Voter Turnout of 20% Projected for L.A. Election Today

Only 20% of Los Angeles’ voters are expected to participate in today’s election to decide who will sit on the City Council and the boards of two school systems. Also on the ballot are eight measures, including one to give the mayor new authority to fire the city’s top executives.

City Clerk Lee Martinez said the projected turnout is 350,000--slightly higher than normal because there are eight City Council races on the ballot, not the seven customary in election years without a mayor’s race.

The bonus race this year is a $1-million affair in which four candidates are vying to fill the 5th District seat left vacant four months ago when Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky resigned to take a seat on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

Yaroslavsky’s wife, Barbara, a community activist, is seeking to succeed her husband in representing the Westside and San Fernando Valley district. But she faces stiff opposition from former Los Angeles school board member Roberta Weintraub; attorney Michael Feuer, who is the former head of a Fairfax-based legal services clinic, and Studio City real estate agent Jeff Brain.

Combined, the candidates have spent more than $1 million on their campaigns.

The 10th District council race also has provided political drama. Councilman Nate Holden, first elected in 1987, is seeking a third term representing a multiethnic district that spreads across the city’s mid-section, from Koreatown to Crenshaw.

But attorney J. Stanley Sanders, a former city commissioner, has waged a lively campaign. Also running is Kevin Ross, a deputy district attorney.

Six other City Council races are also on the ballot. In each, an incumbent council member is facing only light opposition. Among those seeking reelection is council President John Ferraro, whose 4th District stretches from Hancock Park to North Hollywood.

If no candidate in today’s elections obtain more than 50% of the vote, the top two finishers will fight it out in a June 6 runoff election.

Mayor Richard Riordan is pushing for passage of the City Charter amendments on today’s ballot.

Approval of the measures is needed to give a boost to his efforts to reinvent city government, Riordan has said. The mayor has been instrumental in raising about $400,000 for the charter amendment campaigns.

The most controversial of the proposals would eliminate a decades-old system of civil service protections and give Riordan--with the approval of the City Council--the power to easily fire 30 general managers. Opponents say the measure would enable the mayor to unduly influence the judgment of the city’s top bureaucrats.

Another measure would sweep away an antiquated purchasing system that critics say unnecessarily adds $34 million a year to the city’s cost of buying supplies and services, while a third would result in the hiring of an inspector general to investigate complaints of misconduct by LAPD personnel.

Four of seven seats are up for grabs on the Los Angeles Unified School District board, including the two being vacated by incumbents Warren Furutani and Leticia Quezada. Board member Jeff Horton is facing two challengers, and incumbent Barbara Boudreaux is running unopposed.

Finally, the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees has four seats open. The race to fill the spot vacated last year when Wally Knox was elected to the state Assembly has drawn six candidates, and incumbents Kenneth S. Washington, Julia Wu and David Lopez-Lee are all being challenged.