4 Hahn Appointees Switch to Hertzberg

In a setback for James K. Hahn’s reelection campaign, four of the mayor’s city commissioners, including two well-connected political fundraisers, resigned Thursday and endorsed former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg.

Attorney Lisa Specht and developer Doug Ring, who have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for local candidates, said they planned to do all they could to help Hertzberg become the first man in 32 years to defeat an incumbent Los Angeles mayor.

“I think Jim Hahn is a nice guy,” said Specht, a recreation and parks commissioner who co-chaired Hahn’s 2001 mayoral campaign. “He just hasn’t shown the kind of leadership and vision that many of us hoped he would.”

Hahn, who faces three major challengers in the March mayoral election, dismissed the departures as inconsequential. “We have a lot of commissioners who serve the city and for one reason or another decide to move on,” the mayor said.

But the defections, which the Hertzberg campaign announced in a news release, appear to herald an intensifying attack on Hahn by a candidate who has already peeled away several of the mayor’s wealthy and influential backers.

“I suspect they are trying to inflict psychological damage,” said political strategist Arnold Steinberg, who worked on Richard Riordan’s 1993 and 1997 mayoral campaigns. “There may be an attempt strategically to psych out other candidates and encourage dollars to come to your campaign....”

Specht, an attorney with the politically influential law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, has raised money for numerous local political campaigns and said she had raised “tens of thousands of dollars” for Hahn, both before he was elected mayor and since.

Two decades ago, Specht ran unsuccessfully against Hahn for city attorney.

Ring, a West Los Angeles real estate developer who has served on the Community Redevelopment Commission since the Riordan administration, is known as one of Los Angeles’ most prolific fundraisers.

He supported Antonio Villaraigosa in the 2001 mayor’s race and is married to Los Angeles City Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, who has endorsed Hahn.

Ring said Thursday he was resigning explicitly to help Hertzberg with money. New city ethics rules prohibit commissioners from fundraising for candidates for city office.

“I want to fundraise for him,” Ring said. “I think he’s a problem-solver and I intuitively believe that the city needs a new direction.”

Also resigning Thursday were Dennis O’Sullivan, who left the Homeless Services Authority commission, and Victor Sampson, who left the Police Permit Review Panel.

The four former commissioners join a Hertzberg campaign team that already includes two former key Hahn supporters: real estate developer Richard Zyman, another leading fundraiser, and San Fernando Valley businessman David Fleming. Both men are co-chairs of Hertzberg’s campaign.

In the opening stages of the campaign, all the major challengers are scrambling to raise the millions of dollars that political strategists say will be necessary to unseat the mayor. No incumbent has lost since Sam Yorty was unseated in 1973 by Tom Bradley in their second showdown.

Hertzberg’s campaign strategists have acknowledged that fundraising is particularly important for Hertzberg, who will need to advertise extensively since he has far less name recognition than his competitors.

The Sherman Oaks Democrat has so far pursued the task more aggressively than anyone but Hahn. Two weeks ago, Hertzberg announced that he had hit the $200,000 mark, far outpacing the other challengers.

Hahn, who has been raising money for more than year, had collected more than $1.3 million by the end of last year and was expected to have much more by the time the candidates file campaign finance statements at the end of this month.

Matching the mayor’s fundraising will be difficult, according to many political observers. But Hertzberg’s announcement Thursday may also be seen as a way to steer influential political players away from the other candidates, said Cal State Fullerton political scientist Raphael Sonenshein.

“I don’t think this would intimidate people who are thinking about supporting Hahn, but it may intimidate people thinking about supporting another challenger,” said Sonenshein, who has written extensively about Los Angeles politics.

Hertzberg announced the resignations on the same day that City Councilman Bernard C. Parks opened his campaign for mayor at a Westchester news conference where the former Los Angeles police chief attacked the Hahn administration’s “entrenched relationship with special interests.”

State Sen. Richard Alarcon, a Sylmar Democrat, entered the race to replace Hahn in March.

Villaraigosa, also a former Assembly speaker and now a city councilman, said he is still deciding whether to challenge Hahn a second time.

Hertzberg characterized the new endorsements as further indications of disillusionment with the Hahn administration.

“People are coming to me,” he said. “I’m just getting a lot of people who are just frustrated, like I am, by the direction of the city.”

O’Sullivan, the former homeless services commissioner, said he had no plans to raise money for Hertzberg.

“I’m pretty small potatoes,” said O’Sullivan, who directs a drug and alcohol rehab center in the San Fernando Valley.

O’Sullivan said he resigned out of frustration, complaining that the mayor’s office has been neglecting homeless issues since Hahn’s deputy mayor in charge of housing resigned earlier this year. “I couldn’t get my calls returned,” O’Sullivan said.

Sampson, a San Fernando Valley businessman, could not be reached for comment.

Times staff writers Jessica Garrison and Patrick McGreevy contributed to this report.