In L.A.'s 5th City Council district, an insider and an outsider -- Paul Koretz and David Vahedi -- battle to replace Jack Weiss

By David Zahniser

May 17, 2009 12 AM PT

The hotly contested race to replace Los Angeles Councilman Jack Weiss in a Westside-to-Encino district could be summed up in three words: insider versus outsider.

An array of City Hall players have lined up behind former State Assemblyman Paul Koretz as he seeks the edge over neighborhood council member David T. Vahedi in Tuesday’s election for the 5th District.

Eleven of 15 council members have endorsed Koretz. Veteran lobbyist Harvey Englander opened his home for a fundraiser. And the Department of Water and Power’s employee union spent nearly $20,000 on Koretz’s behalf.

Koretz, 54, described such support as a vote of confidence for his years of experience. But Vahedi hopes to turn those backers into a liability by warning that Koretz will fit in comfortably with a council that has approved lucrative settlements with billboard companies, signed off on an ill-fated solar energy plan and confronts a $530-million budget shortfall.

“If you believe that the city’s going in the right direction, then I think you should support the candidate that the majority of the City Hall establishment supports, which is Paul Koretz,” he said.

Koretz mounted a strong counterattack, raising questions about Vahedi’s political past in a series of campaign mailers titled “He’s Not Who You Think He is.” And he disagreed with Vahedi’s portrayal of him, saying he went against the grain in Sacramento, where he was a lawmaker until December 2006.

Koretz, who also spent 12 years as a West Hollywood city councilman before moving into the district, said that as a state lawmaker he wrote bills to improve the working conditions of sheepherders, to ban the declawing of such exotic animals as lions and to distribute condoms in prisons to reduce the transmission of HIV.

“If you talk to anyone who has ever served with me or followed my career, I’m anything but the establishment,” he said. “You should talk to [Councilman] Herb Wesson, who was my speaker in the Legislature for a couple of years. He was bemused by the legislation I would offer, which was often very edgy.”

Vahedi and Koretz are running in a district that takes in some of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, including Beverlywood, Bel-Air and Sherman Oaks. Running along the east side of the 405 Freeway, the district has traditionally been focused on such issues as traffic and development.

Both men have called for greater involvement by neighborhoods in development decisions. Both have been highly critical of Weiss, although Koretz initially endorsed Weiss, who is running for city attorney, and pulled his endorsement months later.

Vahedi, 42, is running as an anti-downtown candidate -- and an ally of disaffected homeowner groups -- in a year when voters are dissatisfied, one political expert said. “I think the May 19 electorate is going to be an angry electorate that is very focused on expressing their anger against the political establishment,” said Bill Carrick, a political consultant who represents neither candidate.

Councilwoman Jan Perry, who has endorsed Koretz, argued that voters are longing for experienced leadership in unstable times and should judge a candidate based on his performance. “Paul is a very thoughtful, very relationship-oriented public servant who does not seek the limelight, even when he should,” she said.

To amplify his message of change, Vahedi promised not to accept campaign contributions from billboard companies or real estate developers -- and highlighted dozens of contributions made to Koretz over a 16-year period. “Paul Koretz says he’ll fight to stop overdevelopment. But it’s just not true,” one mailer states.

Koretz has spent weeks attempting to shred his opponent’s image as a reformer, issuing a series of campaign mailers that highlight his previous campaign work and his affiliations with other established politicians.

One mailer points out that Vahedi, a registered Democrat, has boasted about his endorsement from Supervisor Mike Antonovich, a conservative Republican. Another mailer attacked Vahedi for going months without paying bills from one of his campaign vendors, a printing company with ties to a businessman who has secured bus bench contracts.

Dot Graphics, which produced Vahedi’s mailers, racked up more than $60,000 in bills in the weeks leading up to the March 3 primary but did not receive payment until a month before the May 19 runoff election. Koretz said Vahedi was required under city law to pay his vendors within 30 days.

Koretz said the delayed payments gave Vahedi an unfair advantage during the primary, freeing up money for him to spend elsewhere. Koretz said Dot Graphics has a significant tie to City Hall, given that the company’s owner is the son of a businessman who runs Coast United, which has a city contract for bus bench advertising.

“This is the worst of example of pay to play . . . since we’ve created the Ethics Commission” in 1990, Koretz charged.

Vahedi said he was following a different election law, one that states that candidates have nine months to pay off their campaign debts. Ethics officials also said that because the two laws contradict each other, no one has enforced the 30-day payment period.

Vahedi said he would pay $9,900 more to Dot Graphics in the coming weeks. And he accused Koretz of having troublesome ties to outdoor advertising, including $1,000 in contributions from executives with Jamison Properties, a company that has worked with the advertising company known as SkyTag to overturn the city’s ban on supergraphics -- advertisements that cover the sides of buildings.

SkyTag erected Statue of Liberty images on at least two Jamison buildings in Westwood and has sought a judge’s permit to install or preserve supergraphics on dozens of other Jamison office buildings in Hollywood, Encino, Koreatown and elsewhere.

Koretz said he did not know that Jamison executives had given to his campaign. “If I’d caught it before we took it, I would have returned it,” he said.

With only days left in the campaign, Koretz is attempting to depict Vahedi as someone who is far from a political novice. One Koretz mailer attacked Vahedi for working for a political action committee that promoted the 2006 campaign of Assemblyman Jerome Horton, then a candidate for Board of Equalization, and opposed Horton’s opponent, Judy Chu.

Vahedi received $3,750 in consulting fees from the committee, according to state records. Because the committee opposed Chu and raised at least $52,000 from groups affiliated with the tobacco industry, Koretz said in a mailer that Vahedi had been “hired by the tobacco industry to smear an anti-tobacco leader.”

Vahedi said Koretz had distorted two days of political work for a committee that supported several other candidates. “I never had anything to do with fundraising,” he said. “I never made one call.”

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