L. B. City Council Candidates Preen, Trade Punches in Costly Brochures

LONG BEACH —  For the next week, as months-long campaigns drive toward a June 3 runoff election, the carefully considered images of City Council candidates will arrive in mailboxes and on doorsteps in a rash of expensive flyers and brochures.

For many of the 59,000 registered voters in the city’s 1st, 3rd and 7th council districts, those images--candidates with families, candidates citing issues and candidates on the attack--will provide their best glimpse of the campaigns.

And the candidates, battling in all three races, are setting spending records to reach the electorate with one last image that might swing a vote. By election day, more than $100,000 will have been spent in District 1, perhaps $145,000 in District 3 and about $65,000 in District 7, candidates said.

“This has been a crazy campaign because of the spending. No one wants to be outspent, so that means you’re running scared,” said Evan Anderson Braude, who opposes Ron Batson in the 1st District.

Braude said he will spend about 85% of his $55,000 on brochures, mailers and advertisements. Jim Serles said that three-quarters of the $65,000 he is spending to challenge Councilwoman Jan Hall in District 3 will go for campaign publications. Even the 7th District’s Ray Grabinski, who expects to spend less than any other runoff candidate--about $28,000--said he will send out several more flyers by election day in his challenge of Councilwoman Eunice Sato.

Inaccessible Security Buildings

“All the districts are becoming more difficult to campaign in because of the candidates’ inability to get into some of these secured buildings,” Grabinski said. Sometimes, he said, he simply has to rely on campaign materials.

In all three races, the campaign publications, which were mailed in bunches just before the April 8 primary and have been arriving sporadically at voters’ homes ever since, reveal a clash of styles that are somewhat indicative of the campaigns, though disagreements have been much more strident in person.

In District 1, Braude has yet to mention Batson in his flyers. “I never discuss my opponent in any of my stuff,” said Braude, 38, an attorney. “When you start talking about someone else, you end up being negative.”

Braude does mention his wife and young son, his 30-year political internship with his stepfather, Rep. Glenn M. Anderson (D-Harbor City), his experience as a government lawyer, endorsements from many of the city’s best-known leaders and his involvement in Long Beach area activities.

Brochures show Braude, 38, talking with senior citizens and children, shaking a policeman’s hand. Campaign letters indicate a folksy, nice-guy approach.

“Thank you for joining our campaign for Long Beach City Council. My wife, Cookie, has talked to me about your warm support,” Braude wrote in a form letter before the primary. In May, after one in a series of weekend meetings attended by Anderson and Assemblyman Dave Elder (D-Long Beach) at 1st District homes, Braude wrote: “I’m sorry you were unable to join us this past (Sat/Sun). It turned out to be quite a session.”

Braude Called Opportunist

In contrast, Batson, 46, also a lawyer, said that because he and Braude agree on most issues, the real issue is Braude himself. Batson says Braude is an opportunist who moved here last August to run for office and who is running on his stepfather’s coattails.

Campaign materials stress that Batson is “a longtime resident (who) lives and works in the district,” and they beseech voters to “elect one of our own.” Before the primary, a Batson brochure asked about four leading opponents, “Where do these candidates really live?” About Braude it asked, “Doesn’t he really live in Harbor City?”

Batson has also stressed his political conservatism in campaign flyers that show him with Gov. George Deukmejian, Rep. Daniel E. Lungren (R-Long Beach) and Assemblyman Dennis Brown (R-Signal Hill). All have endorsed him.

Batson emphasizes that he was born and raised in Long Beach, was a star basketball player, a Navy officer, taught in local high schools and began to practice law in downtown Long Beach in 1972. His brother is a Long Beach police officer, pamphlets note.

Braude accuses Batson of running a “dirty” campaign, while Batson says he’s only pointing out facts. “I think the people are resentful that he just moved into the district,” said Batson, “and that on billboards there is this little tiny ‘Evan’ and this humongous ‘Anderson.’ ”

Braude said his opponent is “trying to make a negative out of the fact that I’ve learned some very positive things from being the son of Congressman Anderson. He’s grabbing at straws.”

Hall Pressed on Record

In District 3, the city’s affluent southeast, where challenger Serles is pressing two-term incumbent Hall on her record, the bitterness of a yearlong campaign is reflected in dozens of campaign brochures and letters.

Serles, a dentist who narrowly lost to Hall in 1982, has leveled numerous charges in strongly worded flyers. And Hall has responded with materials that say Serles is not telling the truth.

“His campaign has been a great number of personal attacks on my integrity,” Hall said. “The thread running through it all is that what he does is not based on issues, it’s based on attack.”

Serles, a former president of the Chamber of Commerce, says Hall’s record is the issue. “But I don’t feel I’m vicious in the campaign. I haven’t made it a personal campaign.”

What Serles did say in a letter to residents of Marina Pacific is that Hall’s “largest” campaign contributor is developer William Lansdale, “owner of your boat slips . . . (so) you know she isn’t going to ‘get things done’ for you.” He said Hall has sided with Lansdale in a dispute over whether slips should be leased to non-residents. As councilman, he would have intervened on the residents’ behalf, Serles said.

“I’m pretty thick-skinned, but he’s saying basically that I’m being bribed,” Hall responded. Hall, who expects to spend more than $80,000, has received from Lansdale use of a trailer for a campaign headquarters. In campaign documents, Hall lists the value of the donation at $2,500.

‘Morally Indefensible’

In a recent letter, Serles called Hall’s position on pay equity for women city employees “wrong and morally indefensible! . . . (She) voted against pay equity.” Hall says that is not true--that she favors pay equity and in December voted to make it an issue during current labor bargaining. Serles said that move was “an easy way for her to hedge on an issue that should not have been buried in negotiations.”

A debate over dwelling height limits has also produced accusations by Serles that Hall cannot work with her City Council colleagues. In a letter for Serles to residents of Belmont Shore, Naples and the Peninsula, Councilman Wallace Edgerton wrote: “The majority of the council wishes to make a decision that is fair to all residents, but for some incredible reason, Jan Hall refuses to discuss the issue with us.”

Hall has reponded with letters of her own saying she will fight City Hall “politicos” when necessary and that Serles is now beholden to Edgerton and Mayor Ernie Kell--who have endorsed him--not to district residents.

But most of Hall’s flyers stress her background as a mother of four children, housewife, community activist and councilwoman. Numerous letters to residents of specific neighborhoods list her bread-and-butter accomplishments. To Bixby Hill, she sent a flyer that proclaimed her assistance in getting “a special contract for street sweeping in our area.”

While nearly all of Serles’ flyers deal with issues, he does list essential background information: his service as a commander in the Naval Reserve, chairmanships and presidencies of community and business groups and awards such as Long Beach Jaycees Man of the Year and a similar Elks lodge award.

The District 7 race is in some ways similar to that of Hall and Serles. Grabinski, 42, a burly former football player and now a delicatessen owner, is taking on Sato, 64, a diminutive, three-term incumbent who Grabinski says provides little leadership and has solved few district problems.

Grabinski, whose flyers for much of his 14-month campaign have emphasized his record as a community activist, has become more confrontational.

Endorsement Dispute

Most recently he has pointed out that two Sato flyers claiming an endorsement by Rep. Anderson are in error. Sato acknowledged last week that she does not have Anderson’s endorsement. The councilwoman said she thought Anderson’s wife, Lee, had approved the endorsement in a conversation before the primary, “but there was a misunderstanding, a miscommunication.”.

Sato, in turn, has distributed flyers warning Wrigley District and West Side voters not to be misled by Grabinski.

Such statements have infuriated Grabinski, who has challenged her to prove any falsehood by him.

“She showed up at a meeting last night at Lafayette School and spent 16 minutes calling me a liar. . . ,” Grabinski said Wednesday. “But she’s had 15 months and has never effectively refuted anything I’ve said. She’s used this tactic before in 1982. She tries to get people to feel sorry for her. She tries to make it look like ‘here is this big guy picking on this little lady.’ ”

Sato, in campaign materials and in an interview, said Grabinski had lied about her place of residence. “He has portrayed me to have left my home on Easy Avenue and gone to Lakewood. It’s nothing in writing, it’s what my constituents say he’s telling them.” Grabinski denied the accusation.

Grabinski, Sato said, has also lied in telling voters that he is responsible for a strict oil-pipeline ordinance and a law that stopped a hazardous-waste transfer station in 1981. “It’s the City Council that passed those things” after citizen groups that included Grabinski recommended them, she said. Grabinski’s flyers say he was a “leader” in those efforts and did first propose the hazardous-waste ordinance.

Sato said Grabinski has misrepresented her position on the Los Angeles-to-Long Beach light rail line. She said she did say, as Grabinski asserted, that a route along the Los Angeles River was the most rational of four alternatives. But she never “favored” that route and voted against the whole proposal, she said.

Her style, Sato said in a recent flyer, is to be quietly involved in issues.

She said last week that “I’m not the kind that goes up front and tries to make myself look like a leader. That’s not my style. But I listen and work to get something that is acceptable.

“(Grabinski) has been campaigning for a number of years. He’s the one who goes out and tries to make himself look like a leader.”

Grabinski says he’s “not just blowing smoke. I’ve been in these battles from the beginning” because of a vacuum in leadership due to Sato.

He will elaborate on his and Sato’s positions, he said, in a flyer to be mailed this week.