Bob Gay: A Lifetime Quest That Fell 200 Votes Short : Council: His loyalty to Lindsay and his training preordained him for 9th District seat, he believes.

Bob Gay’s voice was hoarse from five months of campaigning, his eyes bloodshot from staying up late awaiting returns in last Tuesday’s Los Angeles City Council elections.

Then, facing a wall of cameras, the little-known City Council aide broke into bitter tears, the picture of a loser who had never imagined defeat.

“In this game of hard-and-fast politics, you are supposed to be cold and analytical and deadly and vengeful,” Gay, 38, said later in an interview. “But in the rush of the moment, I could feel every step that had occurred for the last 16 years.”

Perhaps no candidate had spent more time campaigning for an office in the June 4 election, or seemingly had more at stake in the outcome than Bob Gay. He saw himself as a marathon runner in a field of sprinters.

For 16 years, Gay was an aide to Councilman Gilbert Lindsay, self-proclaimed “emperor of the Great 9th District” that encompasses downtown Los Angeles. Patiently--and, some say, arrogantly--Gay did Lindsay’s bidding, marking time until the increasingly infirm Lindsay would step aside and anoint him successor. Again and again, he told people privately: “I know I’m going to be the next councilman.”

But instead of retiring, Lindsay held on, dying in office last December, sick and dysfunctional at 90. When Gay’s shot at power came at last, Lindsay was gone. Outsider Rita Walters, a school board member, moved into the district and, with the support of Mayor Tom Bradley, broke Gay’s dream in two.

“Bob Gay had never once thought leading up to the election that he wouldn’t win,” said a supporter of Gay, the Rev. Edward V. Hill of Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church.

The two candidates were just 208 votes apart--a margin narrow enough that Gay still holds out hope that hundreds of uncounted absentee ballots may yet turn the tide. He announced Wednesday that he may challenge the results in court, or may demand a recount. The city clerk is scheduled to certify the final results on June 18.

Last week, in a series of interviews, Gay spoke openly for the first time about his relationship with Lindsay, a man he appears to have respected and resented in equal amounts.

“He needed me,” Gay said. “I needed him. He understood that. I understood that.”

Many political aspirants come up through the ranks as aides to elected officials. But Gay, quietly at first and later much more openly, was far more single-minded than most.

When Gay was 18, and Lindsay told his class at Jefferson High School that the youth of the 9th District should be aspiring to his job, Gay determined to do just that.

Three years later, his confidence bolstered by his election as student body president at Los Angeles Harbor College, Gay said he walked into Lindsay’s office in City Hall and asked for a job.

“I don’t have the money to hire you,” he said Lindsay replied.

“Then I’ll work for free,” responded Gay.

Gay said he later discovered that the councilman did have the money to hire anyone he wanted, including a buxom young woman who seemed to do nothing. That, Gay said, taught him that he could not always trust Lindsay’s word.

A few months later, Lindsay put Gay on his staff.

Working nights as a school janitor, finishing up school, and spending days at City Hall, Gay apprenticed himself to Lindsay. He viewed Lindsay as a “a political father figure, one (who) was harder on me than he was on anybody else in the office.”

Lindsay seemed to make a point of trying to toughen him up, Gay said. “Part of it I understand, part of it I never liked,” he said.

After suffering a stroke in 1988, Lindsay came to rely heavily on Gay and other staff members. It became clear to people at City Hall and in the district that Gay functioned as a surrogate councilman, presiding over ceremonial events and attending community meetings as a stand-in for his boss.

In 1989, Lindsay, then 87, broke an explicit promise to step aside and endorse Gay to succeed him, Gay said. “He went back on his word,” he said. “But I suppose I always knew he would die in office.”

For the most part, Gay appeared deferential and protective of his boss. By the end, Gay frequently had to guide Lindsay to the side of the council chamber to explain what was happening.

Last year, as council members engaged in a raucous debate over ethics reform proposals, Gay led Lindsay away from the din and fed him cookies while explaining to the councilman how the competing factions wanted him to vote. Later that day, the councilman turned to Gay for help when a reporter asked him how he had voted on the issue.

During the 1980s, Gay became a born-again Christian. Today he says he does not smoke, drink or swear, and he is a deacon in a small church. Now single, after two failed marriages, he has three teen-age children.

Gay said he has come to believe that God called him to serve in political office.

“Bob . . . gave a full cup of dedication and devotion to Gilbert Lindsay,” said the Rev. Cecil L. (Chip) Murray, senior minister at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, who supported Walters in the race.

“It was just sort of understood that he would be Gil Lindsay’s heir apparent,” Murray said. “Then came his calling. . . . A year and a half ago I saw the change. His speech, his witness, his public witness, he began to see his life as one of destiny.”

But Lindsay stayed on at City Hall. Living alone and with no close relatives, the councilman came to depend on Gay and other staffers as personal valets and nurses, according to Gay and other City Hall sources.

“We shielded him from the public,” Gay said. “There were times when we tried to make a major effort to not have him degrade himself.”

After Lindsay broke his promise about stepping aside, Gay said, he grew impatient. While remaining loyal to Lindsay in public, he started asking for commitment of support from lobbyists, developers and others of stature in the 9th District.

“He was very open about it,” said Alma Fitch, a lobbyist who represents a variety of clients and eventually became Rita Walters’ campaign treasurer. “You couldn’t go to a lunch or a dinner without him saying this was preordained, that he was going to inherit the 9th District. ‘When I file, I expect your support,’ he’d say.”

Some found his directness refreshing. Others were critical.

“If you’d ask him for a favor, by the end of the sentence he would have on the tip of his tongue what the (payback) was,” said Alice Callaghan, president of the Skid Row Housing Trust.

Several years ago, he began making a list of New York investment bankers he had met during a City Hall controversy over bond underwriting--and he turned to the same bankers this year to help finance his campaign. He also began looking at ministers in the black community as political supporters.

Last year, Gay arranged for a $35,000 appropriation of city money to pay bills for the National Baptist Convention held at the Convention Center. After questions arose on the City Council about separation of church and state, Gay had the proposal redrawn to indicate that secular activities would be included in the convention and booth space would be provided to promote the city.

Religion has permeated his campaign. Gay won the endorsement of many prominent local pastors, and Bible quotations adorned his campaign headquarters.

On election night, when Gay inched ahead of Walters, dozens of youths danced and shouted, “Go Jesus! Go Jesus!” The candidate himself took an imaginary golf swing and claimed victory.

A reporter asked how he could be so certain. “Because I deliberately burn my bridges. I simply don’t make provisions for turning back,” Gay said.

“Sometimes,” said the Rev. Hill, “there is a fine line between dreams and visions, between an actual vision of God and your personal dream. . . .”