Paul Ziffren, Democratic Power in State, Dies at 77 : Politics: He was credited with rebuilding the party in the ‘50s. He also was board chairman for ’84 Olympics.

Paul Ziffren, who as California’s Democratic national committeeman in the 1950s steered the party on a more liberal course and as chairman of the board of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics helped fulfill pledges of a Games free to local taxpayers, has died at his Malibu home.

Ziffren, who died of congestive heart failure Friday night, was 77.

“I regard Paul Ziffren as the builder of the California Democratic Party,” former Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown said Saturday. “We only had one Democratic governor in 60 years, Culbert Olson. By his intelligent work, Ziffren in time built the party up to the point where I was able to be elected the second. . . . He was a close personal friend and a man I admired from our first meeting.”

Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley called Ziffren “a remarkable leader who had a capacity to bring together people of different backgrounds and diverse interests and lead them to solve great problems.

“One of his greatest contributions, and a legacy of his leadership, were the Olympic Games of 1984,” Bradley said. “He chaired the organizing committee, which produced the greatest Games in the history of the Olympic movement. He was a dear personal friend whose advice and counsel assisted me on many occasions.”

Peter V. Ueberroth, president and staff director of the 1984 Olympic committee, said of Ziffren:

“He drew respect and trust from every part of society. His Republican friends were the best and most effective Republicans and his Democratic friends were the best and most effective Democrats. His leadership provided the umbrella of shade and protection for those who worked for the 1984 Olympic Games.

“He gave generously and unselfishly to his friends, and I was fortunate to be one of them.”

A leader in the Los Angeles Jewish community, as well as in legal and political circles, Ziffren had long been a close political associate of Bradley, who in 1979 asked him to chair the Olympic effort.

As Ueberroth noted Saturday, it fell to the gaunt, angular, soft-spoken lawyer to run political interference for the Games, while Ueberroth was in operational charge.

Before the 1984 Olympics were formally awarded to the city, Ziffren had predicted they would make a $100-million profit, an estimate most people regarded at the time as outlandish. Years later, Ziffren would recall with great pride his prediction, which was less than half the $222.7 million actually realized.

Ziffren, who learned a great deal about politics while a law associate of Chicago’s one-time Democratic boss, Jacob Arvey, moved to Southern California in 1943 and became a leading Beverly Hills tax attorney.

By 1950, he was raising funds for Helen Gahagan Douglas in her futile U.S. Senate campaign against Richard M. Nixon. In 1953, Ziffren was chosen California’s Democratic national committeeman.

In his nearly eight years in that post (during which he was instrumental in bringing the 1960 Democratic National Convention to Los Angeles) and later, Ziffren stirred controversy by pressing for a stronger civil rights stand by Democrats and for more of a “Western accent” in the party rather than a Southern one.

Ziffren was replaced by Stanley Mosk, then state attorney general and now a state Supreme Court justice, as national committeeman in 1960 in a move supported by Brown. Afterward, Los Angeles Times Political Editor Kyle Palmer wrote:

“Whether you like him or agree with his views, Ziffren must be regarded as one of those chiefly responsible for the resurgence of Democratic hopes and fortunes in California. . . . “

Mosk and Ziffren subsequently became close friends and Ziffren continued to be active in political matters as well as in his law career and community affairs.

As lawyer to Charlton Heston, Robert Wagner, Natalie Wood, Danny Thomas, Jim Nabors and Bob Newhart, among others, Ziffren brought prestigious Hollywood clients to the firm. Because Ziffren was a leader of the Jewish community, the merger symbolized to some the coming together of the city’s religious and ethnic groups as well.

Ziffren was born in Davenport, Iowa, on July 18, 1913, and was graduated from Northwestern University and that university’s law school. He practiced law in Chicago, where he also served as an assistant counsel to the Internal Revenue Service and assistant U.S. attorney in charge of the tax division.

When Pat Brown ousted Ziffren as national committeeman, it was in part because Ziffren had sided with Assembly Speaker Jesse M. Unruh, a Brown rival, and had urged U.S. Sen. John F. Kennedy to compete against Brown in the 1960 Democratic presidential primary.

“It got so everyone was paying more attention to Jesse than they did to me as governor, which annoyed me,” Brown explained later.

Nevertheless, what one writer called “one of the deepest political schisms in California history” was bridged in 1962 when Ziffren nominated Brown for a second term as governor during the party’s state convention.

As national committeeman, Ziffren also had consistently criticized the Democratic leadership in Congress (Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson and House Speaker Sam Rayburn) as too middle-of-the-road, frequently bringing Rayburn’s wrath down on the California Democratic congressional delegation.

Ziffren’s troubles with the conservative wing of the party went back to 1956, when he became a prime mover in the formation of a new national advisory committee to help formulate party policy and speak for the party between elections.

That did not sit well with Johnson and Rayburn, who, as Time magazine observed, could no longer “feel as complacent as they once did, harassed by the buzzing of the new persistent gadfly from California.”

Even after Ziffren was ousted, he never quit advising Democrats to remain liberal, arguing that those who adopted positions to the right of Republicans could not win public office. As late as 1988, he made national political overtures, on one occasion unsuccessfully urging Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.), to seek the Democratic presidential nomination that year.

Ziffren in the 1960s was frequently engaged in disputes with the Peace Officers Assn. and with then-Los Angeles Police Chief William H. Parker and other law enforcement officers over rules of evidence and the use of electronic devices in catching criminals.

During this period he also tangled with Unruh over the latter’s use of paid precinct workers to help get John Kennedy elected.

Ziffren called the technique “repugnant” and compared it to “the days of Chicago’s ‘Bathhouse John’ and ‘Hinky Dink,’ ” a reference to vote buying.

Unruh observed that Ziffren had been “repudiated” by his party and perhaps was speaking out of bitterness.

Despite his liberalism, Ziffren also had a host of Republican friends. On Saturday, Ueberroth recalled that when he visited the White House on Olympic business, President Reagan and his wife, Nancy, would unfailingly ask to be remembered to the Olympic chairman.

In 1968, when the Democratic Party was torn by dissension between the Johnson and Kennedy wings at the tumultuous Chicago convention, Ziffren said, “At long last we ought to face up to the fact that we are not giving the people a chance to nominate their candidates for President. . . .”

He pointed out that at a national convention, “If the chairman wants to ignore you, he can, and there is nothing you can do about it.”

Years later, however, Ziffren ran the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee much the same way, never allowing the board meetings to become so much as a forum for discussion of Ueberroth’s policies, much less a base for criticism of them.

Even when his friend, U.S. Circuit Court Judge Stephen Reinhardt, asked in writing for a meeting of the board’s executive committee to discuss the boycott the Soviet Union had called against the Los Angeles Games, Ziffren refused to convene one. He explained later he wanted to leave Ueberroth a free hand.

When Ziffren became chairman of the Olympic committee, there were many fears about what the Games might bring Los Angeles, ranging from huge municipal debt to traffic gridlock to terrorism. None of the fears were realized, and well before the Games took place, most of them had been dampened, in part by the hundreds of citizens Ziffren appointed to advisory commissions who turned into boosters for the Games.

After the Olympics were over, Ziffren became chairman of the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles, the group vested with Southern California’s $93-million share of the Olympic surplus to distribute to youth sports. He held the post for its first five years.

His successor in that position, television producer David Wolper, Saturday called Ziffren “a great man,” observing that in his Olympic roles “because of his calm and collected demeanor, he was able to keep many different groups together and settle disputes without rancor.”

The foundation built a library and meeting hall at its headquarters and named it the “Paul Ziffren Sports Resource Center.”

Ziffren was also a member of the boards of directors of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the Otis Art Associates, the American Film Institute and the Music Center Foundation.

He was vice president of the American Jewish Committee in Los Angeles, vice president of the Northwestern University Law Alumni Assn. and a trustee of Brandeis University and the Citizens’ Research Foundation.

He leaves his wife, Muriel (Mickey), and four children, Kenneth, Abbie, John and Toni Ritzenberg.

Services will be held Monday at 2 p.m. at Hillside Memorial Park in Culver City. The family requested that anyone who wishes to make a contribution in Ziffren’s memory donate to a charity of his or her choice.