Ad campaign for secession off to a slow start. (The Secession Question).

With Election Day just over two months away, it's still difficult to find the heart of the strategy behind the campaign to sell secession to voters.

Secession advocates insist they have a plan, but some veteran political strategists say, even if they do, they're already playing catch-up.

One strategist says the firm hired to get the secession message out is wasting its client's money. Another says it's already too late to persuade the rest of Los Angeles of the benefits of a breakup.

Meanwhile, the separate campaigns for Valley mayor and city council also seem to be getting off to slow starts, prompting a couple of local advertising executives to give candidates all of the "Free the Valley" branding that they have come up with - for free.

Arnold Steinberg, chief strategist and consultant to the California Civil Rights Initiative, said Goddard Claussen Porter Novelli, the Sacramento firm hired to put the "Yes" campaign together, is milking advocates of a breakup out of their money.

"In my judgement, there is no strategy, there is no plan and a fundamental error was made in retaining a Sacramento-based firm with absolutely no kind of track record on this issue," Steinberg said.

If Goddard's campaign is about to take flight, you wouldn't know it by looking at the landscape of the Valley. Where are the billboards, the TV ads,. the radio spots?

Secessionists say their campaign is right on track and set to kick off by mid-September.

However, Steinberg, the author of "Political Campaign Management: A Systems Approach" and "The Political Campaign Handbook: Media, Scheduling and Advance," says that Los Angeles, especially what. would be left of it after a split, should have been bombarded with propaganda by now.

Even in the Valley, said Steinberg, there is a serious disconnect.

"I think people in the city,. including the Valley, are beginning to ask, 'Where's the beef?"' said Steinberg. "It's real difficult to see why anyone would give money to it at this point."

Gerry Gunster, Goddard's local point man in the campaign, declined to comment for this story.

Laurette Healey, co-chair of the San Fernando Valley Independence Committee, said November election campaigns typically don't kick off until after Labor Day. She. said the focus so far has been on the grassroots level and that a full-fledged media campaign is still in the works.

Healey said, "We have been doing radio spots and what is called a free media ground campaign for some time now. In terms of hitting the airwaves, everyone knows that most of that doesn't appear until right after Labor Day. Now, we expect that, to be delayed another week because of Sept. 11 events."

Healey said the campaign for secession is not supposed to include the trappings of big politics and big spending anyway. Instead, she said, from the, get-go this campaign was intended to be a grassroots effort.

As far as Steinberg is concerned, there's little that can be done now to convince a majority of voters either in the Valley or the rest of the city to support secession. In fact, he thinks the best thing the committee can do is stop taking campaign donations and cut its losses.

"When they lose they will say that it's because they weren't adequately funded," said Steinberg. "But the reason they aren't adequately funded is because there is no campaign."

As of the last filing deadline in June, secessionists had raised just over $75,000. L.A. United, Mayor James Hahn's anti-secession group, had brought in just under $2 million of the $5 million he's vowed to raise.

Raphe Sonensheine, a political science professor at Cal State Fullerton, says the campaign in what would be left of Los Angeles after a breakup is lagging so far behind it likely does not have time to pick up enough 'steam before the Nov. 5 election.

Sonensheine said the campaign for .a breakup has not. focused enough on capturing support from voters who live outside the Valley and that it's probably run out of time needed to reverse that. In order to pass, the initiative must receive more than 50 percent of the votes both in the Valley and the entire city.

But for Sonensheine, it's less about money than muscle.

"Definitely the (pro-secession) campaign is (trailing) behind Mayor Hahn's, but it's going to take a lot of thought as to whether it's because it's a good campaign or pot," said Sonensheine. "I think it's not clear to the rest of the city why they should vote for this and that doesn't really come down to time and money. It requires a lot of thought and a lot of great stature of great people to frame the message and carry it. But, frankly, they just don't have that."

To be sure, secession leaders are banking on the Ill mayoral and council candidates to carry their message to voters as they conduct their own campaigns.

But the overwhelming majority of candidates are relatively unknown with little or no experience in politics and, in 'many instances, trying to run kitchen-table campaigns on shoestring budgets.

However, they are getting some help.

Ads Creative, a small boutique ad agency in Sherman Oaks launched. in 1997 by two Russian immigrants with an interest m seeing a new Valley city, has taken the lead in presenting voters with a message they can sink their teeth into.

Last spring, Mark Volper and Boris. Smorordinsky coined the "Free the Valley" slogan now seen on T-shirts, bumper stickers and placards around town. They handed out their products at the last few meetings of the Local Agency Formation Commission before the panel made the final decision to put the initiative on the November ballot.

Now they are offering their marketing services-- pro bono--to a group of candidates and community leaders called the Valley Leadership Coalition. The group's primary goal is to assist candidates with Web sites, e-mail accounts, campaign literature and business cards.

"We feel very strongly that this should pass," said Volper. "We think Los Angeles is too bloated and too unruly. And these guys, many of them don't have the resources to do it all themselves."

Outdoor advertising, broadcasting spots and online election resources are also supposedly part of a campaign Ads Creative expects to kick off sometime this month.

Volper and Smorordinsky declined to say what they would spend to sell secession. Their company's 2001 revenues, with a client list that includes Maria's Italian Kitchen and the Warner Center Marriott Hotel, totaled about $350,000.

The two admit to 'being political novices but, like Steinberg, they felt the message behind the secession movement was too nebulous to be taken seriously.

"We thought there was a real disconnect in the Valley VOTE message and the candidates' messages," said Smorordinsky. "The candidates just seemed like they had no idea what they were doing and there was no real brand.

Jerry Hays, a Studio City painting contractor and candidate for the would-be city's 14th Council District, figures Ads Creative has saved him close to $300 so far.

"Am I surprised they are doing this? Yes and no," said Hays. "I'm surprised, but there's so many people here who are so adamant about this that a whole lot of people are helping us that normally wouldn't."

Still, Steinberg called the slogan naive and negative.

"'Free the Valley' just sounds juvenile and. hysterical," said Steinberg. "What they need is a reasonable argument. They have to reach the people in the middle, because it's those voters who will judge the merits of having a new city by the way the campaign is run."