Riordan, Stein Still Leading Opponents in Overall Fund-Raising

With about six weeks to go until the April 8 Los Angeles balloting, fund-raising in the handful of hot contests continues at a fast pace, campaign finance documents showed Thursday.

Mayor Richard Riordan brought an additional $129,625 into his already bulging campaign account, while his underfinanced challenger, state Sen. Tom Hayden, added $178,016 to his treasury during the reporting period between Jan. 1 and Feb. 22.

That put Riordan’s fund-raising total at just over $2.5 million, and documents show he had $1.7 million left to spend in the home stretch of his bid for a second and final four-year term. Hayden, a latecomer to the race who had reported raising just $22,000 by year’s end, has $125,000 cash on hand, a summary of his report showed.

City Atty. James K. Hahn, facing competition from well-bankrolled attorney and former Riordan advisor Ted Stein, raised $192,429 during the latest reporting period, including the proceeds from a fund-raising dinner last month at a downtown hotel. Stein received $127,684, marking the first reporting period in the campaign that Hahn has outstripped Stein. Stein’s campaign total, however, remains higher--$1 million to Hahn’s $822,000. And Stein has more left in the till to spend--$810,696 to Hahn’s $587,118. Hahn gets $141,000 in public matching funds because he agreed to limit his spending to $990,000.

The battle over Proposition 8, which calls for creation of an elected panel to overhaul the city’s 72-year-old charter, continued to rack up big dollars from small numbers of wealthy contributors, the reports showed. The Yes on Proposition 8 Committee raised $372,000 from 15 contributors during the seven-week reporting period.

The drive to put the measure on the ballot was largely funded by Riordan late last year, which has escalated tensions between him and the City Council, which has responded with a rival plan.

Riordan also has helped raise $556,500, mostly from corporate executives, to back a slate of candidates for the panel, which would be made up of one representative from each of the 15 council districts. He is expected to announce his choices next week.

Backers of Proposition 8, which asks voters to create the panel, got $33,000 from the Zenith Corp. and several contributions of $25,000 each from businesses including Ralphs supermarkets, Wells Fargo & Co., Bank of America and Galpin Ford. Energy corporation executive Selim K. Zilkha gave $49,000. Hayden, who backs the concept of charter reform but calls the mayor’s efforts “a power grab,” has created another charter reform campaign committee and kicked in $50,000 of his own money, documents filed Thursday showed. Hayden said he intends to spend the funds not on behalf of charter commission candidates but on the measure itself. He said he has asked the Ethics Commission for clarification of the rules governing the campaign and will decide soon what tack to take.

Money also continued to flow to the campaign accounts of the two leading contenders in the race for the 11th District council seat held by Marvin Braude, who is retiring.

Braude’s former chief of staff, Cindy Miscikowski, raised $27,565 in two months to bring her campaign total to $244,814. The total includes $50,119 in matching funds from the city.

Miscikowski had a cash balance of $136,085 at the end of the reporting period. Her principal opponent, former Riordan staffer Georgia Mercer, ended the period with $111,797 on hand.

Mercer raised $33,414 in the most recent reporting period. She also received $61,119 in city matching funds, boosting her campaign total to $197,623.

A third candidate, businessman Mark Isler of Van Nuys, reported raising $21,718 to date--$20,000 of that in the form of loans he made to his campaign. The fourth candidate, Doug Friedman of Brentwood, said earlier this week he has brought in about $200 overall.

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Times staff writers Nancy Hill-Holtzman and Hugo Martin contributed to this story.