Secession sides formulate plan for long battle.

With a referendum on San Fernando Valley secession already slated for the Nov. 5 ballot, and Hollywood likely to follow this week, the battle over the breakup of Los Angeles is about to begin. And how that battle is waged will determine the future of the nation's second largest city.

Secession proponents have five months to sell their vision of what a new Valley city would look like, and why it would be better for Angelenos on both sides of Mulholland Drive.

Secession opponents, quiet until recently (and perhaps just hoping it would go away), have five months to convince L.A. voters that breaking the city apart will cause more harm than keeping it together.

In the end, it will come down to which side conveys its message more effectively and brings their supporters to the polls -- and right now, it's considered anybody's race.

"Both sides have to get out the vote, both in the Valley and citywide," said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, senior scholar at the School of Policy, Planning and Development at USC.

This will, of course, entail all the traditional components of an initiative campaign: the last-minute TV ad blitzes, the direct mailings, the dueling op-ed pieces in the local papers.

But this is not an ordinary ballot measure: no civic breakup of this scale has ever before been voted on in this country. No one knows if the rules governing traditional initiative campaigns will work here.

What's more, there won't just be one measure on the ballot for each area that wants to secede. Voters will get to choose new names for their cities, a new mayor and new councilmembers. In all, residents in the Valley and Hollywood will have four separate measures to vote on. And that's not including any measure on boroughs that L.A. city officials place on the ballot.

Thus, a good or bad campaign strategy could be the deciding element in which side wins on November 5.

Here's a guide to four key areas of the upcoming campaign.

Overall Strategies

To win at the ballot box, the San Fernando Valley secession measure needs to garner 50 percent support in the Valley, and 50 percent support citywide. The same combination applies to Hollywood, assuming it makes it onto the ballot this week: 50 percent of the votes within the proposed Hollywood city limits and 50 percent citywide.

The big difference is that the Valley tends to produce 40 percent of the overall citywide voter turnout in recent elections, while Hollywood is under 10 percent.

In recent polls, secession support has been in the upper 50-percent range within the San Fernando Valley and the upper 40-percent range citywide. (There's been no comparable polling for Hollywood.) For pro-secession forces, that's within striking distance. But to win, campaign consultants say, pro-secession forces need to break through the 60 percent support barrier in the Valley while at least maintaining current levels of support south of Mulholland.

"They need to get that extra 5 percent in the Valley and, for insurance, 5 percent more in the rest of the city," said Harvey Englander, senior vice president of MWW Group and a veteran local campaign consultant.

That means making more inroads among the Valley's minority populations, particularly Latinos, who would make up the single largest ethnic group in the new city. It also means winning over the high-propensity voters south of Ventura Boulevard who are geographically closer to the rest of the city and who have not been quite as vocal for secession as residents in the more distant northwest corner of the Valley.

As for voters south of Mulholland, secession proponents need to convince them of the benefits of a smaller remaining city, such as smaller council districts.

Assuming the Hollywood secession measure gets on the ballot, proponents in that community will need to coordinate closely with the Valley secession campaign to ensure that they can get the 50 percent citywide support they will need. In other words, Valley voters who vote for Valley secession must also vote for Hollywood secession if the latter is to have any legitimate shot at winning.

On paper at least, the anti-secession forces appear to have the easier job: convincing L.A. voters to vote "no" on what would be a massive change in local government that is fraught with uncertainty. What's more, the same message can be emphasized both in the Valley and in Hollywood.

But the anti-secession campaign has been slow to get off the ground, giving momentum to the secessionists. To turn that around, the L.A. United campaign, led by Mayor James Hahn and former L.A. Mayor Richard Riordan, needs to focus on getting in their camp the so-called "silent majority" of potential voters who have not been vocal supporters of secession.

"There's a sense out there that support for secession is a mile wide but only an inch deep," said Bebitch Jeffe. "It's these people who on the surface say they support secession but aren't really die-hard secessionists that the anti-secession folks must reach with their message."

That may be enough to stop secession this time around. But to win them over longer term, the anti-secession forces face a very difficult task.

"To really win, it's absolutely critical that Hahn and Riordan soundly defeat secession in the Valley," said Matt Klink, vice president of Cerrell Associates, an L.A.-based public relations and consulting firm. "They cannot allow secession to get majority support in the Valley. Because if they do, it will come back again and again, making this city impossible to govern."

Leadership

If there's one thing that's lacking so far in the campaign, it's strong leadership--on either side.

Two members of the trio leading the pro-secession campaign in the Valley, Richard Close and Jeff Brain, are hardly charismatic figures. Although Brain ran unsuccessfully for City Council in 1995, Close has never run for office. The other leader, former state Assemblyman Richard Katz, has not emerged as a leading spokesman. And virtually no one has heard of Hollywood VOTE president Gene La Pietra.

Secession forces in both the Valley and Hollywood have yet another challenge: There will be dozens of people running for the council and mayoral posts--all of them seeking to be leaders of the new Valley and Hollywood cities.

"All these candidates running for office are going to have to coordinate their basic message," said L.A.-based political consultant Jorge Flores. "That's going to be tough to do, because in these campaigns, the candidates will want to differentiate themselves. There will be a great temptation for a candidate to say, 'My opponents don't really support secession, they're just opportunists. I'm the real secession supporter.' That kind of message could run counter to the unifying message that's needed and really destroy the overall campaign."

Secession opponents don't face this pitfall, but they have their own leadership difficulties. By virtue of his position as L.A. mayor, Hahn is chief spokesman for the anti-secession campaign. But he is not a great orator or strong public personality, and he's had a tendency to engage in hyperbole, with quotes like "Secession would be a disaster of biblical proportions for L.A." and calling the Valley VOTE leadership "hare-brained."

"In running this campaign, the only way to win is to run a negative campaign," said Bebitch Jeffe. "But you have to tread a fine line between tearing down the other side's arguments and going overboard with gloom and doom predictions or personal attacks."

Hahn has enlisted the support of two other politicians with a more engaging style: Riordan, who is expected to appeal to Republican voters in the Valley, and former Assembly Speaker and mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa.

But there's one asset that campaign consultants say has been underutilized in the anti-secession campaign: City Council President Alex Padilla. "Here's a guy who's young, Latino, charismatic and from the Valley--just the person you want to make your case against secession among Latinos in the Valley," Klink said.

Financing

This is the great advantage for anti-secession forces. Hahn has pledged to raise at least $5 million for the campaign; L.A. United cochair Kam Kuwata said last week that nearly $3 million of that has been raised in commitments, with five months to go in the campaign.

The $5 million should be sufficient to ran a sizeable media campaign in the fall, campaign consultants say.

Valley VOTE promises to raise between $2 million and $4 million, or "enough to be competitive," according to Katz. He said he was not at liberty to disclose how much had been raised to date until the campaign finance statements are filed in July.

Campaign consultants are skeptical of the ability of Valley VOTE to raise this much money, especially after one of the two biggest backers, Valley businessman and attorney David Fleming, said he may not be able to contribute because he's also a city commissioner.

"Unless I'm missing something, there aren't many businesspeople out in the Valley waiting to write those $100,000 checks that they're going to need," said Howard Sunkin, vice president of Cerrell Associates. "I know how hard it is to raise money in this town and in this economy. They are not going to be able to do this just with $25 contributions from Joe Citizen."

Sunkin said he expects the anti-secession side will outraise and outspend secession proponents by at least a three-to-one margin; others put that ratio at between two-to-one and three-to-one. That difference will be critical in the closing weeks, these consultants said, especially since grass-roots support for secession hasn't caught fire the way support for Proposition 13 did 24 years ago.

Wild Cards 

Like every campaign, several outside or unexpected factors could impact the outcome of the secession battle, mostly in favor of secession.

For starters, Valley--and most likely Hollywood--secession won't be the only issues on the Nov. 5 ballot. At the top of the ticket is the gubernatorial race. Most observers expect a fairly low-turnout election, which could favor the secession side. And if Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon is able to narrow the gap between him and incumbent Gray Davis, that could boost Republican turnout in the Valley, another plus for secession proponents.

There also are any number of local issues that could arise and tilt sentiment toward secession. Things like a petition to expand a landfill in the Valley, or City Council approval of another major Downtown L.A. project could anger Valley residents.

City leaders are expected to minimize the occurrence of such decisions, but that didn't happen with a massive downtown redevelopment plan approved last month or the recent unveiling of plans for a football stadium next to Staples Center.

Wild-cards aside, Valley secession proponents now face the prospect of months of sustained attacks from secession opponents. For the first time, they will have to mount a public defense against those attacks, in addition to trying to get out their message about how secession will be better for all Angelenos.

Secession opponents, while likely outspending the opposition, risk underestimating the tenacity of Valley VOTE leaders. As recently as a year ago, no one at City Hall seriously believed secession would make it onto the ballot as early as this year, if ever. They will now have to knock down the arguments about how separate Valley and Hollywood cities can provide the same level of services for less money while also convincing L.A. voters that L.A. is worth keeping whole.

RELATED ARTICLE: Secession's Cast of Characters

Pro

Valley VOTE's Richard Close, not considered a charismatic figure, has been pushing secession for several years but now must provide specifics to voters.

Jeff Brain, Close's cohort in leading Valley VOTE, is seen as equally uncharismatic, but has the benefit of having campaigned in an unsuccessful run for city council in 1995.

Anti

Former Mayor Richard Riordan, who has sometimes stumbled on the political campaign stump, needs to stay on message as he helps lead the fight against secession.

Mayor James Hahn, who is not seen as a great orator or strong public personality, must be the chief spokesman in the anti-secession fight by virture of his position.