Council Race Enlivened by Scholarship Lottery, Backing of Clergymen

Campaigning in the race to fill the vacant Eastside seat on the Los Angeles City Council warmed up Tuesday with two candidates competing for center stage with different appeals--one using money, the other religion.

Assemblyman Richard Alatorre (D-Los Angeles), in a mailer sent to thousands of homes one week before the Dec. 10 special election, offered a $5,000 scholarship to the winner of a private lottery, while rival Steve Rodriguez, declaring that “God is the ultimate campaign manager,” announced the endorsement of several Northeast-area clergymen.

The Alatorre mailer, consisting of a brochure and a letter to voters, includes a “question-and-answer card” on the assemblyman’s stands on education.

Scratching for Answers

Three questions are asked. The answers are covered and must be scratched off like the numbers hidden on a lottery ticket. If the three correct answers are chosen, the voter is urged to send the card back to Alatorre’s headquarters to be eligible for the scholarship. “The drawing for the scholarship will be held on Election Day, Dec. 10,” the card says.

Rodriguez called the mailer “a slick gimmick attempting to buy their (voters’) support.”

The mailers, Alatorre said at a $250-per-person downtown fund-raiser Monday night, “are like a lottery, a chance. If people have the opportunity to read about what I’ve done, it’s helpful, it’s unique, it gets their attention. Isn’t that what mailers are supposed to do?”

Others Expected

It is the first of a number of lottery-type mailers expected to be sent in the next several days--part of an extensive mail campaign that Alatorre strategists say will cost $75,000 and rivals say will cost at least twice that.

Although mail is important to every political candidate, it has played a huge role in Alatorre’s high-budget campaign, which has sent voters everything from potholders to birthday cards. The mailer campaign for Alatorre was designed by Richard Ross, chief of staff for Assembly Speaker Willie Brown. Brown, a close Alatorre friend, loaned him $100,000 in April.

Alatorre said there is “nothing illegal” about the mailers, noting that a letter from Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp will accompany another lottery-type mailer in a few days. Alatorre spokesman Tom Sullivan said the mailer, which mentions using $5,000 in Alatorre’s campaign funds for the scholarship, was “already checked to make sure it was fair and proper” by lawyers in the city attorney’s office.

Different Opinion

Spokesmen for the city attorney’s office said they had not heard of the mailers, however. Spokesman Ted Goldstein called them “a most unusual approach, a new shtick.” Deputy City Atty. Anthony Alperin, considered an expert on the city’s campaign contribution law, had no comment, saying he had not seen the Alatorre mailer.

Rodriguez, in the meantime, held a press conference to announce endorsements from several ministers. Rodriguez, a Roman Catholic, had been criticized in last year’s recall election for sending rosaries in the mail to voters.

But the ministers’ endorsement of Rodriguez this time “is not bringing religion into the campaign, not a rosary gimmick,” said Joe Ortiz, a broadcast evangelist. Referring to the sending of rosaries in the mail, “Steve has admitted he received some bad advice in his last campaign, he’s apologized for that. . . .”

Letter to Snyder

As a measure of his good will, Ortiz said, Rodriguez also sent a letter of “apology” to former Councilman Arthur K. Snyder “to extend an olive branch to Snyder . . . if he (Rodriguez) was too aggressive” during the 1984 unsuccessful recall campaign that Rodriguez led against Snyder.

Rodriguez, while declining to call himself “born-again,” said he believes that “if more of the Proverbs were followed by citizens, we would have less crime. . . . God is the ultimate campaign manager that we are accountable to.”

The six ministers--all Protestants--who joined Rodriguez at his press conference said they decided to endorse him after he accepted their invitation to attend a fellowship breakfast meeting last month. Jerry Westholder, executive director of Christian Challenge in Highland Park, said Rodriguez has the ministers’ support not because he is Christian but because of “his integrity, life style and goals that are in line with the community.”