Meet the Newest Tom Bradley

Bulletin from City Hall: There’s a new Mayor Tom Bradley.

This one’s an environmentalist, forcing the hidebound Department of Water and Power to conserve water rather than raiding every Northern California river and lake.

He’s combining that persona with another one--mayor for the poor. Bradley’s aides are telling Community Redevelopment Agency officials to cool their cozy relationships with downtown land developers and build housing for the impoverished.

I love to hear about this new Tom Bradley. I could hear the story over and over again. In fact, I have--and I’ve written it many times.

Although parents, schoolteachers, religious leaders and other mentors advise us to be consistent and unwavering in our beliefs, such conduct is death to a politician, especially one who’s been around a long time. Not many have been in office as long as the mayor.

One secret of his survival is an ability to change without missing a beat. He always denies this. To hear the mayor tell it, the Tom Bradley we know today is exactly the same person who enrolled at UCLA before World War II.

That’s not what I remember from my many years on the Bradley beat.

The first Tom Bradley I wrote about in the late 1960s was a liberal black politician, an uncompromising critic of the Police Department, especially its tactics in Latino East Los Angeles and black South-Central L.A. This was the Tom Bradley who, advised by a bunch of young lefties, ran for mayor in 1969 and was buried by a racist assault.

I encountered another Bradley four years later, in 1973. He was running for mayor as a responsible moderate. The ’69 liberals had been dropped from the team or banished to a back room. You didn’t see many blacks around, either. And Bradley didn’t attack the police. And he won.

After the election, I described yet another Tom Bradley--Downtown Tom. To our surprise, the man had developed a tremendous love of high rises. He persuaded the council to approve a huge downtown redevelopment plan that filled the Central City with tall office buildings. Such pro-business policies assured him of a steady flow of big campaign contributions. These made him politically impregnable.

There were other Tom Bradleys in the years that followed. Downtown Tom just missed winning a race for governor in 1982, in part because of a disappointing voter turnout in black neighborhoods. So after that, a more liberal Tom Bradley returned. He ran as a populist for governor in 1986 and, in a speech to the Democratic Party, did something unusual for him. He actually talked about being black. The speech was such a departure for Bradley that it was one of the few times I got on the front page during the one-sided campaign.

Recently, there was another Bradley--Businessman Tom. This Bradley was a paid adviser to a bank doing business with the city, a paid member of a savings and loan board and an investor in the hot stock market of the ‘80s. This persona got Bradley into a lot of trouble.

Now comes the newest Bradley--Environmentalist Tom/Servant-of-the-Poor Tom. It is a hybrid Bradley, created by advisers who want people to forget the tarnished Businessman Tom. Many of these advisers, like the ’69 gang, are young lefties. Mark Fabiani, the deputy mayor, has brought in environmentalists and poverty lawyers.

They’re not all radicals. Former Deputy Mayor Mike Gage, scheduled to be the next president of the Water and Power commission, works for a San Fernando Valley land developer who happens to be a member of the city Planning Commission. There’s still something left of Downtown Tom.

Even so, there are indications that this new Bradley might not fly. It’s already stirring opposition from business leaders, who prefer one or more of the old Bradleys.

Valley business interests, who loved the pro-growth Bradley, worry that the new one might keep the DWP from providing enough water for Valley industrial and residential expansion. Business and much of organized labor, especially the building trades unions, fear the new look signals a full-scale Bradley commitment to slow growth.

Fabiani, rather than the mayor, is the immediate target of the attack. Council members say he’s arrogant. Some top business leaders want him out.

Gage, with his land developer credentials, is trying to assure development-oriented lawmakers that he and the newest new Bradley are not mad environmentalists. And he’s trying to persuade loyal DWP employes that the mayor won’t trash the department.

But even Gage admits he’s got a selling job ahead. You can expect a strong business-labor counterattack, with the attackers taking their case directly to Bradley. The department’s big work force, which knows how to win political fights, will join them. So don’t get too attached to this new Bradley. He may change again.