Last Hahn standing

IT didn’t take long to figure out that the Exy Johnson, Los Angeles’ official tall ship, wasn’t big enough to hold two of the city’s most gregarious political egos.

By the time Councilwoman Janice Hahn stepped aboard the 110-foot-long boat -- leading an annual tall ships parade in the Port of Los Angeles, the hub of her district -- Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was already on deck, soaking up the spotlight.

“I thought he was on another boat,” Hahn commented to an aide. Villaraigosa, surrounded by the ship’s crew, glanced at the councilwoman and then went back to signing autographs. If you ask him, Villaraigosa will tell you that he likes Janice Hahn, the doting baby sister of James K. Hahn, the man he defeated in a rough election last spring. And Janice Hahn will say that she wants to see the new mayor succeed, even if he did break her heart by taking away her brother’s job.

But put Janice and Antonio in close proximity on the open sea and watch out for the churning undercurrent.

Unlike her brother, Janice Hahn has all the zip and verve of her late father, the revered Kenneth Hahn, who served as a county supervisor for 40 years. And she has suffered to get to where she is: When she told her parents years ago that she was going to run for office, her mother burst into tears. Her father, who had urged her to stay out of politics, was no less disapproving.

For many years, it seemed as if her parents were right. She lost races while her brother made the family proud with victory after victory. It felt like a repeat of all those times when they were kids, when her brother’s report cards went up on display while hers got stuffed in a drawer

Now that has changed. Janice, 53, is the only Hahn in public office. With her down-home San Pedro folksiness, she sees herself as the one charged with carrying on the family name and legacy -- even if it means taking on Villaraigosa during his honeymoon with the city.

Hahn has moxie, in spades, and there’s no mistaking it: The new mayor is watchful and a bit wary of her. The subtle tension -- although tempered by spurts of joviality -- was obvious during the 2 1/2 hours the councilwoman spent with the mayor recently on the Exy Johnson.

About 10 minutes after Hahn arrived on the ship, Villaraigosa decided it was time to act.

He announced to the crew that he was going to climb the mast to look at the harbor from a platform 40 feet above deck, amid the unfurled sails. She told the mayor that she would follow behind him, but as she watched him struggle to navigate the rope ladder in his black dress shoes, she changed her mind.

“I’m just going to stay here and offer you moral support,” she yelled up.

“The key is not to look down,” Villaraigosa called back.

The mayor’s Los Angeles Police Department security detail watched nearby. “This is either teetering on a PR accomplishment or a disaster,” offered a radio reporter.

Once securely on the platform, the mayor surveyed the scene and grinned. He looked down at the blond Hahn, dressed in a sporty pink jacket and suede sneakers. “If you want your projects approved, you have to come up here and talk to me.”

She smiled back.

“I need you to get down safely,” she said. “I was a cheerleader in high school. That’s my role. I’m cheering you on.”

She added, quietly: “I do not feel the need to climb up there like that.”

She looked up at Villaraigosa again. “Don’t fall!”

In the family business

To find political personalities as big as Villaraigosa’s and Hahn’s at City Hall is pretty rare at the moment. There’s already talk about the new mayor running for governor, and perhaps an even higher office someday.

For Hahn -- who is so popular in her district, which stretches from Watts to San Pedro, that she ran unopposed in her reelection bid last spring -- the future also looks promising. She says she is determined to stay in local government, where she thinks she can have the most influence.

So, she wonders, will she run for mayor in four years, when her term limit expires? What about running for county supervisor, like her father?

“You have to think about all your options,” she said.

Certainly, politics is something she has been thinking about all her life. Growing up in South Los Angeles as the daughter of the popular liberal Democratic supervisor, she watched her father in awe. They talked about politics at the dinner table, when they went out to restaurants and in church.

“Dad raised us to believe that two of the most noble professions we could go into were full-time preacher or public servant,” said Hahn, who still draws on her strong Christian roots for solace and inspiration. “They were the best ways to serve God and man.”

But there was a problem: Her father didn’t want his only daughter in politics, even though he knew she was a natural. The elder Hahn, earnest but old-fashioned, urged Janice to be a stay-at-home mom.

“At that time, I think dads traditionally thought of women as wives and mothers,” said Sara Jackson, a friend of Janice Hahn since seventh grade. “He may not have realized that she was listening and observing all he was doing for the county of Los Angeles.”

As Hahn got older, she became frustrated. “Those were tough times. I kept wondering why [Jim] was on that path and I wasn’t.... I think there were many times I was a little bit envious, because I couldn’t see how I was going to get there.”

She tried to follow her father’s wishes. She went to what is now Abilene Christian University, then returned to Los Angeles with an education degree. She married, had two sons and a daughter, volunteered at the PTA, went to work as a teacher, got divorced.

By 1993, much to her parents’ dismay, she sought a seat on the City Council in her home district. She lost. In 1998, she ran for Congress. She lost again.

“I think that was a terribly dark time for her, and I think in some ways she knew that the life of a politician meant that you win some and you lose some,” Jackson said. “But in some ways, because she was her father’s daughter, she took it very well. Just because she lost a race didn’t mean she was going to lose the next one.”

She ran again for City Council in 2001, the same year her brother defeated Villaraigosa to succeed Richard J. Riordan as mayor. She won the harbor area by a bigger margin than her sibling.

When she arrived at City Hall, some people expected her to be a shy surrogate of her brother. But she quickly disabused them of that notion.

Everything about her seemed to sparkle -- her blue eyes, her short blond hair, her smile. She wore garish jackets -- in Kelly green, yellow and pink. She quickly won over her council colleagues with her enthusiasm. Even council members who did not support her brother found her endearing.

“She has a tremendous passion for people and a tremendous passion for service,” Councilman Tom LaBonge said. “Jim is extremely smart and has a tremendous knowledge of the city. But Janice has great instincts as a street politician.”

It wasn’t long before the councilwoman was revealing a political streak that far outstripped the technocratic style that characterized Jim Hahn’s regime. She started to question the status quo at City Hall.

When a secession movement in the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood threatened to divide Los Angeles, she came out for the creation of a borough system -- something her brother opposed. And when the police commission approved a new policy curtailing the response to residential burglar alarms, she scolded LAPD leaders and the mayor’s office for failing to solicit more community input.

“I said to Jim, ‘God, if only you had half of your sister’s personality,’ ” said veteran political consultant Joe Cerrell.

Jim Hahn responded with pride. “She’s been a fighter,” he said days before relinquishing his office. “I’m looking forward to sending her all my constituent requests.”

Once she was in office, she had to be mindful of how her actions would impinge on her brother’s reelection effort. “I viewed everything in terms of how it would affect him. There were some things I held my tongue on.... Now I will be free, if I need to, to question more. General mangers, mayoral politics, I’m certainly freer to do that.”

Her first term was busy, and it was marked by little controversy. (However, she drew criticism when she placed on her city website a testimonial she gave in Pasadena at the Billy Graham crusade last year. The speech described how her penniless grandmother planned to kill herself and her children before she heard “the unmistakable voice of God.” Eventually Hahn, who was raised in the Church of Christ in Redondo Beach, removed the religious speech, at the urging of the city attorney.)

Early on, she went to work on her brother’s reelection campaign. “We are very close,” said Hahn, who lives a few blocks from her brother. “We were raised exactly the same way. We both have that kind of Kenny Hahn glue that holds us together. We both, frankly, lived in his shadow.

“We have the same political instincts. We disagreed once in a while.” She added, with a laugh: “And I was always right.”

She is still lamenting Jim Hahn’s loss.

“I never thought there would come a time when I would be the only Hahn in elected office,” she said. “It took me a long time to get here. Now I’m the last Hahn standing. A little bruised and battered, but still standing.”

She added: “I take everything personally. You know, that’s tough. It’s about me. It’s about my family.”

She is well aware that people have been following her every move -- especially how she interacts with Villaraigosa. The problems between them bubbled to the surface publicly in February. During a contentious debate over a planned sales tax hike that Janice Hahn supported, the councilwoman drew gasps when she told Villaraigosa -- then her council colleague -- to save his “crappy speeches” for the campaign trail.

In early August, Hahn caught more attention when she voted against Villaraigosa’s plan to extend the lease on the Sunshine Canyon landfill. (She believed it should have been shut down).

One reporter called Hahn’s action a “kick in the shins” to the new mayor, an allegation that the councilwoman sharply denied.

She paused and then joked: “Believe me, if I kick someone, it ain’t going to be in the shins.”

Lately, she has gone out of her way to praise Villaraigosa. “I don’t see any reason to do otherwise right now,” she said. “I need him and I think he needs me.”

Although it’s obvious that she thinks the mayor is a bit of a showboat, at the end of the day, she says she has a lot of respect for Villaraigosa, even if she won’t follow him up a swaying ladder on the mast of a moving ship.

Burying the hatchet?

After 45 minutes in his lofty perch above the deck of the Exy Johnson, Villaraigosa started to get restless. He decided it was time to climb down and rejoin the group.

Hahn watched his descent with great interest. She told the members of his LAPD detail: “If he falls, you guys are in big trouble.”

Villaraigosa finally stepped back onto the deck. He grinned at his bodyguards. “I’m going to jump overboard now and you guys are going to have to swim after me,” he teased.

He walked over to Hahn, who congratulated him for his skillful feat. They spent the rest of the cruise talking about ways to improve commerce and security in the harbor.

Finally, the ship docked and the mayor and councilwoman walked off the boat like they were old friends. They paused to talk to reporters.

“You would have been very proud of this mayor. This mayor climbed 40 feet up,” Hahn boasted. “I stayed down below to offer moral support.”

Villaraigosa joked: “Did you notice, we walked in fighting and we came out holding hands?”