Rebuild Los Angeles’ Rainbow Coalition : Politics: To be successful in a new era, the next mayor must keep alive Tom Bradley’s legacy of a multiracial leadership.

To listen to former Pacific Rim boosters who have soured on Los Angeles, “the Big One” already has hit. The twin shocks of recession and riot have shaken the faith in perpetual economic growth and multicultural harmony that have sustained the city for more than 20 years. Pessimistic commentators now embrace the “Blade Runner” scenario, a cinematic nightmare vision of the city’s future, as an ominous prophecy that Los Angeles is on the verge of a multicultural meltdown.

The fashionable new pessimism turns the old Pacific Rim boosterism upside down. “Blade-Runnerism” plays up zero-sum ethnic tribal wars--African-Americans versus Latinos, Korean-Americans versus African-Americans, Latinos versus Jews--over reapportionment and Rebuild L.A. funds, municipal jobs and contracts and police reform in the context of a stagnant regional economy and declining federal and state government assistance.

This picture of Los Angeles descending into an ethnic Hobbesian war suffers from an acute case of tunnel vision. Today’s pessimism is as one-sided as yesterday’s overblown optimism. The challenge of ethnic political succession and economic restructuring are real enough but not unprecedented. There is no reason to view them as an unmanageable apocalypse now.

Coping with these challenges will require a commitment to rebuilding Los Angeles politically, not just economically. Political renovation is necessary to earthquake-proof the city against future threats to its economic and social foundations. The multiracial Bradley coalition that has governed the city for a generation was shattered by the Rodney King beating, the Daryl Gates controversy and the riots. During the riots, Mayor Tom Bradley perfected the art of stealth leadership; he barely showed up on anybody’s radar screen. As the aging mayor ponders running for an unprecedented sixth term, there is a growing question whether he is the person who can rebuild Los Angeles’ rainbow coalition.

Waiting in the wings is the next generation of political leaders. The current sniping between mediagenic ethnic activists such as Danny Bakewell and Xavier Hermosillo obscures a political common denominator that cuts across the city’s myriad racial and ethnic divisions. All of the declared or rumored mayoral contenders--Council members Michael Woo, Richard Alatorre, Nate Holden, Zev Yaroslavsky and Joy Picus, County Supervisor Gloria Molina, Assemblyman Richard Katz, Rep. Howard Berman and businessman Richard Riordan--have come of age politically under Bradley’s rainbow. All share an overriding interest in restoring the viability of a multiethnic governing coalition.

The next generation of leaders must know that the sharpest debates of next year’s mayoral campaign cannot be over group entitlements and ethnic turf wars. Economic growth and job creation--expanding the size of the pie--is a vital precondition for enlarging minority opportunities. The key mayoral debates have to be over economic renewal strategies--corporate investment incentives, federal assistance, public-works projects, mass-transit spending and foreign trade promotion and investment.

Multiethnic groups, like the pro-business Tri-Ethnic Coalition and the anti-development Latino and Asian Coalition to Improve Our Neighborhoods, have lined up on opposite sides of the growth issue. How they align in the mayoral race will be determined by the candidates’ economic positions and not by ethnic posturing.

In the wake of the riots, new federal initiatives may offer more potential to rebuild local intergroup bridges than commonly thought. Many of the city’s Democratic minority leaders will seek a new federal/urban economic partnership if Bill Clinton is elected President. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), for example, is outspoken in behalf of black interests but is also committed to a comprehensive federal urban revitalization program.

Los Angeles’ white ethnic groups similarly view the lack of a long-term national policy as chiefly responsible for the riots. More than three-quarters of city Jewish voters, for example, regard “neglect of the cities” as the major cause of the unrest.

The next mayoral election will be as much about generational succession as ethnic transition. The generation gap between declared candidate Woo (age 40) and Bradley (74), for example, is significantly wider than that between Clinton (46) and George Bush (68). If Bradley chooses not to run or is defeated, his successor will carry into office the aspirations of a new generation of political leaders schooled under Bradley’s rainbow.

The Bradley coalition reinvigorated Los Angeles politics after the disorder of the Watts riots. Now, a generation later, Latino and Asian demands for full incorporation will have to be accommodated in the wake of the city’s first multiethnic upheaval. Los Angeles’ next mayor, if not an African-American, may be the first Latino, Asian, Jewish or Irish Catholic occupant of modern-day City Hall. But to be elected, and then to govern successfully, the winner will have to keep alive in a new era the Bradley legacy of coalition politics.