Oschin Flies Into Rage Over Rival Zine’s Campaign Flier

Candidate Francine Oschin hit the roof when she saw the latest campaign flier by political foe Dennis Zine.

It features photographs of Zine in smiling poses with Mayor Richard Riordan and current 3rd District City Councilwoman Laura Chick, the official Oschin and Zine are vying to succeed.

Oschin, a Reseda resident and council deputy, was furious because Chick has not endorsed in the race and Riordan has endorsed Oschin, not Zine. The flier, she said, gives the impression Zine has the backing of Riordan and Chick.

“It’s inappropriate, since he knows the mayor endorsed me,” Oschin said. “He and the mayor have so many differences that they really have nothing in common. It is very misleading to the public.”

Zine’s political consultant, Rick Taylor, laughed at Oschin’s complaint, saying nowhere in the flier does it state Zine is endorsed by Riordan and Chick.

“It’s ridiculous,” Taylor said. “Dennis Zine and the mayor have worked together on charter reform and on police issues.”

Taylor countered by saying Oschin should be more worried about answering carpetbagging accusations, saying Oschin moved into the council district to run for office. “Just think what she is going to say when someone asks just where does she really live,” Taylor said.

Responded Oschin: “I’ve lived in the Valley for 40 years and I’ve lived in the district for more than a year. I lived right outside the district. If that’s the only issue they are raising, they haven’t got much.”

LOOKING AHEAD: The bruises are still healing from all the sharp elbows thrown during the November elections--remember those five open Assembly seats in the Valley?--but already some fresh contenders are warming up for skirmishes in 2002.

Stuart Waldman, a field deputy to Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg (D-Sherman Oaks), announced this week he wants his boss’s job and has loaned himself $100,000 to help capture it. Hertzberg, whose exhaustive command of legislative minutiae made him master of the term-limit universe, will hit his own limit next year.

“I think I’m in a fortunate position, because with term limits there is no learning curve,” said Waldman, 32, who has worked for Hertzberg for nearly six years. “Having worked for the speaker prior to his election . . . until now, I know what works and what doesn’t.”

With the primary still more than a year away, the field of potential candidates has yet to assemble. Tony Lucente, president of the Studio City Residents Assn., said he is considering running for the seat but has not raised any money. “I’m looking at several different options and that’s one of them,” he said.

Hertzberg has not endorsed anyone in the race to succeed him in the 40th Assembly District, a swath of Van Nuys-centered turf that stretches from North Hollywood to Canoga Park. But Waldman, who inherited the money he loaned to his campaign, hopes to convince his powerful employer that he can attract the cash and political support he needs to mount a strong campaign.

“Right now, I have to prove to him and others that I can do it on my own, that I am a viable candidate,” he said.

Waldman, a Van Nuys resident, has never held elective office. But then again, the eminent Speaker Hertzberg was once but a political wannabe too.

Back in 1994, Hertzberg, a well-connected attorney, flirted with the idea of running for the seat he now occupies but pulled the plug on his candidacy after rivals complained he was flashing his $100,000 campaign fund around and trying to “intimidate” them. The episode prompted a mention in this column, poking fun at Hertzberg’s “brief, abortive political career.”

Shows how much we know.

BY ANY OTHER NAME: Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Santa Clarita) got a new assignment Monday with an appropriately modern (if vague) name: the 21st Century Competitiveness Subcommittee.

A panel on global capitalism? A council mulling over national missile defense? No, the new subcommittee is actually a branch of the House Education and Workforce Committee that will focus on higher education, technology, job training and welfare reform.

Higher ed is nothing new to McKeon. He chaired a similar panel (dubbed the Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education, Training and Life-Long Learning) for the past six years. But he ran up against term limits on subcommittee chairs, prompting the reshuffling.

“They basically dissolved the old subcommittees and created new ones with similar jurisdiction,” said his spokesman, David Foy. “His main goal was to continue [working] with higher education. That’s his passion.”

McKeon, a former school board member in Santa Clarita, wrote laws during his previous chairmanship that cut student loan interest rates, streamlined financial aid and consolidated 60 federal job-training programs into block grants to states.

McKeon’s newest San Fernando Valley colleague, meanwhile, earned his first committee seat this week. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) was appointed to the House International Relations Committee, an assignment Schiff called “one of my top priorities.”

“It’s a wonderful assignment and one I was certainly hoping for,” Schiff said. The congressman wants to use the post to stem runaway film production and push for recognition of the Armenian genocide--two hot issues in his Burbank-Glendale district.

No word yet on Schiff’s second assignment--most members get two--but this former federal prosecutor is keeping his fingers crossed for the House Judiciary Committee. There are no vacancies on that prestigious panel, but Schiff said he’s lobbying hard anyway, hoping a new position can somehow be created.

“It’s a tough challenge,” he conceded. “But I’m still hopeful.”

SETTING PRIORITIES: As the Los Angeles Unified School District scrambles to find sites for new campuses, it’s beginning to wear on developers such as Jerry Snyder who are competing for the same prime parcels.

Forget high interest rates and toxic contamination, the greatest impediment these days to developers building commercial projects may be Valley school board member Caprice Young, Snyder joked at a redevelopment board hearing Wednesday.

“Wherever we want to build a project, Caprice Young wants to build a school,” Snyder groused.