Yaroslavsky Sniffs Wind and Looks to 1989 Mayoral Race

Persuaded that the city is changing and that support for Mayor Tom Bradley may be weakening, Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky is making early preparations to run for mayor two years from now.

“There is a likelihood I am going to open a committee,” Yaroslavsky said Tuesday, adding that a 1985 law limiting the size of campaign contributions impels potential candidates to get a head start on fund raising. The law restricts to $1,000 the amount anyone can give to a mayoral candidate. Previously, there was no limit.

Bradley announced Friday that he will run for a fifth term in 1989 and, on Monday, he established a fund-raising committee.

Yaroslavsky, first elected to the council in 1975, has made no secret of his interest in running for mayor one day, but until now has been hesitant to make a move that might pit him against Bradley. Both are Democrats, and Bradley, who is black, has drawn much of his white support from people in and around Yaroslavsky’s liberal, Westside council district.

Supporters of the councilman, however, have acquired a measure of new confidence as a result of recent elections. Voting patterns have reflected erosion of Bradley’s traditional base and, at the same time, indicated growing support for the sort of policies, championed by Yaroslavsky, calling for a slowdown of commercial growth.

“The city is older, less liberal and more concerned with quality of life issues than it was when Bradley was elected,” said one source close to the councilman.

“Traffic congestion, development, garbage collection . . . those are the kinds of things on people’s minds today,” the source said.

It is a vision of a city where sensitivity to civil rights is overshadowed by more practical concerns of mobility, clean air and neighborhood stability, and where political control is exercised more by the middle class than by a burgeoning immigrant population.

During his early years on the council, Yaroslavsky enjoyed substantial backing from major real estate developers, while incurring the displeasure of renters and homeowners for acquiescing to several large building projects in his district.

But lately, as opposition to new commercial construction has mushroomed, Yaroslavsky has emerged as one of the council’s most aggressive proponents of growth control.

Last year, he co-sponsored a citywide ballot measure, Proposition U, to cut in half the size of new commercial development in areas adjacent to residential areas. To a number of political observers, the overwhelming success of the measure, which passed by close to a 70% majority, signaled the birth of a new constituency, and one that might back a candidate like Yaroslavsky. Bradley was not a supporter of Proposition U.

The November election offered another encouraging sign to Yaroslavsky’s supporters. Bradley, in his losing campaign for governor, did not fare as well as he had in the past among black and Jewish voters of Los Angeles, communities that have represented the core of his support over the 14 years he has been mayor.

While Yaroslavsky has not ruled out the possibility of running against Bradley, he speaks respectfully of the mayor these days and says that a political confrontation with Bradley is not inevitable.

“I have a high personal regard for him,” Yaroslavsky said of the mayor, adding: “Two years is a long time, and a lot could happen to either one of us between now and then.”