Hahn Begins His 1st TV Ads in Reelection Campaign

Mayor James K. Hahn took to the airwaves for the first time Tuesday with two television commercials that cast him as a “gutsy” leader who has made “tough decisions” for Los Angeles.

On another marathon day of campaigning, Hahn began to make his case to voters that he deserves a second term, touting his efforts to remake the Police Department, increase after-school programs and keep the city from splitting up.

In a 15-second spot, Hahn walks purposefully down a city street, vigorously greeting friendly passers-by, as a narrator lists some of his accomplishments in office.

A 30-second commercial shows the mayor striding through a leafy suburban neighborhood as he notes that he hired Police Chief William J. Bratton, a move he says has improved the city’s policing. At the end, an ethnically diverse group of people surrounds Hahn as he states, “We kept Los Angeles together” -- an allusion to his successful campaign to defeat San Fernando Valley and Hollywood secession in 2002.

The mayor’s campaign bought at least $485,000 worth of time on broadcast and cable stations to air the ads over the next week, according to media consultants for his opponents. Hahn strategist Bill Carrick would not say how much the campaign was spending on the spots, except to describe the buy as “significant.”

Hahn’s foray into the air wars comes with less than three weeks left until the March 8 election. It is part of a drastically curtailed campaign television advertising season, the result of a steep increase in the cost of television time.

Sherman Oaks attorney Bob Hertzberg was the only candidate to beat the mayor in airing TV ads, starting two weeks ago with a more modest advertising buy. Councilman Bernard C. Parks has opted to run a movie trailer instead, while state Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sun Valley) is set to introduce a series of four commercials today.

Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa is expected to launch his first ads on Thursday, according to a media consultant for one of his rivals, but Villaraigosa’s campaign declined to confirm that.

So far, most of the interplay between the candidates has occurred in mayoral debates and dueling news conferences, and Tuesday -- which featured three forums that bracketed 13 hours of campaigning -- was no exception.

The day began at 7 a.m. with a “Conversation with the Candidates” broadcast live on KABC-AM (790), in which Hahn’s challengers spent much of the hour jabbing at his record.

Hertzberg accused the mayor of “radio silence” since the defeat of secession in 2002, and suggested that Hahn rewarded donors to the anti-secession campaign with city contracts.

“What we see in this whole pay-to-play scandal is, it’s all about people who were shaken down for money to be able to fight secession,” said the former Assembly speaker, referring to the continuing investigation into city contracting.

The mayor rejected that assertion, saying he was proud of his effort to keep the city together. He noted that Hertzberg had proposed a last-minute plan for a New York City-style borough system for Los Angeles to head off the secession vote.

“Mr. Hertzberg tried to approach me with a backroom deal to call off the vote that people had been wanting to have for years,” Hahn said.

The mayor said that frustration with City Hall was at the heart of the secession movements, adding, “That’s why we worked to create that whole neighborhood council system, so people do have more of a direct voice.”

At that point, Villaraigosa jumped in, noting that neighborhood councils were actually created as part of a charter reform measure approved by voters in 1999, before Hahn was elected mayor.

“They didn’t happen without my work,” Hahn retorted. “There were none organized before I was there.”

“They happened long before you,” Villaraigosa snapped back. “As usual, you take credit for other people’s work.”

For his part, Alarcon maintained that many residents still feel distant from City Hall.

“The question is whether in defeating the measure the people feel better for it, and I don’t believe the San Fernando Valley does, and I represent the San Fernando Valley,” he said.

Despite their jousting, the five major candidates expressed similar ideological views when KABC host Doug McIntyre spent half an hour pressing them about illegal immigration.

McIntyre criticized the use of matricula consular cards -- issued to undocumented immigrants by the Mexican consulate for identification -- as well as the Los Angeles Police Department’s Special Order 40, which prohibits officers from detaining or questioning a person solely to determine immigration status.

For the most part, the candidates defended the matricula cards and the police order as ways to increase public safety, and said there was little the city could do to stem illegal immigration. The only dissenter was a sixth mayoral hopeful, Walter Moore, a Westchester attorney who has largely financed his own campaign.

“We should not be giving people an easier way to stay in our country illegally,” Moore said. “We should make L.A. the last place they want to come.”

The back and forth continued when Parks later held a news conference on the steps of City Hall to defend his record as police chief for the second day in a row. The councilman accused Hahn, who engineered his ouster three years ago as chief of police, of spreading a “laundry list of lies” about his tenure.

Hahn did not attend a noontime mayoral forum sponsored by the Encino Chamber of Commerce, but his rivals did, and they did not spare him any criticism. When the candidates were asked to distinguish themselves from one another, Villaraigosa said that any one of the other major contenders “would make a better mayor than the current one.”

Villaraigosa and Alarcon wound up the day at a third event sponsored by a coalition of unions, educators and religious groups at a church in Pacoima. Addressing a crowd of about 1,000, the two candidates spoke largely in Spanish and agreed that they would oppose any expansion of the Bradley Landfill in Sun Valley.

Also on Tuesday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger weighed in for the first time in public on Hertzberg’s pledge to break up the Los Angeles Unified School District. While saying that he was not familiar with the specifics, he nevertheless endorsed the concept of reforming “this huge kind of empire.”

“I think breaking it up would be a good idea,” the governor said, responding to a question from a reporter at an afternoon news conference in Sacramento. “We should not only concentrate on having smaller school districts, but I think it’s also important that we should concentrate on having smaller schools.”

Meanwhile, United Teachers Los Angeles reported that the union had spent $13,194.74 on literature as part of a campaign to support Villaraigosa’s bid, bringing the total independent expenditures in the mayor’s race so far to $274,208.

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Times staff writers Noam N. Levey, Patrick McGreevy and Robert Salladay contributed to this report.