman Hal Bernson, says there is nothing improper about using an old photograph of himself in a campaign mailer, according to Mitchell Englander, a campaign consultant for Smith.

Englander charged that Korenstein has cable television ads running that show her in a school classroom setting with children, and he questioned whether school district resources were used for that.

According to John Shallman, her campaign manager, the commercial was filmed in a school library after hours and the Korenstein campaign paid more than $2,000 in fees to get proper permits to use the facility.

Smith has also criticized Korenstein for using her school district car to attend campaign events, but Shallman said Korenstein reimburses the district any time she uses her car for campaign purposes. Smith and Korenstein are among six candidates on the ballot for the 12th District race.

Meanwhile, a different kind of police complaint was filed Tuesday in the 10th District race to succeed Councilman Nate Holden.

As 10th District candidate Martin Ludlow was standing on the steps of City Hall Tuesday morning announcing a number of key endorsements, his election staff discovered that Ludlow’s campaign office across town had been burglarized.

Shallman, who is also heading Ludlow’s campaign, said someone broke into the office at La Cienega and Jefferson boulevards during the early morning hours and stole computers, printers, fax machines and “everything else we would need to conduct a campaign.”

“It’s a setback,” Shallman said. “Fortunately, we have insurance.”

Shallman added that the LAPD is investigating the crime. “Maybe it was a random act,” Shallman said. “At worst, maybe it had some political motivations, but hopefully not.”

Ludlow, who is running for the council seat to represent the mid-city area, learned about the crime after announcing that he had received support from City Controller Laura Chick and council members Cindy Miscikowski, Ruth Galanter and Ed Reyes. Ludlow is one of seven candidates vying to succeed Holden, who is termed out in June.