Searching for Clues From L.A.’s Oracle

In his cryptic way, the Oracle of City Hall has finally shed some light on whether he’ll run for a fifth term. Or maybe he hasn’t.

Maybe I should let the Oracle, better known as Mayor Tom Bradley, speak for himself. Then you figure it out.

On Wednesday morning, he visited a senior citizens center in Boyle Heights. A woman asked whether he would be a candidate in next year’s mayoral election. “As I have said almost daily, I don’t know,” said Bradley. “Probably in September I will make a decision whether I retire or run again.”

Sitting at a table toward the rear, I jotted down his reply in my notebook without much interest. After all, it was the same old answer.

After lunch, the big mayoral sedan crossed East L.A. to Wilson High School, where he spoke to the students. One of them asked him the same question. This time the answer was different. “I have not decided what I am going to do when my term ends in June,” said Bradley. “Perhaps by September, I will make a decision.”

My grip on my ballpoint pen tightened. The pen picked up speed as it moved across my notebook. This was different. This was new.

For the first time, Bradley had hinted--in his oracular way--at a possible end to his term. The man has been in office since 1973 and I’ve never heard him say anything quite like this. To my political writer’s mind, always searching for nuance in the vaguest of statements, it sounded as if he’d already chosen retirement. The only question now was whether he’d take another job or move to Sun City.

I suppose I could have asked the mayor what he meant. But I knew it was useless. The Oracle’s clarifications are even more ambiguous than his original statements.

So I’ll just take him at his word--his second word. Retirement might indeed be calling.

This is not a unanimous opinion among those who watch the mayor. For although Bradley shows his years, he’s still a tough foe, with more weapons at his command than any prospective opponent.

The day on the Eastside illustrates one of his strengths.

It was arranged by his new Eastside coordinator, Rosa Martinez, who happens to be Councilman Richard Alatorre’s former press secretary. Alatorre is a Bradley political ally, and if the mayor runs, the councilman is expected to throw his Eastside political machine behind him.

The two share a political and economic philosophy: City Hall should create jobs by helping new businesses. Business success trickles down to the working people. That makes everyone happy--boss, worker and politician.

I could see how this worked at midmorning when Bradley stopped by a company called the California Recycling Program on East Pico Boulevard, which processes plastic picked up in city refuse collections. After the plastic travels through a series of crushers and cookers, it is turned into boards, pipes and other building materials.

The company is headed by Conway Collis, a former State Board of Equalization member and a well-known political fund-raiser. Bradley had persuaded Collis to locate his new plant in the East Pico area, site of a city enterprise zone, where businesses are given tax breaks. Collis has hired people from the neighborhood to work in the plant.

Bradley had brought along a number of city economic development officials. They heard Collis make an impassioned plea for city business. Bradley asked one of the officials to coordinate an effort to steer work to Collis’ plant. If Bradley runs again, he can count on Collis to join the network of business supporters and contributors that give him such political strength.

But potential trouble for a Bradley candidacy could be seen at a senior citizens center. “What are you going to do about the gangs?” a woman asked. A man wanted more cops to patrol a troublesome alley near his house where kids hang out.

Bradley’s answers were bureaucratic and tired. Bradley told the man living by the alley that the deployment of police officers is in the hands of the Police Department, as if he had nothing to do with that agency. He also mentioned a study being done about whether to take cops from desk work and put them into the field.

Angry voters hate to hear about studies. If I lived by that alley I wouldn’t have been happy with the answer.

If Bradley runs again, issues such as this will be raised in a more aggressive and hostile manner by opponents and the press. Wednesday’s 11 stops in East L.A. will become daily routine, extending into the night. And at the end, he faces the real possibility of defeat.

Does Tom Bradley, at 74 and after 17 years on the job, want to undertake such a formidable task?