Bradley: The Mayor on Call

We all know how much Mayor Tom Bradley loves his job, even down to the smallest details.

He attends so many ceremonies you’d think he was Prince Charles. If a friend of a friend opens a supermarket, the mayor will be there to cut the ribbon. New movie theaters, trade fairs, benefits, christenings, weddings and bar mitzvahs have been graced by mayoral visits.

But even I, a chronicler of Bradley’s activities since 1969, was surprised by the extent of the mayor’s interest in minutiae, as revealed in a letter to The Times published last Monday.

You may have read the letter. It was prominently displayed under the headline “Mayor’s Action In Shoplift Case.” In it, Bradley objected to a story telling how he made a phone call to a Los Angeles International Airport police sergeant inquiring about the arrest of Yukio Umemura, a city official from Japan, for allegedly filching two wallets and a leather purse from the duty-free shop.

Umemura had paid a courtesy visit to Bradley the day before. So when he was nailed by the airport cops, someone accompanying his tour got the news to the mayor. A mayoral aide was dispatched to the airport and Bradley phoned the police station to express his concern. Justice was swift. The duty-free shop, which operates on a concession granted by the city, refused to prosecute and the airport police dropped the case. Later and independently, the city attorney looked into the matter and decided to charge Umemura with misdemeanor grand theft.

In his letter, Bradley complained the story made it sound as if he acted improperly. Wrong, said the mayor. As “ranking officer in this city with responsibility for every constituent,” Bradley said he merely called “to learn of the circumstances first-hand.” As a matter of fact, he’d do it for anybody. As Bradley put it , “if you run afoul of the law, you will have to take responsibility for the predictable consequences. But if you need me, or simply think you need me, to make inquiry about a matter, I’ll be there. . . .”

I shouldn’t have been surprised by the letter. It fits in with what I know about the mayor--his view of himself as city ombudsman, or some sort of municipal talk show host, listening to the complaint of anybody who can get through to him.

A minister wants a traffic light in front of his church. Bradley fixes it up. A homeless man comes up to him at a Skid Row shelter dedication and asks for a job. The mayor sends him to a prospective employer. An inmate complains from state prison. Bradley has an aide look into it. His car thumps over a pothole on the way to City Hall. The mayor phones the Public Works Department and gets a crew out.

But wait a minute. Not every phone call Bradley gets is about potholes. Sometimes, the mayor sounds more like an old Chicago ward leader than an ombudsman, making calls that come very close to the ethical line. An example of that is his now-famous phone call to the city treasurer inquiring about city deposits in Far East National Bank, which was paying Bradley for being an adviser.

Calling an airport police sergeant to ask about a dignitary’s arrest is another example of walking the ethical line. Don’t you jump when the big boss is on the phone? I do.

But even when Bradley is on safe ground and making his endless round of ceremonial events and constituent service calls, what, really, is he accomplishing? Nothing more than busy work that keeps him from more important tasks, like figuring out solutions to the city’s problems.

That’s been a long-standing complaint about the mayor. To Bradley, leadership is perpetual motion. When he was running for governor, his chance of a lifetime, his advisers couldn’t get him to sit down and study position papers. That’s why he stumbled when confronted with some of the state’s more complex issues.

If Bradley follows the course outlined in his letter to the paper, it’ll get worse. Is everyone who, as he put it, “runs afoul of the law” is entitled to a mayoral phone call? Will he give every shoplifting suspect the same courtesy he showed city official Umemura? Given the high shoplifting arrest rate, Bradley will never be off the phone.

But after 17 years on the job, it’s too late for him to change. So, knowing the mayor would want it this way, I’ll pass along his phone number in case anybody else needs help: (213) 485-5175.