NEWS ANALYSIS L.A. MAYOR : Call for Gates’ Removal Is Putting Woo in the Lead

Michael Woo is leading in the Los Angeles mayor’s race because he started campaigning before anyone else, because Asian-Americans provided him a deep well of financial support and because he is a smart, likable fellow.

But most of all, Woo is ahead in the mayor’s race because of Daryl F. Gates.

Woo’s demand that the embattled former police chief step down made him something of a hero in the African-American community and preempted the criticism that was bound to seep out of City Hall: a sense that when the chips are down, Mike Woo lacks courage.

Now, according to this week’s Times Poll, Woo has emerged as the candidate of minorities and white liberals. If he can hold on to his base, he probably won’t have to do a lot more to survive the April 20 primary and become one of two finalists in the June election for mayor.

“I think Mike’s lead is a factor of a campaign that started early, was well organized, jumped out there and politically has done the right thing,” said Rick Taylor, a seasoned campaign consultant whose views parallel those of several campaign professionals who, like him, are not involved in the mayor’s race. “Woo has galvanized support in the minority communities in particular because of his anti-Gates stand.”

There are signs, however, that Woo’s battles lie ahead. The campaign’s mostly bland, non-confrontational candidate forums have suddenly grown more combative. Woo’s rivals have begun to peck at his record, calling him a chronic “flip-flopper” on large issues and saying that he has made a hash of the most important project in his council district, the revitalization of downtown Hollywood.

He has come under attack for raising money outside Los Angeles and for accepting more than $300,000 in public campaign matching funds--even though he has raised $887,000 for the race. The criticism can backfire, though: There were groans from the audience when one rival accused Woo of refusing to serve in the military.

(Woo held a student deferment during his college years at UC Santa Cruz, 1969 to 1973. He applied for conscientious objector status as an opponent of the Vietnam War, but the issue became moot when the draft ended, a campaign spokesman said.)

“Everybody is looking at this one horse who is way out there, and they’re saying to themselves, ‘When do we have to take the whip to our horse?’ ” said consultant Richard Lichtenstein, who is not working for any of the mayoral campaigns.

Two of the candidates who are most likely to take aim at Woo are Joel Wachs, the urbane, ebullient City Council veteran with strong ties to the Jewish community, and Nate Holden, the black city councilman who ran surprisingly well against Tom Bradley in the 1989 mayoral election. Woo, Wachs and Holden ran first, second and third in the Times poll.

“If you’re Nate Holden or a minority candidate, I think you’ve got to bring Mike Woo down because he is taking from your base,” Taylor said.

For some of the other candidates, Woo is not the immediate concern. Despite plenty of money and a well-oiled campaign machine, businessman Richard Riordan has yet to establish a rapport with the moderate and conservative voters he is targeting. Lately, Riordan has been leaning to the right, with the announcement that he favors the breakup of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“Riordan’s got a balancing act to perform,” said Paul Clarke, a Valley-based consultant who is sitting out the mayoral campaign. “You can’t win a citywide race on the basis of conservative voters,” Clarke said. “There aren’t enough of them left. Too much white flight.”

Like Riordan, Richard Katz, a Valley assemblyman, has got to fire up a base of support in a part of town, the Valley, that is showing more early allegiance to Wachs and even Woo. Languishing deep in the polls, Katz may have started too late.

“He said he was going to run a couple of years ago,” Clarke said. “But he didn’t do anything about it.”

Katz, a Democrat with close ties to labor and the environmental movement, is another candidate who hopes to break away a chunk of Woo’s support.

But it is Wachs and Holden who know Woo best after serving with him for several years on the council.

One possible target: Woo’s tendency to tell each constituency what it wants to hear--not a surprising quality in a candidate who says he is the one best qualified to unite the city’s warring factions.

Last weekend, Woo spoke to forums sponsored by business, labor, black civic and religious leaders and environmental activists without being asked many hard questions about his record or platform.

Members of a coalition of small-business owners heard about his plan to make the city’s taxing and regulatory authorities friendlier to businesses. But no one asked about his stand last fall on Proposition 167, a package of new taxes on California businesses. (Woo said he favored some of the measure’s provisions and voted against a City Council motion to oppose the tax plan.)

He said he would cut red tape at City Hall by consolidating 23 agencies under a new economic “czar.” But Woo, who is also courting City Hall unions, did not say how he intended to simplify the bureaucracy without reducing jobs.

He reserved some of his most concrete campaign pledges for a private meeting last Saturday with one of his most valued constituencies: the African-American community. Appearing the same day at an open forum at West Angeles Church in South-Central, Woo’s comments were far less specific.

At the closed-door session with several black civic leaders, Woo made a series of pledges about how he would use mayoral power to aid black communities--but only after his leadership abilities were challenged.

Lawyer Melanie Lomax summed up the misgivings when she told Woo that there those who thought he was “too consensus-oriented” and “too inclined to compromise.”

As mayor, Woo said he would direct his new economic czar to concentrate business development efforts in South-Central Los Angeles. He discussed a widely publicized plan to hire 1,000 more police officers, then he went on to say that he would deploy the officers in black and Latino neighborhoods, “South-Central, East L.A., Pacoima and Van Nuys.”

Woo said he would back a charter amendment that would require the city to “put more emphasis” on contracting with minority businesses, and, he said, pending the charter change he was “prepared to issue an executive order to go beyond what is now being done” with minority contracts.

Woo’s campaign manager, Vicky Rideout, took exception to the notion that he has been pandering to voters.

She noted that Woo recently refused to take a stand against the expansion of Fox Studios after members of a Westside audience adamantly opposed to the expansion asked him his position on the issue.

“Mike has been the candidate who has gone out of his way to bring up issues that his audiences don’t agree with,” Rideout said.

Times staff writer Richard Simon contributed to this story.