Ferraro Faces Tough Task : Bradley’s Grip on Community Gives Him Big Advantage

During the no-host cocktail hour that always precedes fund-raising dinners, Los Angeles City Councilman John Ferraro and his wife, Margaret, sat at a small table talking to friends.

This particular party was to warm up guests at a dinner for the Martyrs Memorial and Museum of the Holocaust, and the room at the Beverly Hilton was crowded with members of the Jewish community, a voting group whose support Ferraro needs if he is to defeat Mayor Tom Bradley in the April 9 election.

The trouble was, as Ferraro’s friend, Milton Gordon, pointed out, the Ferraros were at the wrong cocktail party. In an adjoining room, honored guests were at a special party, and one of them was Bradley.

“Your rival is next door,” Gordon said, urging Ferraro to join him in pushing his way into the party. Ferraro diffidently hung back. But Margaret Ferraro, a determined and sophisticated woman, has a keen sense of where John should be. Clearly it was in the next room. Slowly, for she is still recovering from a stroke, she rose from her chair, took Gordon’s arm, and walked into the next room as if she were the guest of honor. Ferraro followed and was soon shaking hands.

The small incident illustrated a major point about the mayoral campaign: Ferraro, who has always been reluctant to seek the spotlight, now must battle his way into audiences where Bradley is a familiar figure, trying to win the support of interest groups the mayor has come to dominate in his 11 years as the city’s chief executive.

As he campaigns through the city, Bradley is again building his coalition of interest and neighborhood groups, recognizing they each have an individual concern.

In a sense, that is the story of Los Angeles politics. The city is so sprawling that it is difficult to find concerns common to everybody. The oil drilling that sends Pacific Palisades residents to a furious protest meeting is of little interest to an Eastside resident worried about forthcoming fare increases on the RTD bus that is his family’s main means of transportation. The successful citywide politician knows how to pull together these diverse interests.

Bradley’s ability to do that was evident at a meeting Friday in Van Nuys where the mayor spoke to the Valley Political Education Council, a political arm of the AFL-CIO and one of the interest groups in the Bradley coalition.

Sees No Problems

After Bradley spoke, Robert T. Freeman, council president, told a reporter, “I don’t see that he has any problems” in winning a fourth term, “nothing serious.” Freeman was not hostile to Ferraro, a Democrat who has always been supported by labor, but made it clear that nothing would shake the group’s support for a man they have been backing for years.

“Ferraro will put up a good campaign,” he said, “but the mayor’s record speaks for itself.”

On Thursday, Bradley demonstrated his pull with another important interest group, the teachers, administrators and parents supporting public education. He held a press conference at 77th Street School, in Southwestern Los Angeles, and talked of school discipline, praised parental participation in schools and said teachers were underpaid.

The fact that the neighborhood and the student body were predominantly black also gave the black mayor a chance to identify with the area of the city that is a major part of his political base. The depth of his ties to the area was emphasized when he pointed out to his school audience that the principal, Robert Boswell, and he have known each other since boyhood.

Ferraro, having trouble breaking the Bradley hold on neighborhood and interest groups, is countering his opponent’s advantage by searching for themes that will unite voters across the board against Bradley.

Sometimes that works. In 1969, then-Mayor Sam Yorty brought out a huge turnout of residents who are usually low-turnout voters with a campaign that implied that a Bradley victory would turn over the city to black, leftist militants. Four years later, those voters--living for the most part in working-class San Fernando Valley neighborhoods--were not frightened and turned out in fewer numbers.

Ferraro is trying to sound a citywide theme by concentrating in the first weeks of the campaign on his charge that the Police Department has been weakened in the Bradley years.

That subject is of deep interest to every part of the city. Ferraro, trying to crack Bradley’s Westside, heavily Jewish stronghold, cited police protection Thursday in a speech to the Westside Civic Breakfast Group at Junior’s deli. He recalled the mugging of synagogue-bound Beverly-Fairfax residents and criticized Bradley’s administration for “failure to provide police protection.”

Seeks to Stir Response

Poking around, testing such themes, Ferraro has also tried to stir public response to his criticism of the Bradley-backed Metro Rail subway project and to his charge that the mayor is guilty of cronyism in his appointments.

But by week’s end, he returned to the police theme, holding a press conference in front of Parker Center, the police headquarters, to explain further how he would increase the size of the Police Department without the property tax increase that Bradley favors.

If a theme is developed and the Ferraro campaign takes off, he has some potential advantages, a couple of which have surfaced.

A few Democrats are not enthusiastic over the prospect of a big Bradley victory. As one of them told The Times last week: “There is concern that once he becomes mayor again there is no stopping him for running for governor. That would lead to another losing (gubernatorial) campaign and further reduce our chances in the state in (the presidential election in) 1988.” Bradley ran and lost for governor in 1982.

A surprising admission of at least a slight Democratic coolness came from Rep. Howard L. Berman, (D-Studio City), who complained to a reporter that “I haven’t been asked” to back Bradley yet. Such a complaint is usually political code signifying some unhappiness.

Berman and Rep. Henry A. Waxman, (D-Los Angeles), head the powerful Westside-San Fernando Valley Berman-Waxman political organization. They are furious over Bradley’s support of oil drilling in the Pacific Palisades. In addition, some members of the organization say privately that the mayor did not contribute enough to the successful campaign last year to defeat a Republican reapportionment plan on the ballot. Finally, some Berman-Waxman supporters say--again privately--that the mayor should step aside as a potential 1986 gubernatorial candidate, leaving the field to new faces.

But in the end, Berman said, he expects to support Bradley, leaving Ferraro still looking for support from powerful city interest groups and searching for a broad attack that will bring out anti-Bradley voters.