Hahn in Spotlight in Bradley Probe : Investigation Viewed as a Big Test of Low-Key City Atty.’s Political Future

Los Angeles City Atty. James Kenneth Hahn glided coolly into the limelight last week and, after eight years in public office toiling in the shadow of his legendary father, he was on his own.

It didn’t matter that Hahn, the 38-year-old only son of 10-term County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, had little to tell a City Council committee Wednesday about his expanding investigation into Mayor Tom Bradley’s personal finances.

What mattered was that this had the makings of one of the biggest City Hall scandals in memory and Hahn was at the center, staking a promising political career on just how well he could handle it. There were even those who suggested that this investigation of the popular mayor would be Hahn’s public coming-of-age.

Despite one term as city controller and two elections as city attorney, the last one unopposed, Hahn has never been known as an especially strong, independent politician. Indeed, it was his family name that allowed him to slide easily into public life in the first place, even Hahn himself acknowledges. Once in the city attorney’s office, he has gotten ahead mostly by capitalizing on popular, no-lose, law-and-order issues, going after the likes of slumlords, “crack” houses and gangs.

But with the Bradley investigation, the hazards are noticeably greater. Hahn faces a political dilemma that few other elected officials in Los Angeles have had to grapple with.

“The risk, of course, is the subject of his investigation is a man who happens to have been the dominant political presence in Southern California for 16 years . . . a man with many friends and admirers,” said Councilman Michael Woo, chairman of a council committee looking into possible conflict-of-interest violations by Bradley, who has been a paid adviser to two financial institutions that did business with the city.

“I think there are some people out there who are very uncomfortable about the mayor being asked any of the questions and wish it would just go away. . . . The harder the city attorney pushes, the more some of these people might be offended,” said Woo, who admitted that his role as chairman of the council committee could be as tough as Hahn’s.

With the situation so sensitive, political consultant Joe Cerrell said, Hahn’s role must be considered “no-win.”

“If he comes out and he’s easy on the mayor, people are going to be unhappy because he wasn’t tough enough,” observed the longtime political adviser. “If he’s tough on the mayor, people say he should have been easier. . . . He can’t make everybody happy.”

But if Hahn can pull it off, if he can thread his way through the maze of possible perils, he could emerge as one of the state’s brightest young politicians, political observers believe. Now relatively unknown outside of Los Angeles, the benefits of enhancing his reputation could be enormous. Hahn has expressed interest in, among other jobs, that of California attorney general.

“Politically, he could come out better than when he went into this,” said Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, who also is on the three-member council panel looking into the Bradley question.

“The fact that he didn’t shoot off right from the beginning and take a position, I think, heightens the feeling that most of us have that he will do a fair job,” Flores said. “I think the fact that he hasn’t been talking much is really very good.”

A certain reticence has always been a hallmark of Hahn, who comes off in public as low-key, sometimes even taciturn, a far different man from his gregarious father. But take the crowd away and Hahn visibly loosens. Tall and lean, with charcoal hair just now graying, Hahn is even known to crack a joke or two. He can grin. He can be downright chatty. Talking in his spacious City Hall office late last week, however, Hahn was all business.

Didn’t Seek Assignment

“How this impacts me is really not something I can afford to spend any time worrying about,” he said in a soft-spoken drawl. “I think everyone will agree I wasn’t out seeking to do this . I haven’t been on some kind of mission to attack elected officials, especially the mayor.”

Although disconcerted by the hordes of cameramen and reporters who dogged him after his appearance last Wednesday before Woo’s council committee, Hahn didn’t let his discomfort show. He didn’t let any tidbits about the investigation slip out either. “It was unprecedented, unprecedented to get eight television cameras and a battery of reporters,” he said. It was the first time I ever had them following me down the hall kind of thing. . . . I thought it was very strange . . . a little exhausting.

“There’s something about when those TV lights are on you. . . . They suck the energy out of your bloodstream.”

In stewarding his team of four deputy city attorneys and two Los Angeles police investigators over the next few months, Hahn said, he will use “tunnel vision” to keep on track. Although he is not involved in the actual sleuthing, Hahn consults daily with the team and recognizes that he will be measured by their work. He seems philosophical about that.

“If you start worrying about the perception of one side or the other side, you’re just going to get confused . . . bogged down every day in trying to manipulate public opinion, which most people really aren’t able to do anyway.

“People will always say what they want to say. They are always going to second-guess your motives.”

Don’t Minimize Situation

That is not to say that Hahn or his deputies minimize the delicacy of investigating Bradley, a fellow Democrat whose personal integrity, until now, has never been questioned. Bradley is a man with deep roots in South Los Angeles, the same political base shared by both Hahn and his father; a man who has become a political institution in Los Angeles.

As Chief Deputy City Atty. John Emerson put it, “This is probably the highest sustained visibility of anything in L.A. politics for years.

“Obviously, if the Bradley thing is botched, that’s not positive. If it’s handled well, then that’s positive. That, I suppose, would impact (Hahn) no matter what he does.”

Under the City Charter, Hahn was obligated to take on the investigation unless he claimed his own conflict of interest because of ties to Bradley. That was apparently not something he was about to do, even though some questions have been raised about Emerson’s former association with one of the two law firms representing Bradley.

In 1986, Hahn attempted to disqualify himself from an investigation involving City Councilman Richard Alatorre’s use of campaign funds but got nowhere. Explaining that he had a conflict because of his frequent contact with Alatorre, Hahn asked the district attorney’s office to take over the investigation. Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner declined, and Hahn was forced to pursue it anyway. Although Alatorre eventually paid a fine after admitting that he had violated the city’s campaign contribution law, Hahn was soundly criticized in some circles for not being tough enough.

‘Slap on the Wrist’

“In the Alatorre case, there was . . . wrongdoing and a recommendation from Hahn of a very modest slap on the wrist,” said Walter Zelman, executive director of California Common Cause, a political watchdog group.

“This is a different ballgame. . . . In this case, if he leaves some stone unturned or draws some conclusion not supported by the facts, he’s going to be . . . crucified politically . . . and he can afford that less than he can afford alienating supporters of Mayor Bradley.

“What’s right for his job in this case just happens to overlap with what’s right for him politically.”

Figuring out what is right politically should not be too difficult for Hahn, considering that he was practically tutored from the cradle by the master himself, a man reputed to be among the craftiest politicians in Los Angeles.

Growing up in the Hahn household (besides father and son, there is mother, Ramona, and sister, Janice) was to be at the center of a political tornado. As a matter of course, young Jimmy Hahn was taken along on his father’s meetings with presidents and governors, movie stars and sports heroes.

‘Touring the District’

He caught the first ball at Dodger Stadium when the field was still little more than an excavation pit. He spent his Saturday mornings “touring the district” in his father’s arms, checking for potholes in streets and weeds in county parks. He learned how to pose for newspaper photos, always staying at the center of a crowd to avoid the possibility of being cut out later.

“He obviously loved me very much, and he still loves me a lot,” Hahn said of his father. “I was his . . . son and he was very proud of me and showed me off and took me everywhere. That’s how he’d spend his spare time . . . driving around, seeing how his road projects were doing.

“I knew he was pretty special because he was in the newspaper and began to appear on TV . . . more and more and I got to meet a lot of famous people. And so, I knew he was different. And I also knew that no dad could have loved his son more than mine did, or been more interested in what his son did than my dad was.”

Even now, Hahn visits his father almost every day. Despite suffering a stroke in January, 1987, the supervisor has lost little of his flair for politics. A year after the stroke, he won an unprecedented 10th term to his supervisorial seat with 84% of the vote. He figures that he still has lessons to teach his son.

A Good Listener

“Before he does (something), I tell him, I remind him how we did it,” the elder Hahn said. “He’s a very good listener.”

Even before the recent furor over Bradley broke, Hahn had begun to show signs of his political heritage. Over the last three years, his name has appeared in more than 225 stories in The Times. The more his office has prosecuted slumlords and street gang members, the more familiar his face has become on the nightly news.

Last week, Hahn even made the network news programs when, in the first prosecution of its kind, he filed a criminal complaint against a Los Angeles woman for failing to control her gang member son.

But even with the innovative prosecutions, he has been hard-pressed to shake his image as bland and uninspired, “a perfectly fine kid,” in the words of one political observer.

“He’s been a nice guy who is his dad’s son,” said a prominent Westside attorney. “I don’t think a lot of people think of him as a heavyweight.”

Even his favorable showing in a recent Times Poll measuring the appeal of potential mayoral candidates was attributed by many to his having the Hahn name. In that February poll, Hahn received the highest approval rating among leading Los Angeles politicians, aside from Bradley.

Inherited His Standing

“He’s doing fine on his own,” political consultant Cerrell said, “but suffice it to say, the majority (of his standing in politics) he has inherited.”

Clearly, that all could change in the coming months, and on the surface at least, Hahn seems tranquil about the prospect. He said he considers the Bradley probe just part of the $83,000-a-year post he calls a “dream job for a lawyer.”

“I just feel like I’m here, this is the time, this is the time to do your best in a situation where you may not get any benefits out of it whatsoever,” Hahn said. “This is simply something that has arisen, that falls within my duties as city attorney.”

Such sentiments aside, others around Hahn are not quite so blase.

“So when is this story running?” top deputy Emerson asked during an interview last week. “Front section? Yes, you should get the front section on this. This should be one of those left or right corner (of Page 1) stories with a picture on Page 3.”