Campaign Push for Bradley Riding on a Lot of Legwork

The idea was the same. So were the colors. The banner logos looked familiar. And Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley was presiding, as he had before so successfully.

But the similarities to the Torch Relay of the 1984 Summer Olympics ended there. There were no crowds lining the streets, cheering wildly as they had in Los Angeles two years ago.

The relay runners were there as before, warming up and getting ready to step off.

But Saturday, the motorists who saw them looked bewildered, a “what the . . . ?” look on their faces, as two young girls and a woman ran down a busy boulevard holding a California flag. The runners caught the motorists’ attention, for a moment, before it was back to Saturday errands.

The scene was from the first leg of the “Bradley run for California,” a 12-day, 1,000-mile, state relay sponsored by Bradley’s gubernatorial campaign.

The purpose of the run launched here from Balboa Park, according to organizers, is “to get people involved in the political process.” Campaign officials also hope that the relay, which ends in Sacramento the Thursday before the election, will attract publicity and generate excitement for a campaign that has been hard pressed to sustain either.

The Bradley campaign, up against the well-financed organization of incumbent Gov. George Deukmejian, hopes to gain more than $100,000 from the race, said Ira Distenfield, chairman of the run. While admitting that sum will mean little to the campaign coffers, “our main goal was not to be a financial burden to the campaign, and we won’t,” he said.

$500 for Half a Mile

Each half a mile costs $500 for a sponsor. With 846 individually sponsored runners, the run “will more than cover our costs of $250,000,” Distenfield said.

The route took runners through several areas, including La Jolla, Del Mar, Fallbrook and Perris on Saturday. Today the run was scheduled to resume, passing through Riverside, San Bernardino and north Orange County before stopping for the night in Long Beach. The run is scheduled to go through Los Angeles on Monday.

Bradley himself did not run Saturday, although campaign officials hope that he will run during the last leg in Sacramento.

The mayor was greeted before the run by about 250 people at a breakfast in the park, many of whom said they were Democratic Party and Bradley loyalists.

In a speech, Bradley told supporters that the run symbolized a coming together of “young and old, rich and poor, black and white, brown and yellow.”

94-Year-Old Democrat

Bradley later escorted 94-year-old Democrat George Cole to the starting line, where Cole handed a California state flag to the first runners in the relay, a 7-year-old blind girl, Michelle Burke of El Cajon, and 8-year-old Shedia Nelson of San Diego.

As the flag was passed, Cole paused so that the moment could be captured by media cameras. But to the campaign’s disappointment, only still photographers, no TV cameras, were present. Bradley was thus denied, free of charge, the kind of valuable television exposure that Deukmejian can afford to buy with an ample advertising budget.

As the run left Balboa Park and went north of downtown, the runners formed a single path through traffic, with little comment from motorists except a “Yay, Deukmejian!” and later a “Go Bradley!” accompanied by horn honks.

Comparison Shrugged Off

Bradley campaign officials shrugged off a comparison to the Olympic Torch Relay, although they invited it with their use of Olympic-style logos and colors, plus the presence of the Olympics logistics coordinator, Wally McGuire, who also coordinated the Bradley run.

Campaign manager Robert Thomson said the race “has nothing to do with the Olympics.” Distenfield said that the run was inspired by a walkathon of an Illinois politician he remembered from 15 years ago.

“Every time Bob Thomson hears an Olympics comparison, he cringes, I think because he knows the run can’t live up to comparisons with the torch run,” one aide said. “But it is pretty hard not to make the comparison.”