Bradley Goes Nationwide in Gearing Up for Governor Race

“I’ll let you know when,” said Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley when a supporter recently asked about the beginning of his campaign for governor. “All you have to do is be ready when you get the call.”

Although the mayor is not expected to announce his candidacy until early next year, the call has been loudly sounded for weeks. It has been heard across the country as Bradley works to build a financial and political coalition to help him win what his friends say will be a difficult 1986 campaign against Republican Gov. George Deukmejian.

The shape of the fund-raising drive, and an accompanying effort to line up voters, illustrate how Bradley is using the support of companies doing business with the city, old friends and ethnic group leaders while trying to reach out to the “New Idea” Democrats who backed Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado in the 1984 California presidential primary. Bradley supported the loser, former Vice President Walter F. Mondale.

Sources Near Home

Tonight the financial call reaches out to tap well-heeled, reliable and traditional sources close to home for Bradley during a fund-raising dinner at the Century Plaza Hotel expected to raise about $300,000.

Last month in New York City, financial houses that have handled the sales of more than $2.5 billion in Los Angeles municipal bonds sponsored a fund-raiser that brought Bradley more than $100,000. Some of Wall Street’s giants contributed, including Drexel, Burnham Lambert; Kidder, Peabody & Co.; Salomon Bros. and Smith Barney, Harris Upham Co., as well as Daniels & Bell Inc., the only black firm member on the New York Stock Exchange.

The event was organized by Travers Bell, head of Daniels & Bell, which is helping market the bonds financing a proposed city trash disposal project. It was held under the auspices of the New York Bradley Roundtable, which Bell started.

Earlier in 1985 and in 1984, according to a computer study by the Los Angeles Times Poll, Bradley received $20,750 from Drexel Burnham, $3,500 from Kidder, Peabody and $18,500 from Smith Barney.

Nearing $1 Million

A Bradley campaign official said that counting the expected receipts from tonight’s dinner, the mayor’s campaign fund total is approaching $1 million.

By comparison, Deukmejian, following an expected $350,000 from a $135-per-person dinner Monday night at the Bonaventure hotel, will have collected more than $4 million before expenses from a whirlwind series of fund-raisers this year. Karl Samuelian, Deukmejian’s finance chairman, said he expects by election time to raise more than the $8 million spent during the governor’s first gubernatorial campaign.

The effort to recruit voters involves Bradley speeches around the state and campaign staff organizing efforts that are just taking shape. Last month, for example, Bradley held out the hope of state help to minority businesses in an Oakland speech to young black professionals and business executives. He told how Los Angeles, under his leadership, had given contracts to minority firms.

“Others have been doing this for generations, for centuries,” he said. “The time has come for us to get our fair share, our fair share, nothing more.” Minority businesses, he said, will “open these doors if we have to smash them down. . . . We mean business. . . . There is power in politics.”

Accepting a more difficult challenge, Bradley flew to Redding last week to speak to supervisors from the boards of nine far-Northern California counties, some representing nominally Democratic areas whose support for Bradley was weak in his 1982 loss to Deukmejian.

There was an unpleasant moment when Supervisor Mick Jones of Modoc County, introducing the mayor, said, “What does the mayor and Humphrey the whale have in common? They’re both big, they’re both black and neither made it to Sacramento.”

After Bradley’s speech, the incoming president of the nine-county group, Supervisor Roy F. Peters of Shasta County, told the audience, “So as not to confuse people by the remarks of my colleague, we certainly have enjoyed an open and democratic process and we welcome all people to join us in the elective process.”

The audience applauded loudly and afterward, members of the group told a reporter they were embarrassed by Jones’ words. But it provided a rare glimpse of the bigotry that Bradley faces in some areas.

Finally, organizers are reaching out to Democrats who now are lukewarm about the mayor, including the Gary Hart legions. Earlier in the year, he spoke to the California Democrats for New Leadership, founded by 1984 campaigners for Hart.

“After our meeting, there were some people who were not impressed with him at all. He did not have charisma,” said Paul B. Albritton, a young San Francisco attorney. He said, “I would like Bradley to be my candidate. I would like him to be the candidate of the new Democrats brought into the party through the (1984) Democratic primary. But my emotional energy will depend on two factors: whether his proposals are in keeping with my philosophy and whether he has a chance of winning.”

The fund raising also reflects the coalition-building goal of the Bradley campaign.

An example is the committee organizing tonight’s Century Plaza dinner. It is headed by wealthy businessman Victor Carter and his wife, Adrea, two longtime leaders of the Jewish community, and it includes another Jewish community leader, Edward Sanders, and his wife Rose. Businessmen with large interests in the city, labor leaders, lawyers, old friends and actor Martin Sheen and his wife Janet also helped put together the dinner.

Sanders said the presence of himself and Carter is an effort to defuse remaining hard feelings in the Jewish community, traditionally a source of strong support for Bradley, over the mayor’s delay in criticizing black Muslim minister Louis Farrakhan for remarks taken as being anti-Semitic.

“It is not an accident that I am co-chair,” Sanders said. “It is a conscious decision on my part. While I felt the Farrakhan situation was not handled in a positive way by the mayor’s office, it is a thing . . . that I want put to bed.”

“My feeling is that if you have a friend for many years, you don’t drop that friend because he made a mistake he apologized for,” said Carter, noting that Bradley had admitted he could have spoken out sooner to criticize Farrakhan.