Riordan to Double His Office’s Liaison Link With the Valley

HELP WANTED: Now that there is a new mayor at City Hall, who’s going to be the new Dodo Meyer, Tom Bradley’s enduring and ubiquitous liaison to the San Fernando Valley?

Mayor Richard Riordan has yet to pick someone to fill the slot held for years by Meyer, who came to be dubbed “Mayor of the Valley.” In the last two years of the Bradley reign, Richard Alarcon, now a councilman, held the same post.

Tom LeBonge, the new mayor’s director of field services, said Wednesday that two of the Riordan Administration’s five community liaisons will be assigned to the Valley, a further tribute to the Valley’s key role in electing Riordan. One will probably be assigned to the predominantly middle-class and white West Valley, the other to the multiethnic and poorer East Valley.

Expected to get one of the Valley jobs is Tarzana resident Georgia Mercer, 52, a longtime community activist. Mercer’s most recent outing was as Councilwoman Laura Chick’s campaign fund-raiser.

LeBonge refused to say who the likely Valley liaison appointees might be, and Mercer could not be reached for comment.

According to some, the Riordan Administration wants to reinvent the liaison job. Meyer and Alarcon acted very much as ambassadors and standt-ins at Valley events for Bradley, who infrequently visited the Valley, a political turf that was alien--and at times hostile--to him.

But Riordan, who enjoys a political kinship with the Valley, intends to make numerous forays across the Santa Monica Mountains. (Monday, for example, he will do a tour of the northeast Valley).

“Riordan is not looking so much for a figurehead to represent him in the Valley at functions,” said one source, who asked for anonymity. “He wants someone to deal with constituent problems.”

FEELING THEIR OATS: Latino political aspirants in the northeast Valley, their hopes for empowerment on the rise, are eyeing the seat held by state Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar). Latinos hope to make Katz’s Assembly seat their own next year, provided the incumbent does not seek reelection. A Latino from the Valley in the Assembly would be a first.

Fueling these surging ambitions was Alarcon’s election last spring to Ernani Bernardi’s old 7th District council seat in the northeast Valley. In a district in which only about a quarter of the voters were Latino and his runoff election foe was well-known Fire Capt. Lyle Hall, Alarcon pulled off a narrow victory.

Now, Latinos are asking themselves, why can’t this success be duplicated in the 39th Assembly District?

“The 39th District is basically the same as the 7th,” said Rose Castaneda, an aide to Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City), who ran for the 7th District seat herself.

One of those with the itch to run is Al Avila of Sylmar, who has a lengthy political pedigree. Avila worked for former council members Jim Ronka and Howard Finn and was Councilman Richard Alatorre’s chief deputy. Avila also is one of Alarcon’s confidantes.

“The premise, however, is that Richard (Katz) runs for higher office,” Avila said.

As an aide to Alatorre, Avila helped craft a redistricting plan last summer that radically reconfigured the Los Angeles school board’s 5th District, making it the board’s second Latino seat.

The 5th District, now represented by Leticia Quezada, was responsible for a lot of the stink last summer among Valleyites about the redistricting plan. This strangely shaped district starts in the Eastside barrios of Boyle Heights and Lincoln Heights--Quezada’s political base--and then surprisingly slips into the Valley to absorb distant Pacoima and Sylmar.

Some saw the 5th District as a way for Eastside pols to build a power base in the Valley’s growing Latino precincts. But many Valley Latinos welcomed it as giving them a new voice in school circles.

Finally, for a Latino to make a move on the 39th Assembly District, Katz first must decide to climb the political food chain himself.

Katz remains Sphinx-like about his future, although it is widely rumored that he will run next year for the seat held by state Sen. David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys). Meanwhile, Roberti, facing a 1994 end to his state Senate career due to term limits, is amassing a large war chest to run for a statewide office, probably treasurer.

MONEY TALK: Campaign finance disclosure reports from the spring elections were filed recently, and what did inquiring minds find among the blizzard of numbers? A few odds and ends:

* Alarcon, who spent more than $250,000 to win election, takes the Valley prize for running in red ink. Alarcon had $60,000 in campaign debts as of June 30, the last day covered by the reports just filed. Meanwhile, the reports show Valley realtor Mel Wilson, a Riordan appointee to the Metropolitan Transit Authority, was paid $4,000 as a consultant to the Alarcon campaign. “He gave us advice on business issues--cutting red tape, standard business issues,” Alarcon said of Wilson’s role. How to live within a budget must not have been included in Wilson’s advice.

* Chick got at least $1,500 in contributions from interests tied to Warner Ridge, the development project that was the grim hallmark of Joy Picus’ final term in office. Contributing $500 each to Chick were Warner Ridge developer Jack Spound, attorney Robert McMurry, who did as much as anyone to save Warner Ridge from Picus’ hatred, and McMurry’s Santa Monica-based law firm. But these contributions, perhaps by design, were made too late for Picus to use them against Chick.