Charges Fly Between Hahn and Hertzberg

James K. Hahn and his two main rivals battled Friday into the last weekend of a neck-neck-and-neck contest for Los Angeles mayor, trading charges over personal integrity and the state’s 2001 energy crisis.

Hahn was joined by a prominent consumer advocate in pressing his attack on Bob Hertzberg, who was Assembly speaker for two years, which included a summer of blackouts and soaring electricity rates.

“We’re here to set the record straight,” Hahn told reporters gathered at his Miracle Mile campaign headquarters, as he insisted that Hertzberg had sided with the rogue energy firm Enron. Standing alongside him was Harvey Rosenfield of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights.

Antonio Villaraigosa, meantime, tried to position himself above the increasingly bitter back-and-forth, vowing to stick to a positive message -- at least in his personal appearances.

“In the last four days, I’m going to focus as much as possible on my own campaign and what I have to offer,” said Villaraigosa, who continued to batter Hahn on the television airwaves.

Further back in the pack, Richard Alarcon and Bernard C. Parks took aim Friday at their front-running opponents.

A day after Hahn began airing a TV ad assailing Hertzberg and Villaraigosa for seeking the early release of a drug trafficker, state Sen. Alarcon weighed in with a statement saying he too had been approached by the father of the imprisoned Carlos Vignali.

“Richard had the courage and conviction to refuse [the elder Vignali’s ] request to lobby for his son’s pardon,” the Alarcon campaign said in a letter to supporters. “That is the kind of courage we need in our next mayor.” The comparison the letter drew was to Hertzberg and Villaraigosa, each of whom wrote a letter supporting Vignali.

In South L.A. on Friday, Parks challenged Hahn’s recently announced plan to hire 720 police officers in the coming fiscal year. The former LAPD chief and current councilman called the proposal “suspect,” coming so close to election day.

The rapid fire of charges and countercharges reflected a race too close to call heading into the final days -- with spending pushing close to $10 million.

Hahn, Hertzberg and Villaraigosa are all tightly bunched at the top, polls suggest, in a fight for two slots in a May 17 runoff.

As the candidates pummeled each other on TV, a quieter but often more vicious campaign was being waged in mailboxes, a favorite avenue for last-minute, under-the-radar attacks.

Hahn’s labor allies were targeting Hertzberg with mailers assailing the former legislator’s credibility, as well as his record as speaker.

“Think the only thing colossal about Bob is his size? It’s also his lies,” says one brochure, playing on Hertzberg’s gigantic presence in his television ads. The mailer said the challenger criticized opponents for taking labor contributions, but accepted $145,000 from unions when he ran for Assembly in 2000.

“Maybe Bob’s big idea is that he’s too big for his own integrity britches,” the brochure said.

A second mailer, featuring a photo of cash being thrown into a garbage can, accused Hertzberg of leaving California “with the worst financial deficit in the nation and in the state’s history.”

A third mailer touted Hahn’s endorsement by the unions for city police and firefighters.

Fighting back, an attorney for Hertzberg filed a request Friday urging the Los Angeles Ethics Commission to investigate Hahn’s labor backers. The complaint alleged that the unions had improperly exceeded campaign finance limits.

Hertzberg’s campaign also complained Friday that a telephone recording played after an automated dial-up of GOP voters’ numbers illegally failed to disclose who was paying for the message. The recording criticized Hertzberg, who has aggressively courted Republican support during the campaign.

Ethical issues have been a central part of the campaign for months, with Hahn under fire from all sides over a criminal inquiry into the city’s contracting practices and his fundraising.

The mayor has sought to turn the issue back on Hertzberg and Villaraigosa by questioning their conduct in the Vignali case and tying them to Enron, which was at the center of the state’s energy crisis. Villaraigosa and Hertzberg raised $18,000 and $13,000, respectively, from Enron. Hahn himself took in $900 from the firm when he was city attorney.

On Friday, however, Hertzberg was the main focus of Hahn’s attack, reflecting their competition for the same pool of moderate-to-conservative voters -- particularly constituents they covet in the Valley.

“When he was speaker of the Assembly, at a time of an enormous threat to the state of California, Hertzberg consistently worked to protect the interests of the people who brought us deregulation and the phony electricity crisis,” Rosenfield said in an appearance arranged by the Hahn campaign.

The activist cited numerous e-mails and other documents to argue that throughout 2000 and 2001, Hertzberg discussed legislative proposals with Enron and worked closely with utilities and other industry leaders who were looking to the state for financial help during the crisis.

Hertzberg responded hours later at a Koreatown hotel, where he and Villaraigosa received a Korean American political action committee’s joint endorsement.

The former state lawmaker read from a Times article that quoted consumer advocates and others dismissing the accusations, which Hahn first made earlier this week. “I don’t know about the e-mails,” Hertzberg said. “These are all a bunch of lobbyists whose job it is to promote themselves. I don’t know what their details are.”

Hertzberg, who has practiced law since leaving the Assembly in late 2002, continued to decline to answer questions about his clients, though he explicitly stated Friday that he had never represented Enron.

He did say he represented a company in the “oil and gas” industry, but he declined to name it. He said the only utility he had represented as a lawyer was the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

While reporters peppered Hertzberg, Villaraigosa quietly slipped out of the conference room without taking questions.

Earlier in the day, speaking to reporters at City Hall, the councilman would not talk about Hahn directly.

“The big picture is: We need a fresh start. We need a leader who can unite our city around the common challenges we face as Angelenos,” Villaraigosa said before setting out on a scheduled 32-hour bus ride across the city. “I’ve said from the very beginning this campaign was about leadership and about restoring the trust and confidence in our leaders that we need in this city.”

Also Friday, the candidates presented their latest campaign finance reports, detailing how they had raised and spent millions in the race.

Villaraigosa reported that his campaign had taken in $227,219 and spent $1.2 million from Feb. 20, the beginning of the most recent reporting period, to Wednesday. Hertzberg raised $224,600 and spent $965,800 during the same span.

Hahn’s committee reported raising $78,070 and spending more than $1 million.

So far, Hahn has poured more than $3.5 million into his reelection effort. Villaraigosa has spent more than $2.5 million on his challenge, Hertzberg $2.39 million, Parks $713,300, and Alarcon $735,300.

Overall, more than half the money the candidates have spent -- or close to $5.5 million -- has gone toward television advertising.

Four years ago, a crowded field of candidates spent more than $17.2 million in the open-seat mayor’s race, a city record.

Times staff writers Michael Finnegan, Jessica Garrison, Matea Gold and Noam N. Levey and researcher Maloy Moore contributed to this report.