VOTE Seeking New Blood By JACQUELINE FOX Staff Reporter According to a board member of Valley VOTE, the group that is credited with spearheading the San Fernando Valley secession drive, a move is afoot among its members to oust its long-time president, Jeff Brain, and chairman, Richard Close. A handful of new board members were installed at a special Valley VOTE meeting Feb. 25. The group also created a new mission statement and identified its top priorities for the coming year. Chief among them, VOTE wants to seek reform legislation that would make it possible to win a secession election with only a 50 percent majority in the Valley. Currently the law requires that secession also be approved by 50 percent of voters citywide. But the group also decided to hold a special election in roughly 30 days, which, according to board member Richard Leyner, will likely result in the replacement of Brain and Close, both of whom have served in their current positions since Valley VOTE was formed roughly seven years ago. “It is the opinion of many members and of myself that there be a changing of the guard of some members of the executive committee,” said Leyner, who is a senior vice president at NAI/Capital Commercial Real Estate. “There will be challenges to those positions, and the new leaders will represent the future of the group.” Brain has taken a consulting job with Gene La Pietra, a nightclub owner who led the Hollywood secession drive. Close, a full time attorney and long-time member of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners’ Association, said he intends to remain involved with the group, but is admittedly weighing whether he has the ability to commit as much time to Valley VOTE as he has in the past. He said he intends to decide whether to vie for his seat or give it up willingly before the elections are held. “Within the next 30 days we will be discussing the structure of Valley VOTE and the involvement of various people, and during that time period I will decide if I’m able to remain involved at the same level that I have been,” Close said. “There’s a question of my ability to devote the time necessary for the next phase. I’m gonna stay involved, it’s just the question of how much.” There have also been rumblings in the community that Close angered many Valley VOTE members and secession supporters when he took a pre-election trip to Italy with Ted Stein, a local developer and Los Angeles World Airport’s Commissioner who is considered one of the leading contributors to Mayor James Hahn’s anti-secession campaign. Close said he and Stein have been friends for years and that his role with Valley VOTE was to get an initiative on the ballot, not manage the inner-workings of a secession campaign or lobby against any particular opposition group or individual. “The campaign was run by the Valley Independence Committee, and I was not an officer or part of the leadership of that group,” Close said. “My wife and I have been friends with The Steins for several years and have been taking trips together for several years.” Leyner and others have said that candidates for Valley offices and many secession supporters also grew resentful toward some “other Valley VOTE directors” when they formed the Valley Independence Committee and hired Goddard Claussen Porter Novelli to run the primary breakup campaign. “We sort of lost this great grass-roots effort we had going,” said Leyner. “It’s like they came in and said you just sit back and let us handle things form here. We felt disenfranchised.” Goddard Claussen removed itself from the campaign when it became clear that the pro-breakup campaign would not be able to raise enough money to match the opposition.
