ELECTIONS / L.A. CITY COUNCIL 5TH DISTRICT : Brain Touts Civic Track Record in Long-Shot Bid

The scene was a small, crowded community hall in Sherman Oaks, and Jeff Brain, one of the candidates vying for the vacant 5th District City Council post, took the microphone to cite his accomplishments in that well-to-do San Fernando Valley community.

He started the Sherman Oaks Street Fair and Carnival to raise money for area schools, he told the crowd. He was instrumental in getting a shuttle bus to run along Ventura Boulevard and headed a committee to oversee a revitalization plan for the busy thoroughfare, he said.

After Brain sat down, fellow candidate Lea Purwin D’Agostino promised, half in jest, that once elected she would hire him to oversee the Sherman Oaks section of the district.

Unfortunately for Brain, that backhanded compliment epitomizes his campaign: While the longtime activist and businessman boasts many praiseworthy accomplishments in his community, he is considered by some to be a long shot to beat a field of hopefuls with greater name recognition and larger bankrolls.

For example, Brain has raised about $37,000 as of February, while Barbara Yaroslavsky, whose husband, Zev, held the post for 19 years before resigning in December to sit on the county Board of Supervisors, has collected more than $307,000.

Nonetheless, this dark horse says he shouldn’t be counted out just yet. After all, he is still in the race for the April 11 primary, while D’Agostino has dropped out after failing to submit enough valid signatures on her nominating petition.

“I don’t have the money they have . . . but I feel really good about our chances,” Brain said during an interview at his Sherman Oaks apartment as his wife, Maricel, made campaign calls and his 10-month-old daughter, Jessie, squealed and wheeled around the living room in a walker.

A soft-spoken real estate broker and former Sherman Oaks Chamber of Commerce president, Brain, 35, is described by supporters as a leader with a hands-on approach to problem-solving and a strong grasp of details--qualities they say he demonstrated while spearheading the street fair and the Boulevard’s revitalization plan.

But political observers and some community leaders who have seen him at candidate forums say he comes across as uncharismatic and dry. And even though the race is nonpartisan, he is a Republican in a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans 55% to 30%. The district stretches from Sherman Oaks to West Los Angeles.

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Brain concedes that he is not a polished public speaker but said he doesn’t count that as a major weakness. “What I lack in charisma, I make up for by getting things done,” he said.

As for his politics, he said he considers himself a moderate conservative, akin to Mayor Richard Riordan, and believes his pro-business record will be welcomed by voters who are frustrated with anti-business sentiments that have hurt the city.

“I’m a fiscal conservative and that means someone who believes we’d best not tax people and we run government as lean as possible,” he said.

Brain also has a somewhat quirky side, as demonstrated by the “Brain Man” super hero that is featured on his campaign buttons, literature and collectible milk bottle caps.

A caped crusader with sagging muscles and a huge, exposed brain, “Brain Man” is a character Brain said he introduced to add a bit of levity to the council campaign that was starting up in the midst of the bruising Dianne Feinstein-Michael Huffington U. S. Senate race.

“I just said, ‘This is getting too heavy.’ ”

The son of an aerospace executive, Brain was born on Long Island and reared in Bayport, a nearby seaport town. While growing up, the family of five children moved back and forth across the country, following their father’s work. Brain finally settled down in the San Fernando Valley in 1979 and earned degrees in real estate and accounting from Cal State Northridge.

After graduating, he joined an investment firm in Universal City but left after two years to start his own commercial real estate business, specializing in commercial leasing and sales along Ventura Boulevard. Last year, he closed the company to run for the council seat and took a job as senior vice president of Zugsmith-Thind Commercial Real Estate.

He first got involved in civic issues when a member of the Sherman Oaks Chamber of Commerce urged him to join, telling him that it would provide him a forum to network with other business owners. He joined in 1987 and became president of the group in 1991.

While real estate sales made him a comfortable living, Brain said he drew more satisfaction from tackling community problems.

But when he first began to take on civic issues, other community leaders said Brain was abrasive and confrontational with those who disagreed with his pro-business positions.

“When he first got heavily involved in the chamber, he was more difficult to work with,” said Richard Close, president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. “He made more enemies than friends because he was more concerned with what was good for business.”

They said he became more sensitive to divergent views as he took on leadership roles in the community, such as the presidency of a citizens advisory group to oversee Ventura Boulevard’s revitalization plan.

“I think he is maturing as a consensus builder,” said Fred Gains, a lawyer and community activist in Sherman Oaks. “He’s come a long way.”

His first project was trying to persuade the city to run a trolley-style shuttle bus along Ventura Boulevard to reduce traffic and develop what he calls a “community atmosphere.” But like many of his subsequent ideas, it faced opposition.

The city Department of Transportation threw up roadblocks, saying it was too expensive to maintain a trolley’s wood fixtures and arguing that replacement parts were easier to find if the line used traditional buses like those throughout the city.

Ultimately, Brain had to settle for the traditional buses, which began to run last year. Although disappointed, he said the struggle taught him a lesson about City Hall.

“I look at it as an example of how the city works,” he said. “The community works on something for four years--we wanted a trolley--and ultimately they do what they want to do.”

His next--and probably best-known--effort was developing the Sherman Oaks street fair. As chamber president in 1991, Brain said he attended street festivals in Santa Barbara and thought such events could help create a sense of community for Sherman Oaks.

But, again, the proposal ran into opposition, this time from some business owners and Close, who feared closing off Ventura Boulevard would create traffic, parking and security problems.

But Close said Brain addressed his concerns one at a time and ultimately won over the homeowners group and most business owners along the Boulevard. Since its inception in 1991, the street fair has raised nearly $120,000, about $80,000 of which has been donated to area schools, with the rest going to the chamber.

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So far, homeowners and merchants have generally given the festival positive reviews, with many giving credit to Brain for being well-organized and composed in heading the effort.

“That first year, it seemed to be all Jeff,” said Michael Jay Ourieff, proprietor of Michael J’s, a Sherman Oaks restaurant. “When it was all over, there he was at 6 or 7 o’clock at night sweeping the street.”

Karen Rubenstein, a volunteer who worked on last year’s fair, said she recalls that Brain kept his cool and tracked down a drink vendor when the event’s original vendor pulled out on the morning of the event. “He was very calm in making sure everything got done,” she said.

In 1992, Brain jumped into the fray of a long-debated controversy when then-Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky appointed him to a citizens committee to oversee the implementation of the Ventura Boulevard Specific Plan, a blueprint to control growth and fund $220-million worth of improvements on the Boulevard.

But soon after joining the committee, Brain began to pick the plan apart and eventually uncovered flaws in the city’s cost estimates and plans to widen dozens of intersections.

The plan, adopted in 1991 but retroactive to 1989, was to be funded by fees charged to businesses that generated new vehicle trips.

But Brain said he discovered that the city had overestimated the number of trips that would be generated and found that about half the intersections the city wanted to widen had buildings in the way--two errors that were later confirmed by an independent consultant.

Embarrassed city planners eventually admitted the errors and worked with Brain and other community representatives to revamp the plan by cutting the price tag to $76 million and reducing the reliance on trip fees. A larger portion of the bill will be paid by an assessment district to spread some of the cost of the project to all businesses along the Boulevard.

The new plan was supported last month by the city Planning Commission and is scheduled for a council vote probably next month.

Rubenstein, who counts herself as a fan of Brain and his work, agrees with others who say he does not lead through inspiration or charisma. But she said charisma is overrated.

“I watch TV when I want to see celebrities with charisma,” she said. “I don’t go by charisma as much as I do by hard work and integrity.”

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Profile of Jeff Brain

* BORN: May 26, 1959

* HOMETOWN: Sherman Oaks

* EDUCATION: Degrees in accounting and real estate from Cal State Northridge.

* MARITAL STATUS: Married to Maricel, his second wife. Three children, two from the previous marriage.

* CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: 1985-94, president of Jeff Brain’s Real Estate Network; 1993, Board of Directors for the San Fernando Valley Board of Realtors; 1993-present, chairman of Ventura Boulevard Specific Plan Review Board; 1991, founder of Sherman Oaks Street Fair and Carnival; 1991, 1993, president of Sherman Oaks Chamber of Commerce; 1994, co-founded the Sherman Oaks Town Council, an umbrella group of community organizations that meet once a month to address local issues.