Democratic Legislators Have Funds to Win Again

Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sepulveda), once considered the most vulnerable of Valley lawmakers, is so confident of reelection on Nov. 8 that he has dispatched his top district aide to work on the campaign of a Democratic challenger elsewhere in the state.

Assemblymen Terry B. Friedman (D-Tarzana) and Burt Margolin (D-Los Angeles) say they’ll do whatever is necessary to win but add that they have seen no evidence they’ll have to do much.

And entrenched incumbents state Sen. David Roberti (D-Los Angeles) and Assemblyman Tom Bane (D-Tarzana) are sitting on prodigious campaign funds exceeding $609,050 and $405,744 respectively against poorly financed opponents. They, too, are donating heavily to other Democratic campaigns.

With only 24 days until voters go to the polls, San Fernando Valley legislative races have been low-profile, quiet affairs. Republican challengers have raised so little money and marshaled so little support that even GOP Assemblywoman Marian W. La Follette of Northridge said publicly she doesn’t expect any of them to win.

“These young fellows start out the first time, and they don’t have the name, they don’t have the wherewithal,” said another GOP official who requested anonymity. “I think they have to do it a couple of times.”

Well-stocked campaign coffers are only one advantage of incumbency. Districts drawn to give their political party a major edge, publicly funded newsletters and the staff and resources to provide services to constituents make most incumbents unbeatable unless they are tainted by scandal or heavily outspent.

Democrats Katz and Bane both said the Assembly Republican campaign committee, called ARPAC, could still try to ambush them with an 11th-hour blitz of negative brochures. They are steeling themselves against such an onslaught by sending mailings touting their achievements.

Nevertheless, all of the Democratic officeholders won at least 60% of the vote in 1986. And the last time an incumbent Valley legislator lost was 1980 when Katz beat GOP Assemblyman J. Robert Hays in the 39th District, which includes Latino and black neighborhoods of Pacoima and San Fernando, working-class Sepulveda, rural Sylmar and part of upper-middle-class Northridge.

Despite Democrats’ 57%-to-34% registration advantage, the northeast Valley district is considered competitive because many of those voters are crime-conscious conservatives who supported Ronald Reagan, George Deukmejian and tax-cutting Proposition 13 in the past decade. Before Katz, the Assembly seat had seesawed between the two parties; four different assemblyman were elected in 12 years.

But high-voltage Republican campaigns in 1984 and 1986 failed to derail Katz, who has used aggressive constituent services, taxpayer-financed newsletters and big-bucks election campaigns to establish a high and largely favorable profile. After his lopsided victory two years ago, the GOP Assembly leadership removed his district from the top tier of viable races targeted for large contributions.

Katz has also prevailed because he has established a record as a pragmatic politician who tends to be conservative on crime, moderate on fiscal policy and liberal on social issues, such as abortion and gay rights. This has helped him overcome a potential vulnerability: his role as a top lieutenant of Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco), a favorite GOP target.

In this campaign, Katz, the Assembly Transportation Committee chairman, is touting the passage of his bills to strengthen the state’s ability to seize drug dealers’ personal property and to require trucks carrying sand and gravel to cover their loads with tarpaulins to protect motorists’ windshields. He is also stressing constituent services.

Katz’s opponent is Jim Rendleman, 32, a Granada Hills attorney and chairman of the Los Angeles County Young Republicans who is making his first bid for public office. Rendleman said he hopes to overcome a limited campaign budget with an enthusiastic volunteer army of 350 that is stumping door to door and will get out the vote on Election Day.

Rendleman, a conservative former Air Force officer, is trying to portray Katz as a far-left Democrat who is indebted to special-interest campaign contributors and puts Brown’s agenda above the district’s.

“He’s trying to build himself into a statewide leader without really paying attention to the 39th District,” Rendleman said of Katz. “He represents the loony left and the corrupt political machine and the big labor bosses.”

Katz, who may seek statewide office in 1990, responded, “It’s election year rhetoric and it ought to be treated as such. . . . I vote my district and I vote my district’s interests.”

Rendleman said Katz “showed his true colors” when he backed the Democratic leadership on a procedural vote against moving a death penalty bill out of a committee to the floor for a vote. When it reached the floor, Katz voted for the death penalty measure, as he has previously.

“My support of the death penalty is clear,” Katz said. “I have authored death penalty bills. I have authored bills on victims’ rights.”

Katz suggested that his opponent “obviously hasn’t been around so he doesn’t know what’s being done in the district.” Rendleman moved into the district in January from Chatsworth, where he lived after leaving active duty in the Air Force in June, 1987.

Rendleman responded that Katz moved to the district shortly before first running for the 39th District seat.

Katz has received $379,158 this year, spent $273,252 and has $163,379 on hand, according to his campaign report filed with the state. Rendleman, who wants to garner $150,000, has raised $28,789, spent $37,630 and has $1,022 available. He has not received money from ARPAC.

Although he said he’s taking nothing for granted, Katz has given his administrative assistant, James Acevedo, a leave to work on the hotly contested campaign of Brown-backed Democrat Robert Epple of Norwalk against Assemblyman Wayne Grisham (R-Norwalk) in the 63rd District. Katz has contributed $59,948 to Epple’s campaign and also has been helping another Democratic Assembly candidate, Christian F. Thierbach of Anaheim, in the 72nd District.

In general, Rendleman’s themes are reflected by other GOP challengers who seek to paint their Democratic opponents as too liberal, out of touch with the district, or both.

Assemblyman Friedman, 39, a former legal aid lawyer, is seeking a second term in the 43rd District, where Democrats have a 53% to 36% registration edge. Reagan and Deukmejian have also carried the affluent district, which stretches from Studio City to Topanga Canyon and over the Santa Monica Mountains to Beverly Hills, Westwood and Brentwood.

Friedman said his first-term accomplishments include 15 bills signed into law, several of them anti-crime measures, and appointment to the powerful Assembly Ways and Means Committee, which handles budget legislation. But he is focusing on his effort to prevent the dumping of garbage in the scenic Santa Monica Mountains.

A preservation bill Friedman authored was shelved in the Ways and Means Committee last year, but he subsequently got $9.5 million allocated in the state budget to buy landfill sites in Sullivan, Rustic and Mission canyons and preserve them as open space. The Los Angeles County Sanitation Districts opposed the measure, claiming that the county needs the canyons for landfills to stave off an impending trash crisis.

Friedman’s Republican opponent is Tom Franklin, 30, a Beverly Hills attorney who has served as president of the Beverly Hills Republican Assembly. He said Friedman is “way out of the mainstream” by resisting tougher crime-fighting measures.

He cited Friedman’s opposition to the death penalty for premeditated murder and to a measure giving law-enforcement officials the authority to wiretap suspected drug dealers. Franklin ridiculed Friedman’s contention that gang members don’t use the telephone to make deals. “They carry beepers,” he said.

Friedman responded, “I oppose the death penalty not only for moral and religious reasons but also, according to every study of its use, it is not a deterrent to murder. I favor life without the possibility of parole as an alternative.”

He called the wire tap bill “bad legislation which dangerously threatened the rights of all citizens” while grabbing headlines for its supporters. As an alternative, he said, he supports more police on the streets and increased education to turn youths away from gangs.

Franklin criticized Friedman’s initiative to preserve the Santa Monica Mountains, asserting that it failed to include trash disposal alternatives. Friedman responded that he supports increased recycling efforts, reduced use of plastics and other nonbiodegradable products and composting to cut waste. He said he prefers the more remote Elsmere Canyon between Los Angeles and Santa Clarita as a landfill site.

Franklin has raised $7,729; Friedman has received $168,810 this year.

Bane Cites Service

Bane, 74, is an 18-year Assembly veteran, chairman of the powerful Rules Committee, and another of Speaker Brown’s top allies. Democrats have a 55% to 36% registration advantage in his 40th District, which includes Van Nuys and parts of other Valley communities extending from North Hollywood to Woodland Hills.

Bane said he will emphasize his delivery of constituent services as well as “my strong support for public education, strong support for a decent standard of living for senior citizens, my absolute opposition to any form of discrimination.”

His opponent, Van Nuys businessman Bruce Dahl, 35, said traditional family values--the home, education, fighting crime--are the cornerstone of his shoestring campaign. At the same time, he said Bane has ignored problems with gangs and drugs in the schools to concentrate on campaign fund raising for Brown and candidates the Speaker supports.

“What is happening in this district should be Tom Bane’s prime concern, but it’s not,” Dahl said. “Tom Bane is more interested in the big political bossism of Willie Brown and the inflow of huge amounts of money into that political machine from the banking industry, the insurance industry, the savings and loans industry.”

Bane called this campaign rhetoric from someone who “doesn’t have any background to offer.” He added, “I’m very close to my district and the people of my district know I am very responsive to their needs.”

Bane, who has used his legislative clout to raise large sums, has received $630,000 this year and spent $708,140. Dahl, in contrast, has raised less than $10,000.

Roberti, 49, one of the state’s most powerful figures as Senate president pro tem, is seeking his fifth term in the 23rd Senate District, where Democrats have a 58% to 30% registration advantage. The district includes Burbank, Universal City, Hollywood, West Hollywood and Silver Lake.

Roberti, who uses his campaign funds largely to support other Democratic senators, has focused on registering voters and getting out the vote in his district, campaign aide William Orozco said.

Republican Tom Larkin, 49, a commercial real estate broker and gay activist, characterized Roberti as an “ultra-liberal.” Larkin favors legislative action to reform automobile insurance, tougher laws against street gangs and managed growth. He said he hasn’t raised enough money to send out a single mailing.

Assemblyman Margolin, 38, is seeking his fifth term in the 45th District, where Democrats outnumber Republicans by 58% to 30%. The district includes parts of Toluca Lake, Universal City, North Hollywood, Hollywood, West Hollywood and Hancock Park.

Republican David Frankel, a Los Angeles accountant, has reported raising less than $1,000 and is not campaigning actively. Margolin, who has $55,595 in campaign funds available, is responding in kind.

“I’m not waging a full-scale campaign at this point,” Margolin said. “But I am prepared to do so if I see one from the opposition.”

Staff writers Alan Citron and Mark Gladstone contributed to this story.