Results of Probes Awaited : Bradley Allies Forced Into an Uneasy Silence

Mayor Tom Bradley’s politically powerful supporters in Los Angeles’ downtown business and labor establishments are finding themselves prisoners of the investigations into his financial affairs, unable to aggressively defend him until results of the probes are known.

These are Bradley’s natural defenders. Since 1974, his huge Central City redevelopment project has filled the area with high-rises, providing jobs for construction workers, offices for corporations and major law firms and profits for developers.

Yet, public defense of the mayor by business and labor leaders has been minimal. While declaring that they believe Bradley is honest, such leaders said in interviews that they cannot defend him until they know the facts. As a result, they fear that the lengthy investigations, and the accompanying news coverage, will halt downtown redevelopment, hurt transportation planning and hamper other projects they see as necessary for the area’s economic growth.

“There’s no question the current controversy around the mayor is hurting his ability to lead the city, and that concerns the business community,” said Christopher L. Stewart, president and chief executive officer of the Central City Assn., the organization that represents downtown business.

“It’s just diverting the attention of the city. . . . It concerns us, but what can you do?” William Robertson, secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO, said of Bradley, “There is no question in my mind that he is an honest man.”

But, he added, “the image he has portrayed for so long is tarnished. All the polls indicate his popularity has diminished somewhat because of all the media stuff. I am not taking on the media. That is their job, investigative reporting. Somehow, sometimes, it borders on yellow journalism. I think you are playing it out of proportion.”

Robertson agreed when an interviewer noted that, with the exception of black leaders, spokesmen for the components of Bradley’s political constituency have not spoken up for him. “That’s true,” he said.

That relative silence is one of the more striking political features of a crisis that began late in his successful reelection campaign with disclosures that he had been a paid adviser to a bank and was paid to serve on the board of directors of a savings and loan. Both financial institutions had business dealings with the city.

Investigatory bodies quickly moved in. First, there was the city attorney, inquiring into the arrangements with the financial institutions, and looking into whether there was a conflict of interest between the mayor’s personal financial dealings and his public life in other areas. Then the federal government opened an investigation into his stock holdings.

As news coverage intensified, Bradley, at the urging of legal and political advisers, decided against making a strong public defense, which might have required him to open his books to the public.

As a result, the only strong public defense of the mayor came last week when leaders of the black community held a news conference to charge that the mayor was the victim of a racist attack in the press. That reflected strong concerns in the community that damage inflicted on Bradley, one of the nation’s foremost black leaders, might also hurt black political hopes.

The Bradley coalition, developed before his election as mayor in 1973, began as an amalgam of blacks, Latinos and white liberals, many of them Jewish. Organized labor was a key component.

The coalition was strongly rooted in liberal Democratic politics and downtown business leaders, most of them Republicans, were not especially supportive of Bradley when he challenged then-Mayor Sam Yorty. But, once elected, Bradley began courting downtown interests and pushed his massive redevelopment plan through the City Council in 1974.

The mayor also tended to support growth in other parts of the city, encouraging Los Angeles’ evolution into a major trade and business center.

An example of how the investigations are affecting Bradley supporters came in an interview with attorney Warren Christopher, a longtime adviser to Bradley and other Democratic politicians.

“I can be supportive if he asks me to do something,” Christopher said. Of Bradley, he said, “Sure, you can criticize him from time to time for this and that, a lack of dynamism, but he has been an extraordinary person, with none of the coerciveness or ruthlessness you associate with politicians.”

But Christopher also said of the investigations of the mayor, “I am not going to make a judgment until all the facts are known. I do not know all the facts and do not judge them.”

Ray Remy, president of the Greater Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and a former deputy mayor to Bradley, said that the investigations must be completed before Bradley and city government can get back to normal.

“My own view is that he needs to push to get a closure of the several investigations,” Remy said of the mayor. “That is the only way you . . . not make it an interminable three-year serial.”

The investigations and the news coverage, he said, have “a damaging effect. As investigations go on, you continue to have stories and innuendo. It is important to have a closure of the issue, an array of the facts, and take whatever action that has to be done, and get it behind us.

“My own view, without being party to all the facts, is that it will come out that the mayor has done nothing that is illegal.”

Meanwhile, Bradley continues to go about his mayoral duties without commenting on the investigations until they are completed.

On Thursday, organized labor offered some support. The union representing janitors and maids made him citizen of the year in a brief ceremony at a union hall conference room. No mention was made of his problems.

And Bradley, in the fight of his life, spent part of the morning with two boxers, Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns.

He appeared with them at a promotional news conference at the Biltmore for their June 12 fight in Las Vegas. Both fighters called for more efforts to stem gangs and drugs, which is why, aides said, Bradley participated in the press conference.

Beforehand, he chatted with Leonard and Hearns about why youths join gangs. Bradley said the solution was in educating them. Leonard agreed, but said that it is hard to keep young men in school when they stand to make so much money in the drug trade.

The quiet chats with the fighters reflected the calm atmosphere of the morning, notable for the fact that just two newspaper reporters and one television crew followed the mayor. That was a change from previous days, when several TV crews and a crowd of reporters followed him.

Aides said they believe the controversy has lost some of its intensity. And while demonstrations of public support for the mayor have been minimal, interviews with many political leaders have failed to turn up any effort to try to unseat him with a recall.

“As a practical matter, you’d lose a recall,” said one council member.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, invitations were sent to the printers for Bradley’s inaugural for a fifth term at noon on June 30 at City Hall.

And a band was being lined up for a gala on the City Hall lawn that night.