Molina Wrestles With Running for Mayor : Politics: She says she will decide in November whether to remain a county supervisor. The Latino standard-bearer is the front-runner in early opinion polls.

With Tom Bradley retiring next year and the campaigns of several would-be successors already under way, the big question in city politics is whether Gloria Molina--the provocative, crowd-pleasing county supervisor--will run for mayor.

Molina is not only the front-runner in the early opinion polls. The 44-year-old daughter of an immigrant laborer has emerged as the standard-bearer of Latino politics at a time when Latinos are emerging as the majority in Los Angeles and searching for ways to exert political muscle.

There also are signs that the Latino community’s fractured power structure--one of the biggest barriers to the group’s political success--may be ready to unite around her. Molina’s longtime political enemy, City Councilman Richard Alatorre, surprised old friends and foes recently when he said he is prepared to support Molina.

Molina says she will announce her decision by early November, but she admits that she is having a hard time making up her mind. It is partly a matter of choosing between the political prestige of being the city’s first Latina mayor and the power she wields as one of five county supervisors with jurisdiction over 8 million people and a $13-billion budget.

“Right now, I enjoy tremendously what I am doing,” Molina said in an interview. “I think I am making an important contribution. This is an important job. But there is also that other part that weighs on me that this may be the only opportunity to ever make that decision (to run for mayor). After that, there may be an incumbent who may be able to maintain that seat for 20 years.”

Molina also said she has to decide whether it makes sense, after barely 20 months in office, to walk away from a position that took years of legal and political battling for a Latino to win.

Giving up her supervisor’s job also could be taken as a slap in the face to fellow Democrats because Republican Gov. Pete Wilson would have the power to pick her replacement. In all probability, the governor’s appointment would restore a Republican majority on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors that took Democrats more than a decade to overturn.

Moreover, Molina’s well-publicized stands against official perks and government waste might strike people as political posturing if she abandoned her post in the county to seek a more glamorous job with the city.

“There is a little bit of integrity that is lost here, if you go over there,” she said.

Meanwhile, she is under increasing pressure to run for mayor.

Hardly a shrinking violet when it comes to assessing her own political appeal, Molina said many people are urging her to run for mayor.

“I have had amazing calls that have been unbelievable, unsolicited endorsements--from people who have never supported me in their whole lives to East Coast political consultants who said: ‘We’ve looked at the polls, we’ve looked at the numbers. You really stand a chance. We’re interested in talking to you.’ ”

And just the other day, a stranger came up to her in a supermarket, she said, handed her his business card and promised to contribute $1,000 to her campaign if she runs for mayor.

Clearly, Molina’s pugnacious populism has built her a constituency that extends well beyond her Latino base. Her attacks on the chauffeurs and bulletproof cars enjoyed by government officials and her efforts to steer government contracts to women and minorities have made fans out of liberals and conservatives. Her string of political precedents--the first Latina elected to the City Council, the Legislature and the County Board of Supervisors--has put her in the national political spotlight.

Although she insists she has no interest in a job in Washington, her role as one of the Clinton campaign’s national co-chairs has fueled speculation that she may garner a high-level appointment if Clinton wins the White House in November.

The publicity surrounding Molina for the past year has helped make her the front-runner in early polling for the mayor’s race. In a year when the public loves to hate politicians, Molina is the exception, a career pol with highly favorable ratings.

One of the most recent public opinion surveys, conducted last month by veteran campaign consultant Joe Cerrell, gave Molina a 60% approval rating with only 13% of the voters interviewed offering a negative view of her. No one else in a field of nine potential candidates scored better.

Asked whom they would vote for if the election were held that day, 18% picked Molina. After her came City Council President John Ferraro with 14%, Councilmen Michael Woo and Zev Yaroslavsky with 13%, Councilman Joel Wachs with 5%, Councilman Nate Holden and Assemblyman Richard Katz with 4%, and lawyer-businessman Richard Riordan with 2%. Nick Patsaouras, a businessman and board member of the Southern California Rapid Transit District, received less than 1% support.

Of the nine, only Woo and Wachs have announced that they will run.

Cerrell’s poll results are generally consistent with the findings of other surveys, including one in August by KCBS-TV.

Once again, Molina scored the highest approval rating, 55%, in a field of 10 possible candidates, which included Bradley and Councilwoman Joy Picus but did not include Ferraro.

“I don’t think there is any question that she is a good vote-getter,” said Rick Taylor, one of the city’s most experienced political consultants. “She has been perceived by the voters as a fighter and an independent kind of voice for people, and she potentially has ability to cross over into progressive (non-Latino) communities and secure voters outside of the Latino base.”

The most intriguing development in the Molina groundswell has been recent statements by Alatorre, her longtime political nemesis, that he would be willing to support her if she ran for mayor.

“If she runs for mayor, I believe she would have the best chance of anybody to win the seat,” Alatorre said. “I’d support her.”

The decade-long Alatorre-Molina feud represents one of the nastier rifts in local politics, and although both have won elections without the other’s support, the division is one reason, political experts believe, that Latinos have not played a more dominant role in city politics.

Despite Alatorre’s public willingness to put his mayoral ambitions aside and back Molina, not everyone is ready to believe that the councilman hasn’t got something up his sleeve.

“I think Richard was just messing around when he said that. I think he just threw it out there to see what she would do about it,” said George Pla, a politically active businessman with close ties to Alatorre. “I think the challenge to get Richard and Gloria together is greater than people might think.”

There are ways Alatorre could benefit if Molina were elected mayor. One scenario would have Wilson appointing Alatorre to Molina’s unexpired term on the Board of Supervisors. Although the two men belong to rival political parties, Alatorre has helped raise money for Wilson.

But Wilson has faced an ongoing struggle against Republican dissension, and it is considered unlikely that he would stray from his party in making such an important appointment.

Molina said she did not know what to make of Alatorre’s recent comments about her.

“It makes me real nervous because I’ve never had his support and won races. And all of a sudden, I have his support, even before I’ve decided to run. . . . Amazing! It’s like one of those ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’ puzzles.”

Molina might not need Alatorre’s help to win, but it does not mean she would be a shoo-in if she did enter the mayor’s race. People who have worked with and against her agree that Molina’s rough side could hurt her in a politically fragmented city where forging a consensus could be the key to a winning strategy.

“Gloria is not known for her consensus-building traits,” said Dan Garcia, a politically active lawyer who has helped raise money for Molina. “She has done poorly at working with broad coalitions and representing diverse interests. Her personal style of confrontation will be something she has to overcome in order to be a real leader.”

Molina says the criticisms are exaggerated.

“People say: ‘Gloria, you’re confrontational. The voters love it. But the very quality that could get you elected would also create problems for you once you get there.’ I don’t necessarily believe that to be true.”

Molina pointed to the compromise county budget as an example of her ability to work with political opposites--in this case with conservative Supervisor Mike Antonovich.

“We have a budget that we came together on with one of my colleagues that most people didn’t think I could work with,” Molina said.

The compromise avoided drastic cuts in law enforcement, health and welfare programs by postponing critical decisions until next year when, the supervisors hope, a healthier economy will generate more tax revenue.

Yet, Molina’s willingness to put off hard decisions on the county budget struck some observers as more self-serving than diplomatic.

“It struck me that her tactic on the budget was a case of a politician not wanting to carry the responsibility for severe cutbacks into an election year,” said Raul Nunez, who heads the Los Angeles County Chicano Employees Assn.

But Molina insists that she has not begun to think like a candidate.

And when she does make up her mind, Molina said, with her patented flare for punchy self-promotion, the decision to run will be more visceral than political, as though she will be looking for a sign from somewhere deep inside.

“Between now and November, it’s going to be just really getting down to the basic gut,” Molina said. “I mean, how do you get the gut feeling that you can do it? Get the gut that you are going to go out there and make a run for it, and that you got the gut to win.”