The Sphinx of City Hall : The Politician and His Policies are as Familiar as the Hollywood Sign. But After 18 Years in Office the Real Tom Bradley Remains an Enigma.

It is a steamy 90 degrees in November. As darkness falls on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, passersby gawk at a street person wrapped in a winter coat and wool hat. He is dancing along the neon-lit boulevard to the pulsating sound of a boombox perched atop his shoulder, unaware that he is about to cross paths with the leading man of Los Angeles. * Impeccably dressed in a dark blue suit, a striking 6-foot, 4-inch figure glides toward his chauffeured Lincoln Town Car. Mayor Tom Bradley, leaving a group of Hollywood actors to rousing applause, strides out onto the boulevard, his head held high and posture ramrod straight. Before reaching his vehicle, the mayor encounters the street person. The two men pause momentarily and exchange glances. The vagabond, unshaven, his eyes bloodshot and hair unkempt, continues shuffling down the sidewalk. The mayor, his silky smooth, wrinkle-free face beaming, follows in the man’s footsteps and mimics his every move. Together, they choreograph a Kodak moment: The street person and the 74-year-old mayor swaying in line to loud music. * Bradley retreats to his car with a grin as wide as a motion picture screen. “For a minute, I thought Groucho had come back to life,” he says, bursting out in a jovial cackle. * The sight of L.A.’s subdued, almost statuesque mayor merrily bantering on city streets is one constituents do not expect to see. This spontaneous encounter hardly fits the image of a five-term mayor who is known around City Hall as “The Sphinx.” Bradley is far more likely to sit passively through a meeting wearing a stone-faced look than to engage in lively discussion. He is regarded as aloof, almost dull, and conducts himself in a deadly serious, no-nonsense manner. He has few friends in whom he confides, no hobbies, and hardly any time for his wife of 50 years. He is so secretive that few aides are permitted access to his schedule or his thoughts; on occasion, he vanishes without anyone knowing his whereabouts. Despite devoting nearly his entire adult life to the City of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley remains a tantalizing enigma. He is the only mayor many Angelenos have ever known, though few know much about him. In fact, he is so familiar to his constituents, it sometimes seems he is taken for granted or considered a part of the landscape. * Like a classic Ansel Adams photograph, the longer one surveys the mayor, the more fascinating the contrasts. Despite his seemingly unflappable demeanor, in private he can grow testy, shout and, according to some soured aides, grow defensive and manipulative. Bradley is approaching the middle of his eighth decade, yet he is in remarkable physical condition--staffers half his age have trouble keeping pace. * He shows no signs of losing interest in his work, which consumes him. The city’s longest-serving mayor, in his 19th year in office, he is proposing innovative solutions to the city’s traffic and gang problems that so far have been tied up in bureaucratic knots. Recently, he displayed flashes of vintage Bradley as he calmed the city during the Rodney G. King crisis and the conflict between the black and Korean communities. And, since federal authorities cleared him last month of any wrongdoing following an extensive investigation into various ethical questions, Bradley now declares himself free of the stench of suspicion that clouded his administration for three long years.

This turnaround causes many observers inside and outside City Hall, including some of Bradley’s longtime supporters, to wonder whether the mayor may be taking his latest political comeback too much to heart. They are wary about talk of Bradley’s gearing up for an unprecedented sixth term that would keep him in office through 1997, the year he turns 80.

“He has such a big ego that I think he really believes he is the only person who can lead this city,” says Grace Montanez Davis, who served nearly 13 years as Bradley’s deputy mayor before being forced to retire. She contends that nearly two decades at the city’s helm have changed Bradley from a humble public servant to a man so caught up with his own standing that he has grown “insensitive” to his early principles. Adds UC San Diego political science professor Steven Erie, who is writing a book called “Imperial Los Angeles”: “He has outlived his usefulness. Like an aging baseball player, you’ve got to know when to leave the field.”

In a climate where incumbents nationwide are on the run, Bradley refuses to rule out another reelection bid. Although he insists that he has not even begun to think about next year’s race, when pressed Bradley drops this teaser: “I can’t think of anything that measures up to the satisfaction, the excitement, the challenge and the opportunities that the office of mayor has provided me.”

Some think the city would benefit from four more years of Bradley’s steadying influence. Richard S. Weinstein, the dean of the UCLA Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning, believes that a reinvigorated Bradley could be the ideal candidate to guide Los Angeles toward the 21st Century. “The mayor is uniquely capable of addressing the problems and issues we face,” says Weinstein. “If he is going to use his unique circumstance and history in this city to do something new, that would be pretty interesting.”

Should Bradley run again--and those in the know increasingly predict that he will--he can expect to be attacked relentlessly for his ethical lapses. “It’s going to be vicious, negative, bitter and bloody,” warns Mickey Kantor, an influential attorney and key Democratic strategist. “Even if Tom Bradley prevails, he will be wounded. He has to ask himself, ‘Is that the legacy you want to leave for yourself and the city?’ ” In the same breath, Kantor adds, “This guy is not going to walk away from a fight.”

Throughout his career, Bradley has displayed a courageous determination to prevail against long odds. “One of the things that gives me energy, that drives me, is for someone to say, ‘You can’t do this,’ or to try to stop what I want to do,” he says.

Bradley has been mayor so long--he first was elected in 1973, when Richard M. Nixon was President--that his prior accomplishments often are overlooked. The son of Texas sharecroppers, Bradley has overcome two of society’s greatest barriers--poverty and racism--to become a high school track star, a UCLA education major, a pioneering police lieutenant, a dogged lawyer and the city’s first elected black councilman and mayor.

As mayor, Bradley has cultivated the image of a wise, slightly distant father figure gently presiding over the frantic growth of a world-class city. In doing so, he has made himself easily the most famous of the city’s 38 mayors, building a legacy that is certain to last beyond his lifetime. During his reign he has overseen the raising of downtown skyscrapers, the 1984 Olympics, the transformation of the city into a major hub of international trade and the dawn of a new era of mass transit. Through it all he has remained personally popular, even if only 160,000 voters narrowly reelected him nearly three years ago to lead a city of 3.3 million.

“He has this tremendous dignity, sort of prince-like, combined with a traditional conservative personality,” raves Maureen Kindel, the mayor’s chief political fund-raiser. “He wears well with people both personally and politically.”

These qualities, however, were not always evident when the mayor recently engaged in a bitter feud with local reporters, blaming them for the ethics controversy that threatened to swamp his administration. Bradley refused to speak to certain journalists, including me, who had produced unfavorable stories about him. For this article, though, Bradley agreed to be interviewed for three hours and allowed me to follow him for two days in November. Initially, Bradley pretended to ignore me and refused to make eye contact as I observed him reading papers in his office. As we spent more time together, he seemed to loosen up.

Seated in a high-backed chair in his formal, oak-paneled office, he crossed his fingers and then twirled his thumbs at the start of our interview. He wrestled with the precise words to describe himself. “Essentially, I’m very private,” he said in a soft voice. “That is the way I have been all my life. At times I wish I was more outgoing, more at ease.” Careful not to reveal too much about his inner self, Bradley issued this note of caution: “Anybody who tries to analyze me in a simplistic way will miss the boat. I’m a very complex man in my reactions, in my emotions and in the way I do things.”

IT IS 5:30 A.M. WHEN THE MAYOR CLIMBS OUT OF BED AND ONTO A stationary bicycle at Getty House, the three-story French colonial mansion maintained and owned by the city. The Hancock Park estate has a tennis court, a giant microwave TV dish and landscaped gardens, amenities that Bradley has no spare time to enjoy. He devotes 30 minutes each morning to the bike while scanning the Los Angeles Times. Whenever he sees a story that angers him, he is fond of saying, he vigorously pedals the bicycle. This helps explain why he is in tiptop physical condition. He has grown so disgusted with media coverage of his ethics controversies that he now takes only about 10 minutes to skim the paper. “I came to lose confidence in what I read,” he says. “It caused me to look with a jaundiced eye at everything that was printed.”

He usually eats bran cereal and fruit for breakfast--the one meal each day that is not dictated by his many appearances, and the only one he regularly shares with his wife. He emerges from Getty House nattily attired in crisply pressed conservative suits, some of them gifts from clothiers before the city’s new ethics code was enacted. This is but one sign of Bradley’s passion for meticulously maintaining his appearance. Few people realize that the mayor wears contact lenses, boasts a perfect smile after having a small gap between his two upper front teeth closed and has few facial flaws thanks to cosmetic surgery a few years back. “I want to look as good as possible at all times,” he says matter-of-factly. “I think that is reflected in my dress, my appearance and everything I do.”

Decent clothes were beyond his imagination as a youth, Bradley recalls. His early childhood years were spent in a small log cabin in Calvert, Tex., under poverty-stricken conditions that claimed the lives of five infant siblings. When Bradley was six, the family moved to East Los Angeles in search of a better life. Within a few years his father fled the household, leaving his mother to raise four children on her wages as a seamstress.

The Bradleys were so poor that the mayor vividly recalls not having enough socks as a child. He promised himself that he would collect an ample supply when he grew up. “I became a sock fiend,” Bradley chuckles. “I’ve got socks that I bought when I was a police officer that I’ve never worn. Talk about Imelda’s shoes. You ought to see my sock drawers.”

Today, the mayor has no financial worries: He earns an annual salary of $117,884, has few out-of-pocket expenses and has invested wisely in stocks, bonds and limited partnerships--the subject of the just-completed federal inquiry--to become a virtual millionaire.

Bradley is greeted at Getty House at 7:30 each morning by one of four police officers who serve exclusively as his bodyguard/drivers. En route to City Hall, he sits in the front passenger seat of the black sedan, often with his head buried in paperwork. He shuns all-news radio for Barbra Streisand, Neil Diamond and other pop artists on an easy-listening FM station.

The mayor works in a small, windowless, third-floor inner office. One glance at the cramped room dispels any notion about Tom Bradley, Minister of Neatness. His desk is covered with a heap of city files, pens, pencils, Tootsie Rolls, suckers and knickknacks. A countertop behind the mayor’s desk holds a stereo, jazz tapes, a microwave oven, cans of corn chowder and crackers.

Photos of the mayor and a large portrait of Abraham Lincoln cover the wall. Conspicuously missing are pictures of the mayor’s family. Bradley has two daughters, Lorraine, 48, a physical education teacher at Hollywood High School, and Phyllis, 46, a secretary who has been arrested on several occasions, one as recently as two years ago, for drug and alcohol violations. He sees them occasionally when Lorraine stops by the house early in the morning or Phyllis visits the office. Bradley says he regularly visits his one surviving sibling, a 71-year-old brother, Ellis, in a retirement home.

Bradley’s wife, Ethel, long ago surrendered any visible role as the city’s First Lady. The Texas-born former beauty salon owner and singer/model often can be seen during baseball season at Dodger Stadium with a friend. When the mayor is asked about his wife’s low profile, his reply is terse: “Her feeling is she has given her husband to public service. That doesn’t mean that she now has to give herself.”

Ethel Bradley refers to her husband as “the mayor.” She notes with resignation that his schedule has grown steadily worse over the years. On most days, she says, Bradley leaves the house by 7:30 a.m. and returns around 11 p.m., after she has fallen asleep. The last time she spent any real time alone with her husband was in May to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. According to Ethel Bradley, the couple spent a weekend in Las Vegas, where the mayor relaxed in their Caesar’s Palace suite reading a novel and watching television while she stayed downstairs playing slot machines.

“He is a wonderful person,” boasts the 73-year-old First Lady. “I admire him. He is not a phony. He is very good to his family. Anything we need, he makes sure it is there. I write him a note. The only problem is, I think he works too much now. This is a time in my life when I looked forward to being with him.”.

THE MAYOR PICKS UP THE TELEPHONE AND USES HIS RIGHT FOREfinger to slowly press each button as though he were pushing a doorbell. Bradley routinely places--and returns--each of his own phone calls without the aid of a receptionist. (To save the city money, he avoids making long-distance calls.) He is trying to reach Arnold Schwarzenegger, but the number he has is not in service. Bradley then makes two calls directing staffers to find a new number.

Within five minutes Bradley calls Schwarzenegger again, only to learn that he is in Ventura County attending the opening of the Reagan Library; Bradley had been invited but had no desire to attend. Bradley leaves a message with Schwarzenegger’s secretary: “Tell him I checked on a tree planting at 818 W. 7th St., and they will postpone the planting until the shooting has finished. . . . OK? . . . All right. . . . You’re welcome. . . . Bye, bye.”

It turns out that Schwarzenegger was directing a movie in Los Angeles when he discovered that a city tree-planting ceremony would, in Bradley’s words, “not only disrupt, but completely destroy their plans for shooting there that day.” Schwarzenegger had asked the mayor for help. No request is too small for the mayor of the nation’s second-largest city to personally handle. Two days later, a paroled robber, penniless and in need of transportation back East, approaches the mayor after the unveiling of a mural at the downtown bus depot. Bradley listens to the man’s story, then escorts him inside and arranges for Travelers Aid to provide a free trip to Baltimore. “I felt this was a chance to see if the mayor would really try to help a person off the street,” says the parolee, Dennis Pulley.

Whether he is assisting the Terminator or a thief, the mayor provides a kind of old-fashioned constituent service that went out the window with door-to-door campaigns. He bristles at the suggestion that his time should be spent on more pressing issues. “I like to get to the heart of things quickly. It saves time. Beyond that, I do get satisfaction and pleasure generally out of serving the public.” This direct constituent contact is Bradley’s “greatest strength,” says Philip Depoian, a top aide who started as the mayor’s driver 20 years ago. “It is why he has never lost touch with the city.”

Bradley also never seems to tire of ceremonial duty. He calls so many news conferences and attends so many grand-opening, groundbreaking and ribbon-cutting events that reporters who cover the Bradley Administration routinely don’t bother to show up. Bradley is a big fan of parades. Last year he marched in Chinatown’s Golden Dragon Parade, the Mexican Independence Day Parade, the Korean Festival Parade, the Desert Storm Parade and the Hollywood Christmas Parade while serving as grand marshal in the Philippine Independence Day Parade, the 51st Nisei Week Festival Parade and the Shriner’s Parade.

Curiously, the mayor has participated in virtually every ethnic parade in the city except the one event that winds its way down Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard each year in honor of the slain civil rights leader. Bradley claims that organizer Celes King III deliberately sought to embarrass him in 1985 by not inviting him to the first parade. Since then the mayor has boycotted the parade, because Celes King “did not treat me in a respectful fashion.” King is a downtown bail bondsman and activist who supported Republican George Deukmejian in 1982 and 1986 when he defeated Bradley in campaigns for governor. King contends that he personally invited the mayor to the first parade through a top aide and has sent invitations to Bradley each year since.

Now Bradley says he has had an unexplained change of heart and, tomorrow, plans to ride in the King parade, a festivity that has grown in stature to become the nation’s largest black event of its kind. The mayor’s boycott illustrates the extent to which Bradley is capable of carrying a grudge. But it also serves as an example of how the mayor feels a limited obligation to cater to his black constituency.

The mayor candidly says he has little desire to “go out on a public platform and be a spokesman every day for civil rights. It’s not a politician’s business to be a civil rights advocate or spokesperson. That doesn’t mean you surrender certain moral obligations to make changes . . . “ He refers with pride to his administration’s affirmative action policies and other programs he has introduced to steer city contracts to minority-owned firms.

For some, his generally cool civil rights stance and aloof style go hand in hand. “You have to remember Tom Bradley comes from a different generation,” says Kerman Maddox, a black political activist who has worked for the mayor. “He was brought up in an era where you were supposed to keep your mouth shut and ears wide open and certainly not question white authority. That has influenced the way he governs.”

IN A DRAB HOTEL BANQUET ROOM, BRADLEY PICKS AT A PLATE OF chicken during a luncheon with a dozen executives from the city’s major Korean financial institutions. He has called the bankers together to talk privately about escalating tensions in the wake of two fatal shootings of black patrons by Korean storekeepers.

Speaking in hushed tones, he wastes no time in reminding the bankers that they have “a vested interest”--it is understood he is referring to their livelihood--in resolving the conflict. “The problem very quickly has turned more ugly than anything I’ve seen before in Los Angeles,” he says, his steely eyes piercing those of his guests. “This is something you can’t turn your head from.” His office, Bradley says, has received numerous complaints about Korean merchants: “They don’t treat their customers right. They reach out to take the money without saying thank-you.” The Korean markets, he adds, do not hire employees from within the black communities they serve.

The bankers shift uncomfortably in their seats. They voice their own concerns about Korean stereotypes and black activist Danny Bakewell--”Why is he inflammatory toward the Korean community?” one asks. Bradley listens intently, assuring the bankers that he met with Bakewell an hour earlier and they will find him “one of the cooperative spirits in this.” The mayor then reveals his purpose for the meeting: He wants the bankers to require Korean merchants to undergo “sensitivity training” before they receive any future loans. Furthermore, he suggests that Korean businesses make contributions to “worthy recipients” in the black communities. “Then we could work out a way to get publicity for you,” he says.

The bankers react in silence, an indication of their lack of enthusiasm. The mayor asks for volunteers to help him implement his two-pronged plan, but gets no takers. “All right, I’ll pick you,” he says, and selects two bankers to meet with his staff. All the bankers stand, shake the mayor’s hand and thank him for coming. And they get stuck with the tab.

In meetings like this, Bradley, laboring behind the scenes, subsequently negotiated a truce that reduced tensions between black activists and Korean merchants. But some complain that Bradley would rather play cleanup than prevent conflict. Moreover, the mayor was nowhere to be found in November when the combustible Korean-black conflict nearly ignited following a judge’s decision not to imprison Soon Ja Du, a Korean merchant convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the shooting death of black teen-ager Latasha Harlins. While black leaders rallied and Korean stores were threatened with firebombing, Bradley was flying to Great Britain on one of his foreign trade missions. All the mayor’s office could do was issue a statement saying that Bradley “would emphasize that violence solves nothing” if he had been in town.

It was not the first time Bradley’s penchant for overseas travel--his 21 city-paid trips since 1987 far exceed any other U.S. mayor’s--had undermined his peacemaking efforts. Last summer, he refused to call off a two-week trip to the Far East at the height of the Rodney King crisis.

Throughout his political career, however, one of Bradley’s greatest strengths has been his ability to forge a broad-based coalition among the city’s many ethnic communities. Congressman Julian C. Dixon, a Los Angeles Democrat, calls Bradley “the glue” that has held the city together. Ronald H. Brown, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, says: “Los Angeles is a very complicated city and Bradley has managed in good times and in bad, in times of quiet and tranquillity, in times of great crisis and trauma, to hold a very complex and diverse city together. He’s done it flawlessly.”

Oddly, the one ethnic group that Bradley has largely neglected is the city’s biggest. For more than two decades, Latinos were not represented on the City Council and not incorporated into the core of the mayor’s coalition. Only now is Bradley focusing on an economic development program in the impoverished Eastside. This “stunning failure,” says Mike Davis, author of “City of Quartz: Excavating the Future of Los Angeles,” hampers the mayor’s ability to participate in “a new majority politics” that is certain to shape the city’s future.

For the past two decades, Bradley has left his personal imprint on Los Angeles politics by proceeding quietly at his own deliberate pace, careful not to disrupt or disturb. “It’s just a human quality that is ingrained in me,” he says of his low-key style. “It’s worked pretty well for me in 70-plus years.”

As a police lieutenant in the 1950s, Bradley did not protest when his efforts to end the practice of segregating squad cars were resisted by the department brass. Looking back, Bradley says, the Police Department “did me a favor” by clinging to its racist policies. Rather than get angry, he went to law school at Loyola and Southwestern colleges at night and later quit the force to practice as an attorney. “I’d have never been mayor had they permitted me to rise to whatever degree my talents would take me. They refocused my life.”

This non-confrontational approach, however, has contributed to one of Bradley’s biggest failures: For years he tolerated reports of racism, excessive force and mismanagement throughout the Police Department that eventually were documented in the wake of the Rodney King beating. Like nearly everyone, he was “outraged” by the violence captured on the King videotape, which showed officers mercilessly clubbing a helpless motorist. That King was a black man being pummeled by white officers did not make an impression on him at the time, Bradley says.

The mayor was not so startled by the pervasiveness of police racism and brutality exposed by the incident. He acknowledges he was fully aware of these problems, but chose not to address them because Chief Daryl F. Gates and the Police Department enjoyed the confidence of voters. “It took that kind of very graphic proof for the public to believe what many of us had heard from others over a period of time,” he says.

Bradley and his staff insist that it was appropriate to wait until the King incident to push for police reforms and Gates’ eventual removal. The mayor possesses “a genius for knowing when public support has built to a certain level that is necessary for him to act,” says Mark D. Fabiani, the 34-year-old Harvard-educated lawyer who serves as deputy mayor and Bradley’s chief of staff.

But a distinguished citizens panel--formed by the mayor to investigate the Police Department after the King episode--criticized Bradley for neglecting to assert his influence earlier. As mayor, Bradley’s only authority rests with his five police commissioners who oversee the department. Nonetheless, the Christopher Commission found that Bradley’s “unwillingness over the years to exert more leadership using the inherent powers of his office has contributed to the Police Commission’s ineffectiveness.” The panel also concluded that Bradley did not utilize the city’s merit pay review process “to evaluate the chief critically.”

Bradley says he did not “single out” Gates by giving him a less-than-adequate performance review because the police chief is a powerful political figure and such an evaluation would have been overturned by the City Council. “I don’t believe in going through an exercise in futility,” he says. “That is one I just passed on.”

Such an admission, critics say, serves an an example of how Bradley’s non-confrontational style may be increasingly ineffective in a changing city seething with ethnic tensions. “Bradley is the kind of leader who doesn’t come to the battlefield until it is time to count the dead,” comments Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a senior associate at the Claremont Graduate School Center for Politics and Policy. “He knew the Police Department. Why hasn’t anyone held him accountable for that?” As a long-term incumbent, Bebitch Jeffe notes, Bradley is by no means unusual in his reluctance to aggressively pursue change. “It happens to all politicians at some point in their careers. They love the job so much that they loathe asserting leadership, let alone rocking the boat.”

ONE DAY AFTER HIS NARROW REELECTION IN MARCH, 1989, BRADley pledged to make his fifth term “the most active and most progressive” in city history. He sought to break free of the ethics noose dangling over his administration by resigning his $24,000-a-year post as a director of Valley Federal Savings & Loan. He appointed a citizens panel to create “the cleanest, toughest” government ethics code in the nation; the panel is already mired in bureaucratic infighting. He shook up his office, promoting Fabiani to deputy mayor and removing Grace Davis from the other deputy slot. That position was recently filled by Linda Griego, 44, a former aide to Sen. Alan Cranston and restaurateur, who is expected to concentrate on stimulating economic development.

Under the direction of Fabiani, the Bradley Administration has focused on environmental issues such as recycling residential garbage and cleaning Santa Monica Bay, and created a commission to coordinate policies on the homeless and the lack of affordable housing. Bradley’s initiatives have generated headlines and the appearance that he is busier than ever. But critics label his management style “governance by press conference” and say that the mayor, while generating new ideas, has accomplished little in the way of substantive reform. The Bradley Administration, says author Davis, “has built some of the best policies in the United States on the environmental and housing fronts, though they remain largely on paper.”

Bradley flatly rejects this notion. “I have lots of announcements because we are a very active office. Too many needs are out there and too many things are happening. I believe in hitting them all as hard and as often as I can.”

So far, he has achieved about half of the two dozen initiatives he introduced at the start of his current term, but they include mostly minor accomplishments such as establishing a ride-share hot line, starting another downtown shuttle line, and hiring a city AIDS coordinator. The rest of his priorities may soon get bushwhacked by a projected $150-million budget gap for the coming fiscal year. The mayor has regained some of the influence he formerly held with the 15-member City Council by establishing close ties to the three newest minority representatives--Mike Hernandez, Rita Walters and Mark Ridley-Thomas.

In critical areas such as housing and crime, community leaders say they would prefer that Bradley move faster with bolder initiatives. “I see a person with so much power and the ability to make so many dramatic changes,” says County Supervisor Gloria Molina, a former City Council member and possible mayoral candidate. “He’s not overly dramatic in the positions and the programs he has. Eventually they sort of start moving.”

The mayor has devoted much of his attention to two major proposals: a sweeping truck ban that would relieve rush-hour traffic congestion and a citywide after-school program that would provide a safe learning environment for the thousands of children who drop out of school and into gangs. The truck ban would be paid for by transportation tax proceeds and the after-school program would be financed by downtown redevelopment funds. The truck ban, loosely patterned after the voluntary effort that cleared city streets during the Olympics, would dramatically alter the way commercial goods are shipped in Southern California. It would prohibit 70% of all heavy-duty trucks from using city streets during rush hours. “We will be the first city to pass a truck plan,” Bradley crows to a meeting of Valley business leaders. “The whole country is looking at us.”

Lately, the mayor’s efforts have been frustrated by a coalition of more than 300 business leaders who fear that the ban would cost billions of dollars in higher transportation costs, lower productivity and lost jobs. The mayor’s response: “They lie!” Thus far, Bradley has succeeded in winning early battles at the state Legislature and City Council, but a final decision by the council has been delayed.

Implementation of the after-school program also has been stalled by an impasse in freeing up more than $100 million in redevelopment money. To do so, the mayor needs the support of the supervisors and the courts. After nearly four years of trying, he has gotten nowhere. The mayor’s goal to expand the program, LA’s BEST (Better Educated Students for Tomorrow), to each of the city’s 417 elementary schools represents an unusual venture into education, an area that is normally not the concern of city government. A UCLA study found that a pilot project, currently offered at 19 schools, does enhance the lives of schoolchildren who otherwise would spend idle time in neighborhoods infested by gang activity, drugs and poverty.

At every opportunity Bradley promotes the program. One day when I was with him, he delivered an inspiring impromptu talk to a small gathering at the Screen Actors Guild auditorium. Bradley recalled how he was a voracious reader as a young boy, citing the rather bizarre example of how he first learned about Tarzan of the Apes in a pulp magazine. “It pains me to talk to a youngster who has never finished a book,” he told the actors, who have agreed to serve as volunteer readers in the program. “Unless we deal with dropouts and faders in the third and fourth grade in school, you can forget about them.”

Involving private citizens in City Hall is one of Bradley’s favorite tactics. So far in his current four-year term, the mayor has appointed 18 citizens committees to tackle issues ranging from rescuing (unsuccessfully) the now-defunct Los Angeles Theatre Center to improving airline passenger safety. In many instances, these committees have produced reports that now collect dust. Among the exceptions are the mayor’s Committee to Support Professional Football and his Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department. Just when it seemed certain the Raiders were packing their bags, Bradley negotiated an agreement for the franchise to stay.

Similarly, it was Bradley who persuaded Warren G. Christopher, a former deputy secretary of state, to lead a distinguished panel of community leaders to investigate the Police Department in the wake of the King beating. The panel produced a startling report that is expected to serve as the blueprint for ushering in a new era of policing in Los Angeles, including the selection of a new police chief. Although he misstepped at times, Bradley’s efforts during the King crisis--typically low-key, shrewd and behind-the scenes--largely went unappreciated. “Under a lot of other leaders, this city could have gone up in flames as a result of the Rodney King beating,” says Deputy Mayor Fabiani. “The mayor was the person who kept the lid on things and people have not given him the kind of credit he deserves.”

THE MAYOR SLAMS HIS FIST ON THE TABLE, RATTLING THE SILVERware. He is venting his anger at newspaper reporters during a rare lunch in late November aimed at improving relations with the media. Bradley, who had assailed former Mayor Sam Yorty for his many overseas trips during their 1969 and 1973 campaigns, does not appreciate reporters pestering him with questions about his frequent foreign travels. He portrays Yorty’s trips as “junkets,” while arguing that his own travels have brought back lucrative international business for the city. “So you can’t even talk about Sam Yorty’s travel and mine in the same context,” he insists.

After 18 1/2 years as mayor, it sometimes seems Bradley has reached a point in his career where he has put himself on a pedestal, above comparison with other mere politicians. This became apparent in the fall of 1988, when I first questioned the mayor about his perceived ethical lapses regarding his outside employment. Why is it, I asked him then, that every big-city mayor in the country except him recognizes a potential conflict of interest in accepting a paid position as an adviser to a private corporation? The mayor grew visibly upset, raising his voice. “I am a very unusual person and I don’t want you comparing me with somebody else in some other city in some other circumstance,” he said.

In many ways, Bradley is a different politician than when he was first elected. His career can be divided into three phases, says Byran O. Jackson, a professor of political science at Cal State L.A. The first is the “coalition building” phase in the ‘70s, when he created his own citywide rainbow coalition; next came the “high ambition” phase, when his attention focused on his efforts to become governor in the ‘80s, and, finally, the “power broker” phase, when “people would go through the mayor to accomplish various tasks,” Jackson says. Such “honest graft,” Jackson says, is typical behavior for many veteran politicians.

Bob Gay, a longtime council aide, voices one of the harshest criticisms: “His legacy is going to be that his friends got enormously wealthy during his tenure.”

Among the acquaintances and supporters who have enriched themselves with the help of the Bradley Administration are Bishop H. H. Brookins, the mayor’s political mentor and a leader of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, who has reaped more than $1 million in city contracts; Juanita St. John, a former partner with Bradley in a real estate venture, who was given a lucrative city-sponsored program and was later convicted on embezzlement and tax evasion charges, and Allen Alevy, a carnival operator and political supporter.

In 1989, $80,000 was raised for Bradley’s mayoral campaign through a series of inner-city carnivals organized by Alevy at the same time the mayor was intervening with city agencies to help Alevy, who was trying to acquire surplus city property. Recently, Bradley forfeited $55,000 in campaign funds donated by Alevy.

The largess was not limited to the mayor’s circle of friends. In an extraordinary arrangement, Bradley collected $42,000 in fees in 1988 when he served as an adviser for two financial institutions that had business ties to the city. After questions were raised during the 1989 mayoral campaign, Bradley returned the money to one institution and quit the other.

Bradley further enhanced his own net worth by making high-risk investments, some of them through Drexel Burnham Lambert’s “junk” bond operation in Beverly Hills, which was run by Michael Milken. These personal investments were the subject of a federal investigation into allegations of insider-trading that did not result in any charges. All told, there have been more than a dozen investigations and controversies involving the mayor and his associates.

Through it all, Bradley has remained defiant.

“The one thing that I treasure above all else is my reputation and my integrity,” he says. “I felt that I took an unfair beating based upon speculation by the press. That was a hard thing to take because here I’d built a reputation based upon my service of over 40 years in this city and then to have it whittled away by these kinds of stories was something that hurt me deeply.”

In the end, the ethics controversies, like a foul odor that won’t go away, leave lingering doubts about the mayor’s credibility. Time and again as reporters uncovered potentially damaging information, Bradley declined to respond, suffered lapses in memory or offered explanations that often contradicted the accounts of others.

These reactions left some, including City Atty. James K. Hahn, a former ally, to suggest that the evidence “may call into question the mayor’s credibility and judgment in some areas.”

In the most alarming case, Far East National Bank Chairman Henry Hwang, while paying Bradley $18,000 in 1988 as a special adviser, sent three letters to the mayor marked “personal and confidential.” In these letters, Hwang referred to his bank’s interest in obtaining city deposits, which he later received after Bradley and an aide notified the city treasurer.

The mayor has denied exerting any undue influence. In all three instances, Bradley insisted that he could not recall the letters and did not know of any deposits until 1989, even though to this day he says he opens his own personal mail. Two of the letters also turned up mysteriously missing from the mayor’s files.

Other concerns about the mayor’s credibility surfaced during the Rodney King crisis. Eleven days after the King beating on March 3, Bradley flatly denied a story I wrote disclosing that members of his staff were trying to oust Chief Gates while the mayor was publicly refusing to demand his resignation.

“Let me make it unmistakably clear,” the mayor said at a press conference. “I have had no part, no strategy whatever to force, urge or demand Chief Gates to resign or retire.”

Within days, a high-ranking Bradley aide assured me that Bradley was fully aware of his staff’s efforts to remove Gates. Why did the mayor say otherwise? “This is politics,” said the aide. “What did you expect?” Then, on April 1, Bradley publicly demanded that Gates resign.

Such conflicting statements, says former Deputy Mayor Davis, became commonplace within the mayor’s office to protect Bradley from political embarrassment. Davis, a longtime loyal aide, says the mayor grew furious with her in November, 1989, when she told a reporter that she was not happy about having been forced to step aside as one of his top two assistants.

“In all the years I have known him, he has never been disrespectful or angry,” Davis recalls. “This time his face was totally distorted. He waved this paper at me and said, ‘How dare you talk to the press? You have totally contradicted what we have told the press.” ’

While generally praising her work, Bradley says Davis was fired because she made statements to the press that were “contrary to the facts and a source of embarrassment to me and this office.”

Davis says she later resigned a part-time consulting post in the mayor’s office. Her successor, Diane Pasillas, never filled the $91,245-a-year deputy mayor position after disclosures that she had served a two-day jail term in 1986 for a traffic offense. The mayor’s staff issued a series of conflicting statements about whether Bradley knew of the arrests before the appointment.

Davis says the mayor’s staff eventually ordered her not to talk to the media about the controversial appointment.

“I decided I could not be there any longer,” Davis says. “I couldn’t work that way.”

WHEN TOM BRADLEY was councilman, he introduced a motion to restrict the mayor of Los Angeles to two terms in office. Now that he has served in that lofty post for five terms, Bradley has changed his tune.

“I simply have run because I felt there were things I wanted to do,” he says. “If people felt I’d overstayed my time, they had four shots at saying so.”

So, sometime in the next year, Bradley is expected to decide whether voters will get a fifth shot. One important consideration will be how Bradley sizes up the candidates who emerge as front-runners.

“He does not want to see the mayor’s office in his view diminished by whoever might succeed him if he doesn’t run,” attorney Kantor says.

Bradley concurs. “Certainly I am concerned,” he says. “I have spent all but seven years of my life in this city. It is a city I love. Its future is very dear to me.”

Among the potential candidates are City Councilman Michael Woo, County Supervisor Molina, Assemblyman Richard Katz, City Atty. Hahn, Congressman Howard L. Berman and Mike Roos, former Speaker Pro Tem of the Assembly.

Says Bradley: “There are a lot of people who would like to become mayor who I might have severe reservations about.”

And some political pros now predict that Bradley will do what many considered inconceivable as recently as a year ago. “He wants to prove that the voters support him in his claim that he hasn’t done anything wrong,” says political consultant Joseph Cerrell. “You do that by being reelected.”

When Bradley ran for an unprecedented fifth term in 1989, some of his supporters privately whispered that the mayor should have retired. Now others are beginning to publicly voice the same concerns.

“I think we are at a stage now as a city where we have a need for new leadership,” says Geoffrey Cowan, a UCLA instructor whom Bradley appointed to draft a city ethics code. “Personally, I would hope that at a certain point people retire as champions.”

Attorney Richard Riordan, one of Bradley’s most influential commissioners and a close associate who himself is reported to be considering a run for mayor, agrees. “If he had retired at the beginning of his last term, he easily could have been considered the best mayor of any big city in the history of this country. But,” Riordan continues, “I think his style is not good for the city now and it will not be good in the future.”

Then again, if Bradley remains Bradley, such criticism could inspire him to run one more time.