Bradley Stays on Top, Hahn Aims to Get There : Mayor Used His Big Guns to Reinforce His Party Position

Although every poll showed Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley an easy winner, his campaign staff reached deep into its arsenal for high-powered political weapons, including an attack commercial on television in the final week, to assure the mayor of a victory so big he would remain a statewide Democratic power and the city’s uncontested political leader.

So effective was the attack, especially the commercial, that Ron Smith, campaign manager for challenger Councilman John Ferraro, said: “He started going up and we stopped. They iced us.”

Waxman’s Comment

And Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles), a leader of a powerful Westside Democratic organization that had sniped at Bradley during the campaign in what some of the mayor’s advisers considered a challenge to Bradley’s power, said after the election:

“It was a smashing victory, a most impressive win. I think everyone who follows politics has to take the mayor seriously in whatever he chooses to run for. . . . He has put himself back on top of the list of strong Democratic officeholders.”

Won’t Commit Himself

Yet Waxman, like other Democrats still remembering Bradley’s 1982 gubernatorial loss to George Deukmejian, would not commit himself to a Bradley gubernatorial campaign and again said that state Sen. Gary Hart (D-Santa Barbara) “will be an outstanding candidate for state office,” although the congressman has not decided whom to support.

A jubilant Mayor Bradley reveled in the election results Wednesday at a press conference in City Hall where he remained the boss.

He smiled broadly when a reporter mistakenly referred to him as “governor.” He declined to rule himself out as a 1986 candidate for governor, saying, “I will never put myself in the position of saying never.”

“Times change, circumstances change,” said Bradley, although he also reiterated, “I am not planning to run for governor.”

The one-sided campaign--Bradley 68% to 30%--did not provide moments of high drama. But interviews Wednesday revealed that two crucial decisions, one made early and the other late in the campaign, made the difference between a routine victory and a lopsided win.

The first decision was a concerted effort to get out the vote in the largely black areas of South-Central Los Angeles, the area in which Bradley grew up and traditionally his most loyal base of support.

This was important because the mayor needed the votes for a huge victory and because he had been criticized during the 1982 election for neglecting black areas, resulting in a lower-than-expected turnout that might have cost him the election.

Record Results

Semiofficial figures released by the city clerk’s office late Wednesday showed the success of a campaign that resulted in the highest margin of victory in city history. City Archivist Hynda Rudd said records from 1925 on showed that only Bradley in 1981 and Fletcher Bowron in 1938 came close to matching the mayor’s winning margin.

“John Ferraro ran just the kind of campaign needed to get people to come out and vote for Tom,” said John Murray, a black bank executive and longtime Bradley supporter. “People saw (Ferraro) there with Sam Yorty (in campaign appearances) just evoking old memories and inspiring them to come out and vote.”

In the 8th Council District in South-Central Los Angeles, Bradley received 34,832 votes to Ferraro’s 833. He received about 4,000 more votes in that district than he did in 1981 against Yorty.

Bradley carried every other City Council district, including the San Fernando Valley, the more conservative middle-class residential area where the conservative Democrat Ferraro had hoped to make gains.

And he won decisively on the Westside, the largely Democratic, substantially Jewish area that has long been a Bradley stronghold. And Bradley carried the predominantly Latino Eastside.

Decision to Attack

The second decision was for Bradley to go on the attack against Ferraro, which represented a departure for the mayor.

In past campaigns, advisers had counseled him against attacking opponents on the theory that the predominantly white electorate would react negatively to a black candidate attacking a white foe.

But Mike Gage, Bradley’s campaign manager, said: “We didn’t even think about it. I can honestly say it did not come up in the decision of whether to attack Ferraro. It was not whether a black guy should attack but whether or not a guy who has never done so should attack--or defend himself.”

Gage said that a poll taken March 25 showed a slight Bradley decline in a group of voters considered most likely to go to the polls. Ferraro campaign manager Smith said his polls indicated the same.

“This was the time to attack,” Gage said.

Use of TV Ad Authorized

Bradley authorized use of a television commercial contending that Ferraro had voted for a cable television franchise in 1983 after receiving $17,500 in campaign contributions. Ferraro’s reply that Bradley campaign chairman Tom Quinn was also a stockholder in a cable television company that unsuccessfully sought a city franchise in 1982 and that Bradley received cable contributions were to no avail, according to polls.

“People didn’t know us, they knew Tom Bradley, they believed him, that’s why it worked,” Smith said.

Ferraro shook hands with Bradley in the council chambers Wednesday morning and told reporters later, “Life carries on, you don’t stop because you lose an election.”

Asked if he would change anything about the campaign, Ferraro said, “Yeah, I would have won.” He refused to rule out the possibility that he might run for mayor again, saying: “I’m an old football player. I don’t worry about the next game.”