Bradley Would Have Coliseum Privately Run

Mayor Tom Bradley and Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Chairman Mike Antonovich, who together may have decisive influence over a majority of the Coliseum Commission, called Friday for leasing the stadium complex to a private operator, saying such an arrangement would provide better financing and more consistent management.

Both commission President Alexander Haagen and the stadium’s new general manager, Joel Ralph, welcomed the idea and indicated that they would give it their support as a means of overcoming the financial blow of last week’s announcement by the Los Angeles Raiders that the team intends to leave the Coliseum and build a new stadium in Irwindale.

Bradley went to the Coliseum offices to deliver the proposal in writing just three days after the identical idea was advanced by a potential rival in the next mayoral contest, City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky.

A Yaroslavsky spokeswoman said, “It certainly appears as if the mayor can recognize a good idea when he sees one.”

Members of Commission

Antonovich and two of his ideological allies on the Board of Supervisors, Deane Dana and Pete Schabarum, are members of the nine-member commission. Bradley appoints two other members.

Earlier Friday, Bradley’s longtime political ally, labor leader William Robertson, resigned from the commission with a blast of vitriol against those he called responsible for losing the Raiders by failing to give team owner Al Davis what he wanted in the way of Coliseum renovations last spring.

Robertson, the man most instrumental in the deal that brought the Raiders to Los Angeles in 1982, specifically blamed “the tyrant Haagen” and the three supervisors who belong to the commission for not honoring commitments he said had been made to Davis. Robertson blamed Gov. George Deukmejian for appointing members who would not go along with the purported commitment.

But the real surprise of Robertson’s lengthy press conference came when he said he had warned Bradley to be tougher with Haagen when the mayor joined the negotiating sessions with Davis last spring.

In a move to put pressure on Haagen to be more accommodating to Davis, Robertson said he had told the mayor last spring, “The only thing he (Haagen) understands is strength, and you have to be strong with him.”

Robertson, secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said Bradley had responded that he would point out to Haagen “how important it is for this community to keep that football team, and we (should) use everything we have to get this thing done.”

But after the news conference, Robertson said he did not feel Bradley had heeded his advice.

The mayor, asked Friday to comment on his role in the meetings with Haagen and Davis, responded: “I never consider what I’m doing as getting tough. I try to reason with people. You’ve heard the term, ‘Come, let us reason together.’ Well, that’s what we always did.”

Opportunity for Influence

There have been suggestions for some time that Bradley could have had considerable influence because Haagen, a developer, has been involved with the city’s redevelopment agency in several major shopping center projects in the mayor’s home base of South-Central Los Angeles.

But both Robertson and Bradley denied they ever considered using that leverage to persuade Haagen to be more cooperative in dealing with Davis.

“I don’t deal in blackmail,” Bradley said.

Another person close to Bradley who was involved in last spring’s negotiations, Coliseum Commissioner Richard Riordan, said Friday that in his judgment, Bradley had been “tough with Haagen” in the exchanges.

“I thought the mayor was real tough, but I think Haagen outsmarted both of us,” Riordan said, saying he felt that Haagen had arranged for the talks with Davis to collapse.

No Explanation Offered

Although Riordan offered no explanation for why Haagen would want to sabotage the talks, Robertson said earlier:

“He (Haagen) didn’t want to put it together. . . . He thinks he’s a tough cookie. He’s heard about Al Davis being tough. He was going to show (Davis) who the tough guy in this town was.”

Haagen declined comment on Robertson’s accusation. But on the question of whether the mayor had pressured him, he said Bradley was a gentleman throughout the talks with Davis. “He never suggested in any way there would be any favoritism or any penalty to me as a result of how we dealt with Davis,” he said.

Robertson said he was resigning from the commission after serving on it for seven of the last nine years because he felt “the present Coliseum Commission has laid waste to the stadium’s future.

“In my judgment, the (Coliseum’s) situation (with the impending loss of the Raiders) is irreversible and terminal, and the losers are the people of Los Angeles,” he said. “The (adjacent) Sports Arena has been a white elephant for many years. The Coliseum has just become one.”

He said he would urge all other members of the commission to resign as well, since they could no longer be useful there.

Later, Coliseum General Manager Ralph responded that he was sorry to see Robertson go but that while he recognizes the Coliseum will suffer a serious financial reversal if the Raiders leave, he does not agree that the stadium is in “terminal” condition.

Ralph said he is thinking of approaching the Los Angeles Rams to see if they would be interested in returning to the Coliseum from Anaheim Stadium, where some promises made to them when they left the Coliseum have been tied up in litigation.

In Sacramento, a spokesman for Deukmejian said Robertson was wrong when he suggested that Deukmejian was responsible for Coliseum Commission appointments. The spokesman said Deukmejian appoints members to the board of the Museum of Science and Industry, who in turn decide which of their members should be Coliseum commissioners.