Villaraigosa TV Ad Hits Hahn on Ethics Questions

The Los Angeles mayoral race took a harsh turn Monday as City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa began airing a television ad that slams incumbent James K. Hahn for a grand jury investigation of his campaign fundraising and alleged corruption at City Hall.

The ad echoes months of verbal assaults on Hahn’s ethics by Villaraigosa and comes after the councilman’s own campaign faltered last week when his fundraising sparked a preliminary probe by the district attorney’s office.

Villaraigosa’s move ensures a searing exchange of negative ads in the final two weeks of the race. But Hahn has not started TV advertising -- the main vehicle used to reach Los Angeles voters -- because he lags in raising money. Hahn campaign strategist Bill Carrick said Villaraigosa’s ad shows the councilman’s campaign “is sinking like a rock.”

“This is obviously in direct response to the fact that the D.A. has opened an investigation on him,” Carrick said. He described Villaraigosa’s candidacy as “built on a house of cards,” referring to his central campaign pledge to “restore trust” in City Hall.

Villaraigosa media strategist David Doak said the councilman’s campaign team expected “a vicious campaign” from Hahn, “and we thought that we would put this issue front and center” before the May 17 election.

“We think that Hahn’s history of corruption is a major issue in the campaign,” he said.

Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley is also investigating two prominent Hahn supporters accused of laundering donations to the mayor’s 2001 campaign. Cooley opened the probe of Villaraigosa’s fundraising after the councilman announced last week that he would return $47,000 in donations from employees of two Florida companies and their family members.

Campaign strategist Darry Sragow, who is unaligned in the mayoral race, said it made sense for Villaraigosa to “remind voters of the controversy” surrounding Hahn’s fundraising and administration after days of questions about the Florida donations.

“It’s a cliche, but the best defense is a good offense,” Sragow said.

Villaraigosa’s ad shows images of Hahn and an attache case stuffed with cash.

“A federal grand jury is investigating corruption in the Hahn administration,” an announcer says amid strains of ominous music. “Jim Hahn’s personal e-mails and documents subpoenaed. Resignations amid charges of no-bid contracts and pay-to-play.”

Prosecutors are examining whether Hahn’s administration illegally steered city contracts to campaign donors.

“Where will the investigation end?” the ad concludes. “They say follow the money, and almost all corruption is tied to fundraising for Hahn’s campaigns. Isn’t it time for a change?”

As they each campaigned Monday at L.A. charter schools -- Villaraigosa in the Mid-Wilshire district and Hahn in Pacoima -- the candidates traded shots over ethics and education.

Villaraigosa, accompanied by filmmaker Rob Reiner and schools advocate Nancy Daly Riordan, read “The Rainbow Fish” to a preschool class and vowed to expand preschool programs, then excoriated Hahn for being “missing in action” on education for four years.

Turning to ethics, he raised the case of Hahn donor Mark Abrams, a Westside developer who was fined $270,000 by the city Ethics Commission for laundering contributions to Hahn and other candidates in the 2001 election. He said Hahn had not returned the donations collected by Abrams and another supporter, attorney Pierce O’Donnell, who has been charged with laundering $25,500 in campaign contributions to Hahn.

“He has not returned any of the money from Mr. O’Donnell -- any of the money that has been part of a pattern and practice of scandal and corruption probes in his administration,” Villaraigosa said.

In Pacoima, Hahn touted his school proposals to dozens of children from a stage decorated with tricycles, dolls and other toys at the Vaughn Next Century Learning Center. Surrounded afterward by a cluster of reporters and news cameras, Hahn accused Villaraigosa of using corruption allegations to divert attention from a lackluster education record.

“There were complete investigations into these matters, and the investigators demonstrated that there was no wrongdoing on behalf of my campaign or anybody involved with my campaign,” Hahn said.

Hahn said, as he has before, that it is impossible to return money raised by Abrams, because the accounts were closed, and an aide said the same applied to O’Donnell. He also called on the district attorney to conclude the investigations into his fundraising and city contracting.

“I’m somebody who has cooperated fully with all these investigations, ordered all the departments to turn over every bit of information that’s requested,” he said. “We’ve instructed every staff member to cooperate. A year and a half later, we’re no closer to an answer than we were at the beginning.”

Earlier, the Democratic mayor pressed his effort to rally conservatives behind his candidacy with an appearance on the “McIntyre in the Morning” talk show on KABC-AM (790).

Responding to questions about freeway shootings and racial strife at Jefferson High School, Hahn criticized Villaraigosa for opposing legal injunctions against gang activities when he was a leader of the Southern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Villaraigosa now supports them.

Hahn also faulted the county Board of Supervisors for removing the gold cross that had adorned the county seal since 1957 rather than defend it against a threatened lawsuit by the ACLU. The decision sparked an outcry from some conservatives.

The mayor called the cross, a symbol of the California missions, “a nod to the heritage of how this city got founded.” “I was just mad that they knuckled under to the ACLU without even a court fight,” said Hahn, who called the move “insane.”

Hahn’s father, the late county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, helped design the seal.

Meanwhile, reports filed with the Ethics Commission show that independent spending on the mayoral campaign has nearly broken the $1.5-million record set four years ago.

Almost $982,000 has been put behind Hahn’s reelection. Another $514,000 has been spent to promote Villaraigosa. By law, the spending, primarily by labor unions, cannot be coordinated with either campaign.

Villaraigosa received a major financial boost Monday when the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in Washington, D.C., said it would spend $200,000 on radio ads for him.

Times staff writer Jeffrey L. Rabin contributed to this report.