Access to Mayor’s Office Becomes Path to Power

In the mid-1980s, before a political corruption scandal gained him notoriety, fireworks magnate W. Patrick Moriarty wanted to meet with Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley about a deal that needed city approval. He was directed to a contact lens technician named Mary Anne Singer.

“I was told by a City Hall lobbyist that if you wanted to talk to Tom Bradley, Mary Anne was the person you went through,” Moriarty recalled in a recent interview. “She could deliver him to listen to your story.”

Recently, flower wholesaler Mas Yoshida said, Singer has suggested she could act as a lobbyist to help smooth the way for a proposal to close a city street and create a pedestrian mall at the downtown flower mart. Although he said he does not need Singer’s help, Yoshida described her as a Bradley “liaison person” who markets access to the mayor.

“She takes ideas to the mayor,” he said. “The mayor seems to listen to her suggestions.”

Bradley and Singer have been friends for nearly a decade, and in that time, the mayor has intertwined his personal associations and public duties.

She has used her connections to Bradley to build a small public relations business. The mayor has granted audiences to her clients and associates and appeared at their special events. Once, he prodded the bureaucracy to install a stop sign in front of her house.

Singer has raised tens of thousands of dollars for Bradley’s various election drives. She has become one of the close-knit circle of supporters who have joined Bradley on trips, and at political events. The mayor has visited her home.

As with some of the mayor’s other friendships, the ties between Bradley and Singer raise questions of preferential treatment and conflict of interest, offering a glimpse of how business is sometimes conducted at City Hall.

Since April, Bradley has been under intense scrutiny by various local and federal authorities. A federal grand jury recently was convened to investigate possible violations of public corruption and securities laws by the mayor.

Investigators have explored many aspects of Bradley’s financial affairs, including his employment by banks doing business with the city, his role in steering public funds to an Africa trade group headed by a business partner and his purchase of stocks from firms and individuals suspected of insider trading.

Although City Atty. James K. Hahn said in September that he had found insufficient evidence to prosecute the mayor for conflicts of interest, he sharply criticized the man who rose to power 16 years ago as a crusader for clean government. In recent years, Hahn said, the mayor has displayed an “indifference to such ethical concerns.”

No Comment From Singer or the Mayor

Bradley refused to discuss his dealings with Singer, despite repeated requests from The Times. He also did not respond to written questions. For her part, Singer would say only: “I do not desire to talk to you.”

Most of those in Bradley’s innermost circle discussed Singer only with great reluctance and, in some cases, with the promise of anonymity. Many said that they remain loyal to the five-term mayor and do not want damage his political legacy.

Singer has told friends that she met Bradley in the late 1970s, while fitting him for contact lenses at a clinic that treated city employees.

Since then, the friendship has deepened. Bradley has become a parental figure to her teen-age son, according to the boy’s father, Martin Singer.

In 1984, when Mary Anne Singer was going to be out of town, she gave Bradley her power of attorney to sign final paper work for the sale of her Hancock Park home, an acquaintance recalled. Documents related to the transaction show Bradley’s signature and list his address as City Hall.

Bradley once recommended her for a job and then made sure she got paid.

Mark Weinberg, the mayor’s former investment adviser, said that in 1984, at Bradley’s urging, he agreed to pay Singer a monthly retainer to steer prospective clients to his commodities brokerage firm.

“I did it because I like the mayor,” said Weinberg, now an independent television producer.

Weinberg said that when he fell behind in his payments to Singer three or four times, the mayor “would make comments like, ‘You need to take care of Mary Anne.’ ”

“To be fair to her,” he added, “she did raise one million bucks (in investments), although that’s chicken feed in this business.”

Weinberg said she earned $50,000 from the arrangement, over an 18-month period.

‘Nobody Had Access Like Mary Anne’

Singer is a 47-year-old native Californian who has been married and divorced twice, the last time in 1979. She is tall with a sparkling smile and a regal bearing. Friends and business associates describe her as an energetic, civic-minded businesswoman with a mercurial temperament.

Singer and her son live in a stylish, rented condominium in Beverly Hills. She owns both a Mercedes-Benz and a BMW. She still works three days a week in a Westside ophthalmology office. Last year, Singer was among 20 of Bradley’s most prolific fund-raisers who joined the mayor on a trip to New York. The party flew in a chartered flight and attended a Broadway performance of “Phantom of the Opera,” where Bradley and Singer sat next to each other.

At City Hall, Singer’s access to the 71-year-old mayor surpasses that of the many lobbyists, public relations consultants and businessmen who want Bradley’s attention, former and current mayoral aides said. One former staff member recalled being warned during training that “you just don’t say ‘no’ to Mary Anne.”

“Nobody had access like Mary Anne,” the ex-aide said. “Whatever she wanted, she got and she let people know it. If you said ‘no’--for whatever the request was--Bradley would call. So you would just learn.”

It is this access that sources say Singer has used to build a small public relations business.

In 1982, she incorporated Image Power, which she ran from her home. It appears that most of her clients were eye doctors, whom she had met through her contact lens work. Among other things, she helped bring patients to their clinics and offices through community outreach programs.

Through Image Power and on her own, Singer also attracted clients who wanted business favors from the mayor or wanted to be seen with him as a way to enhance their image and business prospects. City business license records indicate that Image Power alone grossed an average of about $100,000 in 1987 and 1988. For the most part, she charges her clients a monthly retainer.

Ceremonial Favors Delivered for Clients

Singer has been able to deliver for her clients everything from meetings with Bradley to ornate proclamations for such trivialities as the commemoration of a birthday, as she did for ophthalmologist Marc Rose on his 40th. Bradley presented it personally, according to the mayor’s appointment calendar.

She arranges for clients to be photographed with the mayor, gets them invitations to political gatherings and produces Bradley for their special events, as she has done for White Memorial Hospital fund-raisers.

Although Bradley is known to provide such small amenities to any number of political constituents and supporters, Singer seems to stand alone in the way she markets these ceremonial favors.

Moriarty, the former fireworks magnate, said he paid Singer $900 to hold a cocktail party at her home so that he could meet Bradley to discuss a land deal that needed city approval. Former Moriarty associate Richard Raymond Keith said she also received $900 in free landscaping for her Hancock Park home, although Moriarty disputes this.

Like others who have hired Singer, Moriarty said she did not ensure favorable action by the mayor, but did guarantee access. “That’s all we bought,” Moriarty said.

Moriarty said the mayor was “noncommittal” during their brief discussion about Moriarty’s proposed landfill in La Tuna Canyon and referred him to the city councilman in whose district the property was located.

In the end, Moriarty’s business plans in Los Angeles crumbled amid newspaper reports that he had laundered campaign contributions and supplied prostitutes to other elected officials for their help on unrelated matters.

Moriarty pleaded guilty in 1985 to federal mail fraud charges. That same year, his operative, Keith, pleaded guilty to income tax evasion, bankruptcy fraud and other charges. Both served prison sentences of more than two years and are now free.

Bradley Benefited From Fund-Raising

Those familiar with Singer’s practices said the mayor, too, has benefitted from his relationship with her, receiving thousands of dollars in campaign contributions she solicits from her clients and associates.

One of Singer’s biggest fund-raising sources is Allen E. Alevy, whom she brought into the mayor’s camp in the mid-1980s and for whom she did public relations work, according to Bradley insiders.

“If I call the mayor,” Alevy has boasted in the past, “he will call back in a day or two. Guaranteed.”

Alevy is a Long Beach entrepreneur who once secretly owned a notorious massage parlor in Signal Hill. Several months ago, he was fined and placed on probation for failing to comply with Los Angeles city orders to shut down an illegal mobile home park in Wilmington.

On paper, Alevy’s contributions are relatively small. Since 1984, campaign disclosure reports show that he has contributed $7,200 to Bradley’s mayoral and gubernatorial campaigns, both personally and through his companies. But that figure represents only a portion of the money Alevy actually has raised for Bradley, according to several sources, including Bradley campaign accountant Jules Glazer.

Throughout 1987 and 1988, while the mayor was gearing up for what was expected to be a tough race against Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, Alevy organized a series of at least 11 fund-raising carnivals.

Four sources said Singer served as a liaison between Alevy, Bradley and the mayor’s re-election campaign. The sources said, among other things, she helped coordinate the scheduling of the carnivals.

According to carnival officials, Alevy lined up free sites for the carnival operators who, in turn, gave a share of the proceeds to “The Committee to Re-elect Tom Bradley.” The carnivals were not advertised as political fund-raisers, the carnival officials said.

The Times obtained copies of some of the cashier’s checks, made payable to the campaign from Davis Enterprises, one of two carnival companies used by Alevy. They total $20,000, only a portion of the total carnival contributions.

Bradley accountant Glazer was unable to tell The Times exactly how much money was generated by the carnivals. He said, however, that the funds were given to him by Bradley, bypassing campaign officials who normally record and screen contributions.

The carnivals raised concerns among Bradley campaign officials, who were wary of Alevy and disturbed by the circumvention of normal campaign fund-raising procedures. Former Public Works Board President Maureen Kindel, a longtime Bradley ally, went to him with the concerns. He told her not to worry, according to sources familiar with the conversation.

Kindel declined to comment.

Assistance Given With Land Deal

At the same time Alevy was raising money for Bradley, the mayor was helping him acquire two vacant properties owned by the city in South-Central Los Angeles. As reported by The Times in September, Bradley made telephone calls on Alevy’s behalf to city real estate officials, and maneuvered behind the scenes with the City Council.

The council allowed Alevy to obtain one parcel without competitive bidding in early 1988, but he was denied the second in May of this year after city financial analysts concluded that the deal was not in the public interest.

Public records show that at least two of the fund-raising carnivals were held on the block-long parcels on East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard while Bradley was intervening with city officials to help Alevy acquire them. When the carnivals were held in September, 1987, and February, 1988, the land still was owned by the city, which prohibits political fund-raising activity on public land.

Alevy acquired title to one of the properties for $185,000, about two months after the last carnival. The second parcel was not yet for sale at the time the carnivals were held.

Use of the land for the carnivals was never approved by the city, said chief real estate officer Pedro V. Romero. “I don’t know anything about it,” he said.

Alevy recently refused to answer questions about the carnivals and acknowledged only that he had hired Singer in the past for “public relations work.”

“My statement is, we’re not discussing Mary Anne Singer,” he said, adding: “A whale is harpooned only when it surfaces to spout. And I’m not coming up to spout.”

The mayor has refused to answer questions about Alevy and his role as a fund-raiser.

Before Alevy, ophthalmologist Rose was among Singer’s most reliable sources of political contributions. Between 1983 and 1987, he donated more than $25,000 to the mayor, according to campaign disclosure reports.

Those records show that Rose’s contributions began after he hired Singer and dwindled to virtually nothing after he ended his business dealings with her in 1987.

Rose, who runs an eye clinic in East Los Angeles, declined to be interviewed. But his business manager, Peter Vizel, said Singer “was always pushing Rose to contribute more.”

“She would say that he should be participatory,” Vizel said. “She claimed that it is good for him to donate if he needs something (from the mayor) in the future.”

During the four years that Rose was a Singer client, he paid her roughly $120,000 for a variety of services, Vizel said. Singer has taken Rose to the mayor’s office, said one former Bradley aide. She also has produced the mayor for at least one event designed to generate business at Rose’s clinic, recalled Bradley’s former press secretary, Ali Webb.

Vizel insisted that Rose hired Singer for her public relations skills, not her political connections. A number of other clients interviewed by The Times also said they hired her for public relations work.

Mayor’s Request Yields Stop Signs

Bradley also has intervened with the city bureaucracy on behalf of Singer, according to her neighbors and city records.

In the mid-1980s, Singer lived in a house at the corner of Odin Avenue and Holly Drive, a narrow street shaded by jacaranda trees near Hollywood Boulevard.

Shortly after Singer moved in, she became displeased by cars that she thought were traveling too fast past her residence, according to neighbors. Within weeks, stop signs appeared at the intersection, astonishing residents who had lived on Holly for years, some of whom said they did not believe a stop sign was needed.

Public records show that Bradley’s office requested the signs less than two months after Singer purchased the home, and that they failed to pass any of the tests the city uses in judging whether a stop sign is warranted, such as frequency of traffic accidents and proximity to a school.

Former transportation engineer John Chappell said he initially rejected the stop sign because it flunked city standards but that superiors pushed it. “I believe my study shows it was not warranted,” he said.

City records state that the case was rushed through the system. The signs were installed in five weeks, although the process usually takes three months or longer.

The matter was expedited by transportation engineer Robert Takasaki after Bradley’s secretary called at the mayor’s request, according to city records. “I got the impression they wanted something done right away,” he said.

Stop signs rarely are installed to control speeding--the problem cited when Bradley’s office first called. But city officials found another rationale, determining that signs could be placed there because a concrete wall at the intersection hampered driver visibility.

Assistant General Manager Guy L. Quinn of the transportation department ultimately approved the sign. He said in an interview that there is a “reasonable suspicion” that the wall was used as an excuse to satisfy the mayor’s request.

Singer soon left Holly Drive and moved into a modern multilevel home owned by her friend and former client, Dr. David Levine, the Bradley family physician. He also has lucrative worker’s compensation contracts with the city.

Inspectors Involved in Neighbors’ Dispute

The city attorney, in his conflict-of-interest probe of the mayor, investigated whether Bradley tried to steer city business to Levine in 1984. Although Bradley did set up a meeting in his office between the doctor and workers compensation officials, the city attorney concluded that the mayor received nothing in return and violated no laws. Present at the meeting was the late Mas Kojima, a former Bradley aide who at the time was working for Singer’s public relations business.

On a Harbor Department trade mission last November in Bangkok, Bradley was joined by Levine, his wife and Singer at a dinner for the Los Angeles delegation at the U.S. ambassador’s home.

Levine said in an interview that he was in Thailand on business and that Singer and his wife were vacationing with him. By prearrangement, they joined up with their “close personal friend,” the mayor, and attended the dinner, Levine said.

The home Levine rented to Singer towers at the end of Floral Avenue in the Hollywood Hills. The extremely narrow street contains only five houses, providing a cloistered feel. Levine said the mayor has been to the house for a birthday party.

In the summer of 1986, Levine and neighbor Andrew Dolan became engaged in a bitter property-ownership dispute in which Dolan filed a successful lawsuit.

Dolan alleges that during the feud he was “harassed” by city inspectors, who scrutinized virtually every facet of his home and the remodeling he had begun. Dolan estimated that at least two dozen inspectors visited him in less than one year.

Neighbor Kirby Talley said he also remembers the inspectors. “There were too many of them, too often,” he said, “to be routine inspections.”

Public records examined by The Times document one of the visits. The inspector in that case was Takasaki, the traffic engineer who expedited the Holly Drive stop sign. Takasaki said the mayor telephoned him and he went to Dolan’s house “at the request of the mayor” to order the removal of a “do not enter” sign Dolan had placed near the cul de sac outside his house. Levine said that he and Singer complained to the mayor that the sign was impeding access to her garage.

In retaliation, Dolan informed city officials that a retaining wall in front of the Levine home illegally jutted into the public street. Street inspector Ronald Berenson agreed, ordering Levine to remove the wall within 15 days.

When nothing happened, Dolan called the inspector to find out why.

“I got into a lot of trouble with the mayor’s office,” he quoted Berenson as saying.

Berenson acknowledged in an interview that he may have made such a remark, but added that he later learned the proceeding was halted when Levine applied for a permit to keep the wall--and not through political pressure.

City records show that the mayor, however, did help Levine with his permit application.

“Bradley wants this expedited,” Public Works Commissioner Ed Avila, appointed Dec. 8 to the post of deputy mayor, told an engineering bureau official in a phone message.

Another memo from Avila to engineering inspectors noted that “the mayor has been to the house.”

Singer’s name also appeared in the voluminous paper work pertaining to the wall.

In a brief note, engineering official Bassen Hanna wrote that Levine was unhappy about his treatment by the city and “told me to wait for a call from Marian (sic) Singer ? ? from the Mayor’s Office.”

“I don’t know why Levine told me that,” Hanna said in an interview. “The only thing I can remember is that I couldn’t find any Mary Anne Singer in the mayor’s office.”

Research was contributed by Cecilia Rasmussen of The Times and Todd White, a free-lance journalist.