City Council Hopefuls Pass Up Offer From the Religious Right

DRAWING A BLANK: Read the voters’ guide distributed by the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. and you will learn that all the candidates for the vacant 5th District City Council seat support reducing airplane and helicopter noise from nearby Burbank and Van Nuys airports.

This is just one of the voters’ guides that will begin to appear in mailboxes throughout the city as the April 11 primary approaches. The guides are brought to you by organizations that, for the most part, are prohibited from endorsing candidates and instead distribute the candidates’ responses to the groups’ questions.

But read the voters’ guide from the Christian Coalition of California and you may be left scratching your head. That is because so few candidates responded to the group’s questions.

The group asked six questions of 23 candidates vying for council seats. That should have generated 138 answers. Instead, the group got 81. The candidates refused to answer the rest.

Among 5th District candidates, only Jeff Brain, a Sherman Oaks businessman and registered Republican, answered any of the group’s questions. Brain chides his fellow candidates, Barbara Yaroslavsky, Roberta Weintraub and Mike Feuer, for ignoring the group, saying Christians represent a large voting bloc.

Sue Burnside, a campaign spokeswoman for Weintraub, said Weintraub did not respond to the Christian Coalition’s questionnaire because the group is very conservative and “we do not subscribe to their values.”

Feuer’s campaign manager, Cynthia Corona, said she felt that the coalition’s conservative positions would conflict with Feuer’s, so she didn’t give the questionnaire to him to fill out. “I thought it wasn’t worth his time,” she said.

A spokeswoman said the coalition will send copies of its voters’ guide to 125,000 of its members in Los Angeles.

But maybe so many candidates ignored the coalition’s questions because the questions touched on some pretty controversial issues.

For example, candidates were asked if they support giving employee benefits to unmarried couples, using taxpayer money to challenge Proposition 187, expanding needle-exchange programs for drug addicts and hiring private companies to perform public-service jobs, such as trash collecting.

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OLD FRIENDS: Councilman Joel Wachs’ reelection campaign has been low-key to nonexistent, but supporters have nonetheless sent contributions to help Wachs defend the seat he has held since 1971. On the donor list: Jim Schroeder, Washington attorney and husband of his better-known wife, Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo.).

Despite political differences, the Schroeders have been friends of Wachs since all three attended law school at Harvard, graduating in the Class of 1964 (with fellow alumnus Stephen Breyer, now a U. S. Supreme Court justice).

“I see (the Schroeders) when I’m in Washington. I’m very fond of them,” Wachs said.

Jim Schroeder mailed a $250 contribution to Wachs’ campaign last week. But it may be Pat who has made the most lasting contribution to Wachs since their law-school days.

It seems that back when the Class of ’64 was in its second year at Harvard Law, Wachs lived in a house with five other students. They split the chores among them, including the cooking once a month. When it came to Wachs’ turn in the kitchen, he was at a loss, since he didn’t know how to cook.

So in stepped Pat Scott (later Schroeder), a friend with whom Wachs had hit it off.

“Pat helped me cook my very first meal. It was chili,” Wachs said. “It was a hit.”

By the end of the year, Wachs said, he was the designated house cook.

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LET’S BUY UP THE WHOLE STATE: Competition for park expansion funding will be especially tough this year, so Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills) was pulling out all the stops as he sought more federal help for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area this week.

After highlighting the benefits of the vast urban wilderness in testimony before a House Appropriations subcommittee, Beilenson offered a unique arguments for more money. Buying up more land for the Santa Monicas--Beilenson wants between $4.3 million and $8 million in the 1996 budget--may actually save the government money, he said.

Come again?

Yes, Beilenson explained, the fires that swept through the Santa Monicas in the fall of 1993 destroyed 5,854 acres of National Park Service land. Had this property been filled with developments, the government would have had to dole out more in disaster assistance.

“It is very likely that we saved large sums of taxpayers’ dollars in disaster assistance by already having a significant amount of land there in public ownership as open space,” he said. “We will undoubtedly save enormous sums on disaster aid in the future if we continue purchasing land there before it is developed.”

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TAKING AIM: To measure Antelope Valley Republican Assemblyman William J. (Pete) Knight’s metamorphosis since his freshman lawmaker days, just look at the all-star lineup he’s recruiting to speak on behalf of his gun bill, the so-called Citizens Self-Defense Act, next month.

Modeled after a Florida law, Knight’s legislation would allow Californians to carry concealed weapons for protection so long as they pass a background check and training course.

Here’s the lineup from the man who last year wanted to wipe out the Commission on the Status of Women:

* Sandi Webb, Simi Valley City Council member, who shocked her constituents with remarks sympathetic to William A. Masters II, the Sun Valley man who shot dead a teen-age graffiti vandal in February. In public comments, Webb said she, too, has been known to illegally stuff a pistol in her purse for safety’s sake.

* Rebecca John, the 31-year-old Colorado founder of SWARM (Safety for Women and Responsible Motherhood), a group advocating the right to carry concealed weapons. Twice the victim of assaults, John has been quoted as saying the government is “violently discriminating against me” for forbidding her that privilege.

* Suzanna Gratia, the Texas chiropractor leading the “concealed-carry” crusade in the Lone Star State. Gratia’s tragic story stems from a mass shooting by a crazed gunman in a Killeen diner, where her parents died along with 21 others. Gratia, who escaped the restaurant, had left her gun in her car that day out of respect for the law she now wants to change.

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GOING BALLISTIC: The nearly 70 congressmen who formed the new Missile Defense Caucus do not intend to keep you up at night. But Rep. Howard P. (Buck) McKeon (R-Santa Clarita) and other members of the bipartisan group are pushing a sobering message--the world is not as safe a place as you might have thought.

“When the Cold War ended, many people assumed we no longer faced the threat of nuclear attack against the U. S.,” said Rep. Bud Cramer (D-Ala.). “Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. What we face today is a loose, unpredictable band of foreign countries like North Korea, China and Iran who’ve been able to get their hands on ballistic missiles.”

The group is advocating a missile defense system and seeking to put an end to the joking references to former President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” plan that they say frequently clouds the debate.

In the coming months, the new caucus intends to gather facts buttressing their case and mobilize an array of constituents--including defense contractor employees--to lobby their lawmakers.

Saying the United States has been “left naked” to attack, Rep. Floyd Spence (R-S. C.), chairman of the House National Security Committee, rejected critics’ arguments that a missile defense will never work.

“That’s like saying if you have an umbrella with one little hole in it, you should throw the whole thing away,” he said.

This column was reported by Times staff writers Hugo Martin and Henry Chu in Los Angeles, Marc Lacey in Washington and Cynthia H. Craft in Sacramento.