L.A. Mayor Unbowed as Political Storms Brew

Traveling to South Los Angeles to talk about schools the other day, Mayor James K. Hahn was in no mood to discuss his reelection.

“I have no comment about anyone running for office or thinking about running for office,” the Los Angeles mayor snapped at a television reporter who asked about one of his challengers. “I’m doing my job.”

The outburst made the afternoon news and set off a round of snickering among local politicos on the lookout for signs that the mayor was breaking under the pressure of criminal investigations and a growing field plotting for his job.

But that one slip was all the Hahn-watchers would get.

Despite months of headlines linking his administration to allegations of corruption, the mayor who built a reputation for integrity in a quarter century of public life has given barely a hint that he is troubled.

Hahn’s response has baffled some allies, who have urged him to fight back more forcefully. And it has fed detractors, who have called Hahn’s passivity a lack of leadership.

But those who know Hahn well say his stoicism reflects a man who is surprisingly secure in himself -- and whose decades in politics have taught him how and when to fight hard.

“I think Jim Hahn is frequently misunderstood,” said Councilman Eric Garcetti, one of the few elected officials with whom Hahn has developed a somewhat close relationship. “He’s a much stronger person than a lot of people give him credit for.”

The past several months have not been easy for the 53-year-old mayor. Hounded by challengers trying to drive him from office next March, defended publicly by few, the intensely private and reserved mayor has rarely appeared more alone.

Four of his deputy mayors have stepped down, including one who was called to testify before a grand jury. His Airport Commission president, Ted Stein, resigned amid controversy over his fundraising for the mayor.

Federal prosecutors have been going after e-mails inside the mayor’s office as part of their probe of city contracting at the airport, seaport and Department of Water and Power.

Then, last week, former Assembly Speaker Bob Hertzberg jumped into the race to unseat Hahn, attacking the mayor as being “asleep at the switch.”

Hertzberg joined state Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sylmar) and possible candidate Bernard C. Parks, a councilman and former police chief, in a field that could seriously trouble Hahn’s hopes of winning a second term.

His colleagues in city government, who for months said little publicly about his troubles, have become increasingly bold in their criticism of his leadership. Even when Hahn has made overtures toward members of the City Council, many have accepted only warily. Only a handful have stood up to defend him.

But as pundits question his administration’s ability to stay afloat, the mayor has kept to a busy schedule touring the city. He has resolutely expressed confidence that Angelenos will reward his efforts to reduce crime, repave streets and keep libraries open. Out in public, no one save reporters brings up his troubles.

In the face of criminal probes that are inching ever closer to his office, Hahn has also repeatedly stressed that he is unconcerned. He has seen no evidence of wrongdoing, he said. And he is eagerly awaiting the results of the investigations.

“Everything is on track,” Hahn said in an interview. “It’s not going to deter me from focusing on my priorities.”

The mayor’s sister, Janice Hahn, who sits on the City Council and is one of the mayor’s few confidants, said her brother privately confessed some anguish at what he sees as attacks on his aides.

“ ‘It was a painful week,’ ” she said the mayor told her when Stein stepped down. Janice Hahn said her brother found it particularly troubling because he does not believe Stein did anything wrong.

“Jim’s image of integrity is extremely, extremely important to him,” said Robert Horner, Hahn’s onetime law partner and longtime friend. “His father instilled that in him from the time he was a kid. You don’t take perks. You don’t accept favors.... That’s just the way Jim Hahn was raised.”

But Horner and others who know the mayor well say that a lifetime in politics has, as well, hardened Hahn to the pressures he is enduring now, even if the Hahns are not particularly experienced in scandal.

Growing up with a father whose legendary political skills carried him to more than four decades on the county Board of Supervisors, Hahn has seen more political battles than almost any other living Los Angeles politician.

Supervisor Kenneth Hahn took on and defeated the city’s conservative establishment to win election as a liberal New Deal Democrat after the Second World War; he appointed a black deputy to his staff in 1952, a time when neither the police nor fire departments were integrated.

In his political career, which stretches through one term as city controller and four terms as city attorney, the younger Hahn has also had no shortage of trials.

As a junior prosecutor in the city attorney’s office, Hahn felt the harassment of senior members of the office when his father did not endorse Hahn’s then-boss, City Atty. Burt Pines, for attorney general, Horner said.

Twelve years ago, when Hahn himself was city attorney, his office was raided and several of his employees subpoenaed as part of an Ethics Commission probe into allegations that Hahn deputies were illegally doing campaign work out of his office. The district attorney later dropped the inquiry and concluded that there was no foundation to the allegations.

Hahn fought fierce campaigns to win his last term as city attorney in 1997 and to win the mayor’s office in 2001.

Then, when he let Parks go as police chief two years ago, Hahn endured personal attacks from leaders of the city’s black community, which for half a century has been the foundation of his family’s political success.

“He has seen it all,” said Bill Carrick, one of Hahn’s longtime political advisors and a key member of his reelection team. “He knows that if something blows up, you deal with it. You don’t sit around and anguish over it.”

In an interview in his City Hall office, Hahn made the same point.

“If you’re in this position as mayor, you’re going to make some people happy, and you’re going to make some people unhappy .... It just comes with the job,” the mayor said. “I know people are going to make allegations. You let it bother you, and you’re not going to get your job done. I can’t control that. And if I can’t control it, I can’t worry about it.”

Hahn’s sanguine assessment of the trials of elected life also demonstrates his quiet self-confidence, say people who know him.

“Sometimes, you get a little angry that he’s not more concerned or upset,” said Joe Cerrell, a veteran Democratic consultant who has known Hahn since the mayor was a young man. “But that’s not who Jim Hahn is. And that’s why he sleeps better at night and doesn’t have the ulcers I do.”

Indeed, Hahn is an anachronism in other ways. No backslapper like his father, the mayor frequently labors through speeches and has long appeared painfully uncomfortable in public settings. At press conferences and public events, Hahn often stands by himself in the background, letting other politicians grab the microphones.

In a political age that seems to demand heartfelt tales of redemption and perseverance, Hahn almost never discusses his emotions, much less his life outside City Hall. He protects his two children from the public spotlight.

When he’s not working, Janice Hahn said, the mayor is happy being with his children and driving around in his 15-year-old Buick.

“He doesn’t like being in the limelight. If I’m in a restaurant and not recognized, it bothers me all night. It doesn’t bother him in the slightest,” said Janice Hahn. “He looks at himself as someone who wakes up every single day ready to do his job.”

The mayor simply isn’t the kind of person who wastes energy worrying about his opponents, his sister said.

“Jim knows that he hasn’t done anything wrong,” Janice Hahn said. “I think he sort of feels that the truth will come out.”

Like his father, Hahn has won election after election by embracing the image of clean government. The Boy Scout image is the real Hahn, said former partner Horner, who got to know Hahn in the ‘70s when the two were junior prosecutors in the city attorney’s office.

When they were partners, he said, Hahn would labor over the practice’s financial books to ensure that everything was recorded legally, Horner said. But he was a terrible business partner; he hated to ask clients for money.

“I never saw Jim do a dishonest thing,” said Horner, who said he hasn’t talked with the mayor in several years. “To me, it’s unimaginable that there could be anything to these allegations. Unimaginable.”