Meyer Serves Bradley as ‘Mayor of the Valley’

When Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley came to Northridge last month for a meeting with tenants of the run-down Bryant-Vanalden apartments, Dodo Meyer was at his side, advising him on how to handle the area’s politically volatile problems.

In 1984, when Bradley decided to replace most of the city’s commissioners, Meyer sent the mayor a list of important San Fernando Valley residents to consider for the appointments. Most were named commissioners.

And, more recently, when a community group sought help in obtaining federal funds for a health clinic for American Indians, Meyer drafted a letter on the mayor’s stationery in support of the group’s request and signed Bradley’s name to it.

Wields Clout

Such is the influence of Meyer, a direct, outspoken, strong-willed 61-year-old former housewife-turned-women’s-activist who has been Bradley’s trusted Valley deputy for the 12 years he has been mayor. Just about everybody--including Bradley--introduces her as the “the mayor of the Valley.”

Her job is to represent Bradley in the Valley--be it at a Chamber of Commerce meeting or a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new supermarket. It also is to keep the mayor informed of Valley issues, especially hot political ones.

“She’s the mayor’s eyes and ears in the Valley,” said Councilman Howard Finn, who represents the northeast Valley.

More than an information gatherer, however, Meyer has been effective in building support and, equally important, in heading off potentially embarrassing problems for the black and liberal mayor in the predominantly white, conservative area that has been the toughest part of the city for him politically.

She maintains hundreds of 3-by-5-inch cards listing Valley residents who have worked for Bradley’s campaigns. On them, she has detailed what the residents have done, including how much money, if any, they have contributed to the mayor’s fund-raising drives. Meyer said she uses the cards during her off hours to raise support for Bradley at campaign time. She insists she never uses them as the basis for determining whose requests for city services are granted.

Critics, including several homeowner leaders, accuse her of being more concerned about enhancing Bradley’s image than in tending to the needs of the Valley.

“She serves to insulate the mayor from a lot of what’s happening in the Valley, which I think is detrimental to him because he doesn’t become that involved in Valley problems,” said Richard Close, president of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn.

No one, however, disputes that when it comes to Valley matters, Meyer has the mayor’s ear.

“If you want the mayor’s support for something, you’re wise to check with Dodo, and it certainly helps to have her on your side,” said Deputy Mayor Tom Houston.

“Dodo,” the name of an extinct, ridiculous bird that couldn’t fly, is an unlikely name for someone who wants to be taken seriously.

Meyer, a 5-foot-2, dark-eyed brunette, got the nickname when her brother, at an early age, unsuccessfully tried to pronounce her real name, Doris. As a girl, Doris took one of her first steps toward independence by deciding she wanted to be known as “Dodo.”

Insistent on Nickname

“When she was nine and went away to camp,” said her daughter, Patricia Meyer, “she decided from that moment on that she was going to be called Dodo. When her parents drove up to pay her a visit, she announced, ‘My name is Dodo, not Doris.’ Her parents respected her wish. They had no choice. Their willful daughter had put her tiny foot down and that was that.”

Bradley put it more simply: “Dodo has a strong personality.”

Meyer, one of only a handful of people left from the mayor’s original staff, is a $41,428-a-year “administrative coordinator,” one of six in the mayor’s office assigned to different areas of the city.

But she enjoys more independence and power than her counterparts because of her knowledge, tenure and keen political judgment, Houston said. He said Meyer is one of only a few people in the mayor’s office who can contact Bradley directly without going through someone else.

“We defer to her judgment on a variety of issues,” Houston said.

For example, Houston said, Meyer was Bradley’s chief adviser on a controversial plan proposed by Councilman Hal Bernson that would have made it easier for landlords to evict 3,000 predominately low-income Latinos from the Bryant Street-Vanalden Avenue area of Northridge. Last September Bradley came out in opposition to the plan. After the mayor’s announcement, which came on the heels of weeks of criticism from others, Bernson shelved the proposal.

Immediate Memo

Meyer said she sent a memo to Bradley explaining the plan immediately after it was tentatively approved by the City Council. Although she declined to make her memo public, she said she called the plan “outrageous.”

In what may have been a miscalculation, however, Meyer arranged the recent meeting between Bradley and landlords and tenants of the Bryant-Vanalden area to discuss ways that they could voluntarily clean up the neighborhood.

However, only 25 tenants showed up, and they were confronted by 700 angry residents of the surrounding, mostly white, middle-income neighborhood. The homeowners had received mailers from Bernson--who had not been invited--suggesting they attend the meeting to voice their support of Bernson and their concern for run-down conditions and crime in the Bryant-Vanalden apartment complexes.

Bradley said at the time of the meeting that his staff had erred in not inviting Bernson. Although the meeting clearly had backfired on Bradley, his advisers later contended it did the mayor no political damage because Bradley never fared well in Bernson’s district anyway.

Conflict With Bernson

Bernson, meanwhile, declined to comment on Meyer other than to say: “She works for the mayor and does what the mayor wants her to do, which puts her in conflict with me on a lot of philosophical issues.”

On non-controversial matters, Meyer clearly feels comfortable speaking or writing for the mayor, as was the case with a letter she recently sent out under the mayor’s name supporting a request by an American Indian group in San Pedro for a federal grant to continue operating a health center.

“If I know enough about an organization, and I believe they’re contributing to the community, I will write a letter in the mayor’s name in support of their project,” she said.

Meyer works out of an office in the Valley Municipal Building in Van Nuys, adorned with poster-sized pictures of Bradley. She receives dozens of calls every day from the public, ranging from complaints about potholes to requests from homeowner groups for the mayor’s support for a building moratorium on Ventura Boulevard.

Often, people call the mayor’s office because they don’t know where else to call for help.

She acknowledges that good service frequently translates into political support, a fact recognized by her boss.

“Dodo has helped me build political support in the Valley by introducing me to important leaders and organizations in the area and by means of the overall effective job she has done,” Bradley said.

At a fund-raiser for the mayor’s reelection campaign last spring, Meyer was Bradley’s side the entire time, escorting him from table to table and making introductions.

‘Working the Room’

“It’s called working the room,” Meyer said. “That’s part of politics. I mean, anybody who’s worth their salt does that for their boss.”

Bradley supporters say Meyer also has been important to the mayor because she knows the area where Bradley can best spend his time and money to build support. They also say she has been effective in cultivating the Valley business community.

“She has been extremely effective at building bridges for the mayor among a variety of constituencies that did not exist early in his administration,” said Norman Emerson, a former Bradley aide who is now director of public affairs for Warner Center developer Robert Voit.

Emerson said Meyer has been able to improve the mayor’s standing in the Valley by bringing together diverse groups to promote projects for the good of the Valley, such as development of an arts park, which would include a 2,500-seat theater, in the Sepulveda Basin. It is one of her pet projects.

Criticized

Meyer’s critics include some homeowner leaders, who say that in order to steer Bradley clear of controversy, she keeps the mayor from getting more involved in solving such Valley problems as noise at Burbank Airport and Ventura Boulevard traffic congestion.

Meyer responded that there is little the mayor can do on some issues, such as the airport, which is owned by the cities of Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena.

Some homeowner leaders also accused Meyer of being more attentive to the Valley business community than to homeowners.

Gerald Silver, president of Homeowners of Encino, complained that Meyer has never attended one of his group’s meetings.

“I don’t go to homeowners’ meetings because, if I did, I would be out every night of the week,” Meyer said. She dismissed Silver’s criticism to their differences over development of the Sepulveda Basin arts park, which he opposes.

“But homeowners know very well that our door is always open to them,” Meyer added. “They know how to get me. I speak to some on a regular basis. And those who I’m not in touch with, it’s because they don’t choose to be in touch with me.”

The Valley’s unofficial mayor was born Dec. 4, 1924, in Racine, Wis.

Ex-New Yorker

She grew up in New York City. As a teen-ager, she moved with her family to Van Nuys when her father, Nate J. Blumberg, took over as head of Universal Pictures, now known as Universal Studios.

She attended UCLA but dropped out after a year to become a nurse’s aide during World War II at the Valley’s Birmingham Hospital, now the site of Birmingham High School.

“I grew up fast,” Meyer said, recalling that her duties included “wrapping up corpses.”

At 22, she married Stanley Meyer, a theater-chain executive who first met her as a young girl when their families knew each other in Wisconsin. After the Blumbergs moved from Wisconsin, the two didn’t see each other again for 20 years until 1946, when Stanley Meyer visited her father, who was ill in a New York hospital. They were married the next year.

Husband a Producer

The Meyers--he is a television producer whose credits include Dragnet, Gunsmoke and Have Gun Will Travel--lived in Encino until 1980 when a fire damaged their home. They have lived since in Santa Monica.

Meyer said her introduction to politics came at age 15 when her mother drafted her to operate the switchboard at a campaign headquarters for President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City.

“It was exciting,” she recalled.

After she married, she devoted her time to raising three sons and a daughter, now ages 26 to 32.

In the mid-1960s, when Dodo Meyer’s youngest child was old enough to attend school, Meyer helped organize a fledging political group called Women For.

Met Bradley

A few years later, after becoming head of Women For, Meyer met Bradley, then a city councilman from Southwest Los Angeles. In 1969, she headed the women’s committee for Bradley’s campaign against Mayor Sam Yorty. Bradley lost that election, but he ran again four years later and won; Meyer ran his Valley campaign.

During the 1973 campaign, Bradley had promised to put a deputy in the Valley. On his first day as mayor, he offered the job to Meyer.

“For me, the choice of a Valley coordinator was easy,” Bradley said. “Dodo lived in the area. She was extremely knowledgeable and well-respected, and had good administrative skills.”

With Bradley gearing up to run for governor again, Meyer said she plans to do everything she can to help her boss get elected.

As for her own future, Meyer said she is unsure what she would like to do.

But she confided that when Bradley ran for governor in 1981, she would have liked to continue working for him. This time, however, she saw herself as one of his aides for all of Southern California.