ELECTIONS / L.A. COUNCIL : Castaneda Back in Race for Bernardi’s Seat : Officials reverse a ruling that invalidated signatures in the northeast Valley district.

Rose Castaneda underwent an abrupt political resurrection Thursday as Los Angeles election officials reversed themselves and allowed her to run for the City Council seat being vacated by Ernani Bernardi.

Castaneda, a top aide to Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City), had been disqualified on Tuesday from the April 20 race after city officials declared that she failed to satisfy a legal requirement to turn in 500 valid voter signatures.

Officials said they invalidated 434 out of nearly 900 signatures submitted by Castaneda because voters had not dated their signatures, as required by city law. The invalidated names left Castaneda just 38 shy of the number she needed.

But city elections chief Kristin Heffron said Thursday that the city attorney’s office ruled that 42 of the invalidated names should be allowed, giving Castaneda a new total of 504--enough to qualify her for the ballot. Heffron said the signatures, even though undated by voters, were allowable because the forms they appeared on were properly dated by Castaneda signature gatherers.

The reversal was greeted with jubilation by Castaneda’s campaign, which had been deeply embarrassed by its earlier apparent failure to carry out such a routine political chore.

“There ain’t no fat ladies singing down here,” said Castaneda’s delighted campaign manager, Marc Litchman.

Castaneda’s qualification boosted to eight the number of candidates competing for Bernardi’s 7th City Council District seat, which represents a largely Latino, blue-collar section of the northeast San Fernando Valley. The 81-year-old Bernardi recently launched a bid for mayor of Los Angeles.

While Castaneda celebrated, other candidates knocked off the April ballot for insufficient numbers of signatures got no relief Thursday.

The election division conceded that it handed out inaccurate district maps to would-be candidates for municipal office, but insisted it is not to blame for the failure of dozens of hopefuls to qualify for the ballot.

Among those disqualified was a seasoned politician--Warren Furutani, a school board member who planned to challenge Harbor-area Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores.

He fell 67 names short of the required 500 signatures of voters living in the 15th Council District.

“I’m just flabbergasted,” said Furutani, who was reviewing every signature again Thursday.

Elections chief Heffron admitted that her office distributed faulty maps to candidates in every one of the eight City Council races. Candidates use the maps to identify the boundaries of the council district--from which they collect signatures.

But Heffron insisted, “None of the candidates should have been disqualified because of an error on our part.” She said the errors were in the boundaries of the precincts within the council districts, but not in the district boundaries themselves.

Most of the disqualified candidates collected the required 500 signatures, but many of them were invalidated because they came from people living outside the district in which the candidate sought to run.

Disqualified candidates have until March 15 to challenge their disqualification.

“What we’ve told candidates is administratively we cannot accept those (voters’ signatures) if they are out of district, even though it was our error in providing incorrect maps,” Heffron said.

“The only way they can get signatures accepted is to go to court.”

That’s exactly what one disqualified candidate plans to do.

Mary Lou Holte, a Van Nuys resident who planned to challenge Councilman Marvin Braude, blamed the clerk for her disqualification and said she will sue to get her name on the ballot.

Heffron said that the city clerk’s office sent letters to every council candidate within a few days of the filing deadline notifying them of the “discrepancy” in the maps.

Holte said that she received the letter the day after she turned in her petitions--and after the deadline passed.

“On deadline day, I turned in 769 signatures, and everything seemed to be fine,” Holte said. “I came home that afternoon and got a letter from the city clerk’s office saying ‘Sorry for the inconvenience.”’ Of the 769 signatures she turned in, only 342 were deemed valid.

Asked if she has complained to Braude, she said, “No. I’m sure he’s over there laughing.”

Assistant City Atty. Anthony Alperin said, “There is no administrative remedy for the situation . . . The candidates would have to bring the issues before the courts. We can’t comment on what our response to those lawsuits would be.”

The map foul-up recalls an earlier goof by the city clerk’s elections division.

In the 1989 municipal election, a City Council candidate secured a court order to qualify for the ballot with 493 signatures by claiming the clerk’s office erred by distributing an incorrect map of council district boundaries.

In the current election, Furutani, a past president of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education, was the only seasoned politician among the five candidates challenging incumbent Flores in the 15th District.

None of the others--businesswoman Janice Hahn, attorney Diane Middleton, businessman Rudy Svorinich and attorney James Thompson--have held elected office, although Hahn is the daughter of ex-County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn.

In the mayor’s race, meanwhile, the number of candidates dropped to 24, down from the 52 who had originally declared their intention to seek the city’s top office. The mayoral field still sets a record, however.

Times staff writer Lisa Richardson contributed to this story.