Tom Houston Resigns as Mayor’s No. 2 Man

Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Tom Houston, the aggressive No. 2 man of Mayor Tom Bradley whose charge-ahead style sometimes stirred controversy, is leaving his post to enter a local private law practice, the mayor’s office announced Friday.

Houston, whose departure had been predicted ever since Bradley lost his second gubernatorial campaign in November, will be replaced June 15 by Michael Gage, a former Democratic assemblyman and Bradley’s campaign manager for his successful 1985 mayoral reelection. Because Bradley won that election by his biggest margin ever--68%--Gage’s selection as deputy mayor and chief of staff is yet another indication that Bradley already is gearing up for a reelection bid in 1989. Bradley already has said he will run again.

Houston, 42, will join the long-established Los Angeles law firm of Lewis, D’Amato, Brisbois & Bisgaard, best known for civil litigation. Houston will specialize in securities, environmental and land-use law, he said.

“I hope I’ve made some contributions in the past three years,” Houston said. “But it’s time to go back to law, to some new challenges, and time to put more money away for the future.” He made $85,000 a year as deputy mayor and chief of staff.

Houston, appointed chairman of the state Fair Political Practices Commission by former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., was hired by Bradley in May, 1984, with a publicly unspoken mandate to help get Bradley elected governor. Bradley had lost the state’s top job by a hair in 1982, and Houston’s state political knowledge was considered a major plus to the mayor’s 1986 chances.

But Bradley lost in 1986, and by a large margin.

Bradley staffers and supporters, used to a committee style of decision making in the mayor’s office, at first welcomed Houston’s attempt to inject new life into the Bradley Administration and centralize decisions. But by Friday, three years after he took the job, one staffer said, “There are few tears being shed that he’s going. Many of us felt that Houston was not only autocratic and publicity-hungry but a poor match in temper and outlook to Tom Bradley.”

But Houston ran up against a strongly protective “old guard”--Bradley aides who have been with the mayor a long time, who eventually resisted Houston’s efforts to move quickly on issues and who bristled at Houston’s criticisms.

Houston drew attention to himself right after he took over, saying in interviews that he would like to run for state office someday. While that ambition is shared by many political aides, it raised questions among longtime Bradley loyalists whether Houston was promoting himself or the mayor. And Houston publicly distanced himself from controversial Bradley decisions with which he did not agree. An example was Houston’s remark, “I certainly would have done the opposite thing,” when his boss approved oil drilling in Pacific Palisades.

And other Bradley supporters were galled when they saw Houston on television celebrating the passage of an anti-toxics proposition in November, the same night Bradley suffered the biggest political loss of his career.

Defenders say Houston brought a much-needed shot in the arm to a mayoral staff that had long been “asleep at the wheel and resented being told to do more,” said another Bradley friend. “He helped the mayor take very concrete and specific positions on topics that had not been dealt with much, like toxics. He was shaking things up and Tom Bradley needed that. But that also sparked a lot of pettiness against him. But I don’t think that Houston ever intended to stay much beyond the governor’s race. It’s been pretty obvious that he’s been making calls to move.”

‘Not Forced Out’

Bradley said Friday that Houston “was not forced out, was not cut out. I’ve been very pleased with him. . . . He got a good offer and he accepted it.” The mayor said he will nominate Houston in the next few weeks to be a member of the city’s Environmental Quality Board so that Houston “will continue to be a member of the Bradley team.”

Gage, also 42, is almost jocular compared to Houston’s intensity. Yet the two are close friends. Gage was Houston’s best man in November when Houston was married in Kenya--in a hot-air balloon.

Gage, a former assemblyman from Napa, worked on Brown’s failed presidential campaign in 1980 and ran Leo McCarthy’s successful campaign for lieutenant governor in 1982. In his career he has swung between the mundane and unusual. Most recently vice president of Gersten Cos., a firm with many business and real estate holdings, he was also a wilderness river guide “for $50 a day when I first left the Legislature in 1980. I’ve never operated by what is, I guess, normal standards that the next job always has to pay more money. I enjoy the diversity of going in and out of public service.”

It was Gage who arranged the 1985 river rafting trip Bradley took as part of an overall Houston effort to promote the mayor as more activist and environmentally sensitive.

Gage, praised by Bradley as someone “who has tremendous experience as a legislator, executive and manager who knows politics,” said he plans to start a transition into the job June 1.