Decision ’94 / Local Offices : Primary Expected to Provide Some Political Suspense for Valley Voters : Elections: Though many incumbents face little or no opposition, new faces and crowded races are predictors of interesting battles.

The June 7 primary election won’t be totally bereft of cliffhangers or promises of political novelty for San Fernando Valley voters, even though half a dozen incumbent state legislators are unchallenged or face only nominal opposition.

For the Van Nuys-based 20th Senate District seat, GOP voters will pick a candidate to run in November against state Sen. Herschel Rosenthal (D-Los Angeles), who has represented a mostly West Side district for years but is risking charges of carpetbagging to set up political shop in the Valley.

Democratic voters in the 41st and 42nd Assembly districts, where incumbent lawmakers are stepping down to seek other offices, will be trying to pick from among a slew of ambitious political novices in their party’s primary.

Finally, Democratic Party leaders will be watching the primary performance of Adam Schiff, a former federal prosecutor. Schiff must overcome two rivals to earn the right to run in November against Assemblyman James E. Rogan, the freshly minted Republican incumbent from Glendale.

Facing no opposition in their primaries are state Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills), Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar), Assemblywoman Barbara Friedman (D-Van Nuys), Assemblyman Bill Hoge (R-Pasadena) and Assemblyman William (Pete) Knight (R-Palmdale).

Veteran lawmaker Rosenthal, who has been endorsed by the powerful political organization headed by U.S. Reps. Howard Berman (D-Panorama City) and Howard Waxman (D-Los Angeles), can be expected to easily overpower Michael Del Rio, his sole Democratic rival in the 20th Senate District primary.

Rosenthal is seeking the 20th District seat after a period of political tumult that began after reapportionment moved his district from its familiar West Side-based moorings to central Los Angeles.

Seeking a new political home, Rosenthal ran in 1992 for the West Side-based 23rd Senate District seat which put him at loggerheads with another reapportionment refugee, Sen. Tom Hayden.

Hayden won that costly and bitter battle between Democrats, leaving Rosenthal with the option of resigning, running for reelection in his new heavily Latino central Los Angeles district or seeking more hospitable political turf. Rosenthal chose the latter course and aimed his sights at the Van Nuys seat being vacated by Sen. David Roberti (D-Van Nuys).

Although Rosenthal seems a shoo-in in his new political digs, the outcome is less predictable in the 20th Senate District GOP primary which features gun store owner Randy Linkmeyer, realtor Dolores White and contractor Larry Martz. A fourth GOP candidate, Al Dib, a retired green grocer and perennial office seeker, has stepped aside and endorsed Linkmeyer although his name remains on the ballot.

White is the best known of the candidates. She sought the same seat in 1992 and was main organizer of the failed April bid to recall Roberti. The recall was largely financed and inspired by Second Amendment activists upset by Roberti’s authorship of a 1989 measure to ban certain military-style semiautomatic weapons.

By 59% to 41%, voters rejected the recall and kept Roberti in office. But term limits bar Roberti from seeking reelection. He is running for state treasurer.

White received 26% of the vote on the second portion of the recall ballot that asked voters to pick the candidate they wanted to replace Roberti. Linkmeyer, also among the candidates, got 16% of the vote.

Rosenthal has some of the same characteristics as Roberti: both are considered liberals, both have been gun control supporters and both have invited charges of carpetbagging by moving their political bases to the Valley. But some doubt if Rosenthal will suffer the same troubles that vexed Roberti’s political career in the Valley.

For starters, Russ Howard, a leader of Californians Against Corruption, a group that was instrumental in the April recall election against Roberti, said his organization is unlikely to challenge Rosenthal. Unlike Roberti, who for 13 years was Senate president, Rosenthal is not the high-profile exemplar of the bankruptcy of the state’s political leadership, Howard said. “He is not a symbol,” he said.

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Others suspect that the forces that tried to recall Roberti are too exhausted from their recent campaign to mount a challenge to Rosenthal. “We’re not hearing anything about them getting involved,” said Lynette Stevens, Rosenthal’s campaign manager.

The hottest state legislative races in the Valley have developed around the decisions of two incumbents to move on.

In the 41st Assembly District, a Democratic Party primary donnybrook was triggered when Assemblyman Terry Friedman (D-Brentwood) decided to seek a Superior Court judgeship rather than seek reelection to a seat where Democrats have a voter registration edge.

The other free-for-all has erupted around the efforts of seven Democrats to win their party’s nomination in the 42nd Assembly District. The lion’s share of the district is comprised of the communities of Hollywood, Fairfax, Bel-Air, Westwood and Brentwood and the cities of West Hollywood and Beverly Hills, all located south of Mulholland Drive.

But the district also includes Encino, Sherman Oaks and Studio City in the Valley. Except for a very small stretch, the district covers the entire Ventura Boulevard commercial corridor from Valjean Avenue to Lankershim Boulevard.

The decision by Assemblyman Burt Margolin (D-Los Angeles) to run for state insurance commissioner sparked the 42nd District race.

In no time, the Democratic primary was teeming with ambitious, voter-tested West Side office seekers. The Democratic primary candidates:

* Mark Slavkin, a Los Angeles school board member since 1989, has been endorsed by his former boss, retiring Los Angeles County Supervisor Ed Edelman, and by U.S. Rep. Anthony Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills). Slavkin’s mother is an aide to Beilenson.

* Los Angeles Community College District board member Wally Knox is being endorsed by Assemblywoman Barbara Friedman (D-Van Nuys). Friedman is a close friend of Knox’s wife, Elizabeth Garfield, who was elected to the community college board herself last year. Knox, an attorney, has served on the board since 1987.

* Paul Koretz, a West Hollywood city councilman since 1988, has been endorsed by state Sen. Rosenthal and by Los Angeles City Councilmen John Ferraro and Joel Wachs. Koretz’s wife is a top aide to Wachs. Koretz, who works as a political consultant, was a paid political adviser to Wachs’ 1993 mayoral campaign.

* Abbe Land, a West Hollywood city councilwoman since 1986, is backed by a number of women’s organizations and by Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg.

* Civil rights attorney John Duran, who ran against Margolin in 1992, is appealing to gay voters as the author of laws protecting homosexuals from discrimination.

* Laura Lake, a UCLA educator, has gained strong name identification by running in 1989 and 1993 against Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky.

* Criminal defense attorney Bruce Margolin--no relation to the retiring incumbent--supports the legalization of marijuana.

The only Republican in the 42nd Assembly District primary is Robert Davis, a West Hollywood businessman. Also running is Libertarian Eric Michael Fine, a business consultant.

In the 43rd Assembly District GOP primary, Assemblyman Rogan faces three rivals as he tries to keep a grip on the Glendale-Burbank-based seat filled in a May 3 special election to replace Pat Nolan, who had resigned after pleading guilty to political racketeering. Nolan is now in jail.

Rogan’s GOP contenders are Joseph Pietroforte, a retired public accountant; David Wallis, a businessman and engineer; and Louis Morelli, president of a taxpayers organization.

Rogan, a former municipal court judge, is expected to handily win the nomination for the new two-year term, especially because his main challengers, LAPD Officer Peter Repovich and Los Angeles Community College trustee Julia Wu, have bowed out of the race. Repovich and Wu’s names appear on the ballot, but the pair suspended campaigning at the urging of Republican party leaders in Sacramento.

In the 43rd District Democratic primary, Schiff, a former assistant U.S. attorney, is expected to easily win. A moderate Democrat, Schiff is seen as a possible threat to Rogan in November in the recently redrawn district whose attenuating GOP roots were exposed in 1992, when local voters favored President Clinton and U.S. Sens. Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer.

Schiff’s two Democratic primary foes are Craig Freis, a Glendale businessman, and Ken Kulpa of Burbank who has no ballot designation.

Running as a Libertarian in the 43rd District is Willard Michlin, a real estate broker.

In the six races with unchallenged incumbents, the candidates in the primaries of the opposing parties are:

* 36th District (Republican Knight is the incumbent): James Hutchins is the sole Democratic primary entrant, and Eric Fussell is the Libertarian candidate.

* 38th District (Republican Boland is the incumbent): John Arce, a student, and Donald Cocquyt, an attorney and horseman, are vying for the nomination in the Democratic primary while Green party member Charles Wilken, a teacher, is running unopposed.

* 39th District (Democrat Katz is the incumbent): Nicholas Fitzgerald, no occupation listed, is the sole candidate in the GOP primary.

* 40th District (Democrat Friedman is the incumbent): Noel DeGaetano, a small businessman, is the only candidate in the GOP primary, while Kelley Ross, a Libertarian, is unopposed.

* 44th District (Republican Hoge is the incumbent): Bruce Philpott, the former police chief of Pasadena, is the only candidate in the Democratic primary. Ken Saurenman, a contractor, is the Libertarian candidate.