Hahn Rivals Focus on Corruption

In what has almost become a tradition this campaign season, the four major challengers to Mayor James K. Hahn used their third debate with the incumbent Thursday to take swipes at him for presiding over an administration under investigation for alleged corruption.

“We are running for mayor because we want to restore confidence and trust,” said Antonio Villaraigosa, a city councilman and former Assembly speaker.

“We have to end pay-to-play,” said state Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sun Valley), implying that city contracts are for sale to campaign contributors.

Councilman Bernard C. Parks and former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg also stressed similar themes.

Thursday night’s debate, the second this week before a predominantly Jewish audience, came hours after a federal grand jury indicted John Stodder Jr., a former public relations executive, for his role in an alleged scheme to inflate bills submitted to the Department of Water and Power.

The indictment is the first to come out of local and federal investigations into contracts at city departments.

Stodder worked for Fleishman-Hillard on its $3-million-a-year contract with the department, but also helped advise the mayor’s office on how to use that contract to bolster the mayor’s image.

Stodder’s attorney denied the accusations in the indictment.

Hahn pushed aside the criticism leveled by his opponents Thursday night, saying that he supports the investigations. “The city of L.A. is a victim and the DWP is a victim, and when somebody steals from the government they should be punished severely,” he said.

Going on the offensive, he also had harsh words for opponents who he suggested are smearing his reputation.

“When somebody tries to spread a cloud over everybody, tries by innuendo to suggest that they were a part of it, that’s wrong too,” he said. “No one has ever suggested that I had anything to do with these things.... Everyone knows the Hahn name, my name, stands for honesty and integrity.”

Political scientist Raphael Sonenshein, who has written extensively about Los Angeles politics, said the investigations have been a fixture in the mayor’s race since the beginning. But Thursday night “is the first time it became a live issue you can actually see and feel,” he said.

Sonenshein praised Hahn’s forceful defense of his own personal integrity. “It’s a bad news item for Hahn,” he added, “but he handled it better, I think, than anyone else.”

The hourlong debate was held before an audience of about 140 voters at Temple Beth Am on the city’s Westside. The five candidates answered questions written by audience members and posed by a moderator, Ana Garcia of KNBC-TV Channel 4.

While Hertzberg, who is Jewish, hopes to win support from a substantial portion of Jewish voters in the March 8 election, all of the candidates are courting members of the community, who make up a significant fraction of the city’s electorate, vote in high numbers and also tend to contribute to their favored candidates.

In 2001, a Times exit poll found that Jews made up 18% of voters in the June runoff. Hahn beat Villaraigosa in that race in part by capturing 54% of the Jewish vote, compared with the 46% won by Villaraigosa.

For most of the debate, the five candidates focused on nuts-and-bolts policy matters, from homelessness to Los Angeles International Airport modernization to transportation.

The mayor stuck diligently to his message that he deserves another turn because he has offered solid leadership that has made the city safer and “moved the city forward on many fronts,” including improvements to traffic, housing and after-school programs.

As he has done repeatedly in recent weeks, he also sought to portray three of his opponents -- Villaraigosa, Hertzberg and Alarcon -- as Sacramento politicians who rapaciously siphoned away city funds during their tenure in the Legislature.

Hahn made disparaging references to Sacramento politicians twice in his opening statement and again in his closing statement, hammering them for balancing the state budget by taking funds that were meant for Los Angeles.

His opponents, meanwhile, offered passionate and sometimes arcane explanations of how they would do things better.

But the candidates broke little new ground.

Much of what they said Thursday night they had said before -- in some cases almost verbatim.

Hahn touted his $11-billion plan to expand LAX, while his opponents called it an expensive boondoggle that would do little to make passengers safer. Hertzberg said he is embarrassed by the decrepit appearance of the airport.

In one of the more awkward moments of the debate, the candidates were asked to say something “warm and fuzzy” about one another or their policies.

Hertzberg offered this tantalizing tidbit: “I was Antonio’s roommate and I’m not disclosing anything.”

“And neither are you,” he said, turning to Villaraigosa, with whom he shared an apartment in Sacramento when both were in the Assembly in the late 1990s.

Then he joked, “Yes, it was warm and fuzzy.”

Parks accused Hahn of pandering to the city’s police union by giving officers “raises well over the cost of living.” And, striking one of his favorite themes, he called police officers’ work schedule, in which some work three 12-hour days, “a multimillion-dollar giveaway.”

Hahn portrayed himself as the only candidate motivated primarily by a desire to “make this a better city.”

In response, Alarcon snapped: “I am not running for mayor of Sacramento. There has been far too much talk of Sacramento.” He then reeled off a list of Los Angeles projects for which he secured funding during his time up north.

Hertzberg, who wore a yarmulke, played to his ethnic advantage in the temple, promising to work “24/6,” a reference to resting on the Jewish Sabbath.

Thursday’s debate, like the one Tuesday, was sponsored by the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Federation, the Jewish Journal newspaper, the Progressive Jewish Alliance and the Jewish Labor Committee. Hahn did not attend Tuesday’s event.

Times staff writer Michael Finnegan contributed to this report.