RIOT AFTERMATH : Seymour Allies Self Closely With Bush in Response to Unrest

When President Bush entered a closed-door meeting with Republican senators on Capitol Hill Tuesday, Sen. John Seymour (R-Calif.) was at the President’s side providing a briefing on the latest developments in the Los Angeles riots. Afterward, Seymour met privately with Bush and spoke in his place when the President refused to talk to reporters.

Tonight, Seymour is scheduled to fly with Bush aboard Air Force One to Los Angeles, where the senator will be seen escorting the President for portions of his three-day visit.

For Seymour, who two months ago acknowledged that half of the state’s 13 million voters might not know who he is, the President’s trip to riot-torn Los Angeles presents an opportunity to boost recognition only weeks before the June 2 primary.

Seymour is running against Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) in the Republican primary for the two-year Senate seat vacated by Gov. Pete Wilson. He has mounted a campaign as an outsider battling the Washington Establishment and in some of his television ads doesn’t even identify himself as a senator.

“Now here he is linking himself with the President,” said Bruce Cain, a political science professor at UC Berkeley. “I would be very wary about accompanying George Bush in (South Los Angeles). There is going to be a lot of anger in the black and Latino community. . . . He is taking a big risk.”

Seymour and his staff say they don’t view the trip as a political risk.

“He is going back out there because he is a United States senator and he does have a role to play in how assistance will be brought to bear in helping this community recover,” Seymour spokesman H. D. Palmer said. “That is a proper role for a U.S. senator to play.”

One Seymour aide pointed out that the junior senator has been far more active than Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.). The 77-year-old Cranston, who has remained in Washington recovering from hernia surgery, said last week that he was “stunned that the four officers charged with viciously assaulting Rodney King were acquitted on virtually all counts.”

Seymour was not nearly as outraged in his reaction to the verdicts, saying, “It’s difficult to second-guess the decision, disturbing though the decision may be.”

Seymour quickly condemned the ensuing violence, however, and in interviews Tuesday demanded the fullest prosecution possible of the “hooligans and thugs” who participated in the riots.

His scheduled flight to Los Angeles last Thursday evening--the day after the verdicts were delivered--was postponed by smoke that limited flights into the airport. He arrived on Friday and spent the afternoon at a command post near the riot area.

“This is the Watts Riot II, so to speak,” only “much more challenging,” Seymour said Friday.

Seymour returned to Washington on Monday and began briefing fellow senators. After meeting with Bush on Tuesday, Seymour told reporters: “What we have to do is, No. 1, restore law and order. And, No. 2, rebuild South-Central Los Angeles and rebuild it in such a way so that the people of Los Angeles have a piece of the action.”

By accompanying Bush to Los Angeles, Seymour will take full advantage of free media exposure certain to come his way, said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, senior associate of the Center for Politics and Policy at the Claremont Graduate School. By being at Bush’s side, Bebitch Jeffe said, Seymour is much more likely to appear as if he is responding to the crisis.

“Would you prefer him to lay low and be attacked for that or tell him to use the trappings of the presidency . . . and be seen in the position of doing something (and) identifying problems with constituents who wouldn’t know him if they had to pick him out of a lineup.”