NEWS ANALYSIS : If Bradley Runs, Longevity Is Both His Ally and Curse : Politics: Strong anti-incumbent feeling will hurt the five-term mayor. Yet he is familiar and tops the polls.

Hurrying to his next meeting, the 74-year-old mayor of Los Angeles was loping up a down escalator at the Sports Arena recently, exhorting a trio of much younger aides to follow him.

“Come on,” he said. “All you’ve got to do is get your rhythm.”

Aides to the mayor love to tell this story of Tom Bradley, emphasizing the mayor’s youthful agility, when discussing the obstacles Bradley will face if he chooses to run in the 1993 mayor’s race.

“It just demonstrates the mayor’s vitality, energy and nonstop enthusiasm,” said press secretary Bill Chandler.

He may need every ounce. If Bradley does run for a sixth term--and he promises an announcement in September--he will have to contend with the fierce winds of anti-incumbency that are threatening officeholders across the country.

In Los Angeles, the hostility will be fanned by memories of the riots, of the mayor’s yearlong feud with former Police Chief Daryl F. Gates, of the paralysis that gripped City Hall after the Rodney G. King beating and of questions raised over the mayor’s personal finances. All of that provides fuel for the argument that the mayor no longer has what it takes.

“Anything that went wrong, they’ll hold it against him,” said Joe Cerrell, a local political consultant who has been around as long as Bradley. “Crime, drugs, gangs, job loss, the business climate. It will be the mayor’s fault. Think of the possibilities. His opponents will have two decades to pick over.”

At the same time, no one underestimates the mayor. If he decides to run, Bradley, after 19 years in office, will be better known than anyone else in the race. That advantage could be enough to get him past the April primary. To win in the June runoff, Bradley’s best hope is to find himself pitted against someone who carries as much political baggage as he does.

“To prevail in a one-on-one contest, Bradley would need an opponent he can put on the defensive, a conservative, maybe, or someone with a record as vulnerable as his own,” said one former Bradley aide.

It appears as though Bradley would face a crowded field of strong opponents for the first time since he won the office 19 years ago.

“If he runs, I expect he’ll be in for the roughest campaign since he was first elected, Cerrell said.”

Rick Taylor, a campaign consultant who has worked for Bradley, agreed with Cerrell.

“It will be one hell of a campaign,” Taylor said. “Bradley can count on having six or seven candidates banging away at him, and seven to 10 million dollars spent against him.”

In the early going, Bradley would be handicapped in a number of ways. He has virtually no money in his campaign treasury. Old friends and supporters are urging him not to run. Some, such as lawyer Richard Riordan and businessman Nick Patsaouras, are laying plans for their own mayoral candidacies. Some other former allies are pledging to support rival candidates.

“I am hoping the mayor won’t run,” said Bruce Corwin, a businessman who has served as Bradley’s campaign treasurer in the past. “He’s one of my heroes. I want him to retire on top.”

Corwin said he called Bradley earlier this month to tell him he would be supporting another mayoral candidate, state Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar).

“I think it’s time for a change,” Corwin said. “I think we need new energy and a bold new look.”

Stanley Hirsh, a downtown property owner and Bradley fund-raiser in the past, on Wednesday agreed to head up fund raising for Councilman Joel Wachs’ possible mayoral bid. “We need new leadership,” Hirsh said.

Nor could Bradley count on his traditional base.

Organized labor, usually a mainstay in the mayor’s corner, may not be there for him in force. The United Brotherhood of Carpenters, for example, is expected to endorse Katz despite the fact that union head William Luddy has been a Bradley appointee to two city commissions.

Most observers believe that the coalition of Southside blacks and Westside Jews that lifted Bradley to power in 1973 is history, splintered by tensions over Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan and the riots.

“The coalition is gone, part of the general fracturing of the city,” said Richard Maullin, a pollster who has worked for Bradley during reelection campaigns. “He sustains a base among black voters. It is definitely there although not as strong as it used to be.”

Reinforcing those sentiments was the Rev. Cecil L. Murray, pastor of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, the mayor’s church.

The black community, said Murray, is not immune “to the general level of unrest regarding politicians everywhere. The longer a politician’s tenure, the more likelihood of a strong backlash.

“Tom Bradley’s friends will be there no matter what,” he said. But he added there is “a swing group of younger voters who don’t have the long memories of Bradley’s accomplishments.” They might well vote against Bradley, Murray said, and their vote could be “decisive.”

Cynthia McClain-Hill talks like one of those swing voters. The publisher of a newsletter that targets young black professionals, McClain-Hill thinks Bradley has been around too long.

“There is a growing rumble in the African-American community for Bradley to retire,” she said. “The mayor has had an exemplary career, but after a point, like anyone else, his ability to adapt to new demands lessens. Something seems to happen to people who have been in government a long time. They become less attuned to the needs of the people they govern.

“Hopefully, Bradley won’t run.”

Voter disaffection with Bradley has been growing for several years. His winning margin in the past two reelection drives fell from 68% in 1985 to 52% in 1989.

The latest Los Angeles Times Poll, taken in early May, found that 55% of the city’s voters were disinclined to vote for the mayor. The lack of enthusiasm was most pronounced among Anglo voters, nearly two-thirds of whom said they probably would not vote for Bradley. A third of all black voters said they felt the same way, as did half of the registered Latinos.

But the Times poll also indicated that the mayor was still preferred over his competition. When people were asked to note their preference among seven potential mayoral candidates, Bradley was the favorite by far.

Results like that lead most analysts to assume that Bradley would do well in a crowded primary where he could prevail without receiving a majority of votes. In the primary, the winners are simply the two top vote-getters except in the unlikely event that one candidate receives more than 50% of the vote. When no one does, the candidates who finish first and second face each other in a runoff.

Deputy Mayor Mark Fabiani said that Bradley, as he contemplates his future, is not troubled by any of the potential obstacles to his reelection--not the possibility of a bruising campaign, the defection of old allies or even the prospect of losing.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt in the mayor’s mind that if he runs, he wins,” Fabiani said.

“The key issue on the mayor’s mind is how best to lead the city out of its present crisis,” Fabiani added, referring to the post-riot social and economic climate. “If he thinks he can do it best by being a candidate for reelection, he’ll run.”

So far, Councilman Michael Woo is the only declared candidate in the race. But Woo is expected to have a lot of company. Others who have talked about running include council members Zev Yaroslavsky, Nate Holden, Richard Alatorre, Wachs and Joy Picus, as well as Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina, Katz, Riordan and Patsaouras.

In the Times poll, Bradley fared better than Holden, Molina, Woo, Katz, Riordan and Yaroslavsky. The poll did not include the names of Picus, Wachs or Patsaouras.

With or without Bradley, the mayor’s race looks to be a whole new ball game in Los Angeles politics.

Most observers doubt that Bradley or any of the possible candidates could reunite the black-white base that sustained the mayor for so long.

“The interesting thing about Los Angeles now is there are so many constituencies. Even the white vote is divided between Jews and non-Jews, downtown and the San Fernando Valley,” said Bruce Cain, associate director of the Institute for Governmental Studies at UC Berkeley.

“There are two different Latino groups, differences in the way Asian nationalities vote. . . . For example, there is no guarantee that Japanese or Korean voters will support Woo,” Cain said. Woo is the son of Chinese immigrants.

For years, the city’s changing population had little impact on the outcome of elections because the great majority of voters were always Anglo or black, despite the fact that each of those groups was declining in number.

Anglos and blacks continue to dominate the electorate, in large part because of low voting rates among the city’s growing Latino and Asian populations. However, at least one candidate, Woo, said he believes that a successful election strategy requires reaching out to groups that don’t yet vote but who have a growing stake in the way the city is run.

“I think you have to show the voters that you can govern effectively,” Woo said recently. And to do that, he said, a candidate must demonstrate that he has the confidence of voters and non-voters alike.

Much speculation centers on the idea of Woo as Bradley’s designated successor.

Yet there is no clear sign from Bradley loyalists that Woo will inherit their support if the mayor does not run.

Deputy Mayor Fabiani has opened the door to a Woo endorsement, praising Woo for being the first council member to call for Chief Gates’ resignation after the King beating. And Fabiani said that, besides Bradley, Woo is the only potential candidate who has reached out to the city’s diverse ethnic groups.

Dan Garcia, a lawyer who has been close to the mayor for years, said that so far he is not enthusiastic about any of the mayoral hopefuls.

“I’m not comfortable with any other candidate,” Garcia said. “Although Tom’s administration has been battered over the last couple of years, he still has the biggest shoes, the highest profile and one of the better abilities to have people gravitate around a single theme.

“Nobody coming up the ranks that I can see has his broad overarching vision and appeal.”

As the date for the mayor’s announcement approaches, Bradley watchers are engaged in a spirited guessing game over what he will do. A man who has always enjoyed playing the political Sphinx, Bradley has never been harder to read.

He is making no effort to raise money for a campaign that could cost several million dollars. Many people think Bradley went out of his way to make political trouble for himself by sharply rebuffing Cardinal Roger M. Mahony’s recent appeal for financial support for a program to reduce gang violence.

On the other hand, Bradley’s support for a term-limits proposal--one that would not take effect in time to keep him out of the mayor’s race--could be read as the posturing of a wily politician who hopes to get on the good side of the current anti-incumbent fervor.

Just before the election, the first leg of the Metro Red Line subway is scheduled to open, giving Bradley a project that he could claim in a reelection campaign as one of his greatest achievements.

If Bradley decides not to run again, he will receive an annual city pension of $91,789 a year as well as income from a blind trust. Out of office, it is widely assumed, Bradley, who is an attorney, could look forward to a job in one of the city’s top law firms. It is also conceivable that he would be offered a post with the federal government if the Democrats win the White House in November.

But none of that offers the opportunity for vindication that could come with one last run for reelection.

There are those who believe that Bradley won’t go quietly until the city’s rebuilding effort is well on its way toward absolving him of any responsibility for conditions that spawned the riots.

“I happen to think that the riots and their aftermath could be a major motivation to stick around,” said Virgil Roberts, a record company executive and prominent black civic leaders. “If he felt that were he to step aside people would remember him as the guy who helped cause the riots, it would be an impetus to stay on,” Roberts said.

“The mayor is a very competitive guy.”

The Potential Field

After 19 years in office, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, 74, faces a decision on whether to seek a sixth term. The mayor says he will announce his plans in September. By then, Bradley could face his most formidable field of challengers. Here is a list of those who have expressed interest in running next April:

Richard Alatorre, 49: A political power in the Latino community with strong business support, he is a former state assemblyman elected to the council in 1985. Has not decided whether to run.

Nate Holden, 64: A councilman since 1987. Nearly forced Bradley into a runoff in 1989 and was the first of the potential candidates this year to form an exploratory committee.

Richard Katz, 41: San Fernando Valley state assemblyman since 1980. Has been raising money for a possible mayoral campaign. Led a fight to reorganize L.A.’s transportation agencies.

Gloria Molina, 44: A former council member and assemblywoman and the first Latina this century to win a seat on the county Board of Supervisors. Has not ruled out a run for mayor.

Nick Patsaouras, 48: A member of the RTD board and the county Transportation Commission and a Bradley zoning commissioner, he is a Greek immigrant who became a millionaire businessman.

Joy Picus, 61: Councilwoman from the San Fernando Valley since 1977. Has not decided whether to run for the city’s top job but would have to give up seat if she did so.

Richard Riordan, 62: Wealthy downtown attorney and businessman and sponsor of term limit initiative. A former Bradley parks commissioner, he has not decided whether to run.

Joel Wachs, 53: San Fernando Valley councilman since 1971. Announced Wednesday that he is raising money for a possible mayoral campaign. Wachs ran for mayor in 1973, finishing a distant fifth in a field of 13.

Michael Woo, 40: Two-term councilman from Hollywood. Council’s first Asian-American and first to formally declare his candidacy, saying he is in the race whether or not Bradley runs. Must give up seat to run.

Zev Yaroslavsky, 43: A Westside-based councilman whose district extends to the Valley, he dropped plans to challenge Bradley in 1989. First elected in 1975, he is undecided about running but would have to give up seat.