Houston Relishes Role of Ambitious Maverick : Politics: Apparent contradiction on immigrants is not uncommon for veteran who sees himself as outsider.

Once Tom Houston helped write laws protecting migrant farm workers. Now, he is running for mayor of Los Angeles and blaming much of the city’s budget crisis and crime on illegal immigrants.

For almost 20 years, he has been a familiar face at City Hall and the state Capitol. But in this race, the 47-year-old attorney and lobbyist routinely claims he is a political outsider.

Even after moving from rock-ribbed Republican to die-hard Democrat during the Vietnam War, Houston still seems to be in a political tug of war with himself--sounding a tough law and order theme one minute, then revealing that his first choice for President last year was U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), probably the most liberal candidate in the race.

So is Houston serious? Confused? A chameleon?

Yes. No. And maybe.

For Thomas Kingsley Houston is not easily pigeonholed. In fact, it often seems impossible to pin down this onetime high school wrestling champion.

But for all his apparent contradictions, for the variety of opinions about him, everything--and most everyone--cite these truths about Houston:

He is smart. He is stubborn. And he is ambitious.

“I think Tom prides himself on being a gadfly, on not being a team player,” said attorney Mary Nichols, who knows Houston from the administrations of former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. and Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley.

“In many ways, he seems to take after Jerry,” said Nichols, who was head of the state Air Resources Board when Houston led the Fair Political Practices Commission. “He doesn’t have the spiritual dimension Jerry has, but he certainly takes great pride in afflicting the comfortable.”

Another former Bradley aide, Fran Savitch, added: “He’s a very interesting guy who . . . could have been--in another life--Wyatt Earp. He’s like a cowboy. He’s a shoot-from-the-hip guy.”

Houston’s freewheeling style has been on display in his campaign to be the city’s first new mayor since Richard Nixon was President.

To be sure, Houston has not run as a single-issue candidate--his platform includes promises to serve only one term, push for four-day workweeks for businesses to reduce traffic, and reform the City Charter to increase the mayor’s power and hold top bureaucrats more accountable.

His candidacy also draws from his considerable experience in government--first as an attorney for the Federal Energy Agency in 1974, then as a top official in Brown’s Administration from 1975 to 1983 and as deputy mayor to Bradley from 1984 to 1987.

But resume and political promises aside, Houston has hitched his candidacy to the volatile issue of immigration.

Doing so has brought some badly needed attention to his once-invisible campaign. (In January, the Times Poll showed that of 1,618 people questioned only one in four knew Houston’s name and a mere 3% planned to vote for him.)

More importantly, perhaps, Houston’s strategy--at a tinderbox time in the city’s history--tells a great deal about this very bright, very blunt man whose impish appearance belies a ferocious drive and a confidence that borders on arrogance.

“Now, I’m in favor of legal immigration and immigration policies which have historically helped build our country,” he said in declaring his candidacy. “But our educational, medical care and welfare systems are all now collapsing under the weight of hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens.”

“As mayor of Los Angeles,” he has promised in his only television ad so far, “I’ll do something about gangs, starting with the two gangs of illegal aliens who murdered 100 of our citizens last year. I’ll have them picked up and deported.”

Whether those gangs, though unquestionably violent, murdered 100 people last year has yet to be documented--Houston is waiting for official LAPD statistics. As for the public services issue, even Houston acknowledges that some studies show illegal immigrants bring more to the region--both in labor and taxes--than they take out.

No matter. Those details are incidental to his point that Los Angeles is a city in crisis and that something dramatic is needed to save it.

His critics, however, charge that he is pandering to racism.

Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alatorre has said Houston “forfeited his right to serve in any public office because of his divisive campaign.”

But in Houston’s view, the critics are trying to sink his campaign by halting debate. And as he said at a recent candidates’ forum: “I will not be intimidated by this. I will not back off . . . because I’m convinced the public is both with me and wants these issues aired.”

The tenacity is vintage Houston--a man always forging ahead, though not always on a predictable path.

Born and raised in St. Louis, Houston grew up in a conservative Republican household. As a teen-ager, he supported Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign for President and then, as a student at Princeton University, the Vietnam War. But he changed his position about Vietnam while he was an Army lieutenant stationed in Germany, where he heard horror stories about the war from combat veterans.

That switch on Vietnam, Houston says, was the turning point in his political thinking, as well as the last time, he insists, that he had a significant change of heart in ideology.

After graduating from Stanford Law School and working briefly in Washington, he was recruited to Sacramento by his former law professor--Rose Elizabeth Bird, the future chief justice of California.

During his years in Sacramento, Houston held several top posts in the Brown Administration. His style, though, never really meshed with some of the then-governor’s intimates. “Tom wasn’t in the counterculture part of the Administration,” said David Janssen, another Brown Administration official who is now chief administrator of San Diego County.

Houston’s drive is evident in his determination to confront things that once frightened or repulsed him. To overcome a fear of sharks, he went scuba-diving in shark-ridden seas. To conquer an aversion to spiders, he began picking them up. And when it came to his aversion to dealing with the homeless, Houston went out of his way to engage the destitute in sidewalk conversations.

“It’s all part of becoming a complete person and trying to overcome weakness, fear, aversion, whatever. The whole purpose is to make you a more connected individual,” he said.

Over the years, Houston’s intensity has drawn him praise as a man of action. It is a description he embraces. “If something can be done, I’m the guy to do it,” he said. “I think that’s what my record shows.”

True enough, the record shows Houston has had a hand in many significant state and local actions--among them, working with Bird and several other Brown Administration officials to establish the state’s landmark Agricultural Labor Relations Board and co-writing Proposition 65, the 1986 measure called “the Toxics Initiative,” which aims to curb exposure to toxins.

But the record also shows Houston sometimes takes credit for the work of others. Although as deputy mayor he pushed the city’s anti-apartheid policy, it was his then-aide--and now deputy mayor--Mark Fabiani who first proposed it, according to Fabiani and others. Likewise, Houston takes credit for the city’s landmark ban on discrimination against people with AIDS, but it was written by City Councilman Joel Wachs.

Houston characterizes his misstatements as insignificant. What matters, he says, is that on his watch, government gets moving.

“Running government agencies, setting policies, implementing, yeah, that’s my love,” he said, gazing at the view from his 25th-floor law office in the downtown Bank of America tower.

Another is travel. Over the years, he has run with the bulls in Pamplona, tracked gorillas in Rwanda and seen shipwrecks in Micronesia. He and his wife, Susan, an independent producer, were married in a hot-air balloon over Kenya. He has two teen-age children from his first marriage.

Houston has been practicing law since he left City Hall. And although supporters view his moves between the public and private sector as an asset, critics wonder whether Houston has lost his ethical compass along the way.

One longtime Bradley insider, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said: “He came to (Bradley’s Administration) as very bright, very brilliant . . . but what happened was that he lacked judgment. And now as I view some of the things he has done . . . it is like something got derailed somewhere. Like a really brilliant guy who got derailed by ambition or whatever.”

Ambitious? Certainly. Derailed? That depends on whom you talk to.

As Houston sees it, he is right on track, running for an office he insists that he can manage better than anyone in the race. “None of these (candidates) have been tested in running an agency at all, much less in very tough times,” he said.

With the April 20 primary approaching, Houston also makes it clear that this is his first--and last--run for public office. “This is a one-time shot for me,” he said. “And it’s not because I don’t enjoy it . . . it’s just there are a lot of other things in my life.”

Such as his family. Such as launching other political initiatives. And, of course, travel.

“If I’m not mayor,” he said, “the next trip we’re hiking up into Tibet and over Nepal.”

Profiles of the 11 major candidates for mayor of Los Angeles will run in order of appearance on the ballot. Tomorrow: Nate Holden.

BANK SUFFERS LOSS: A bank founded by Nick Patsaouras lost $2.9 million in ’92. B1

Profile: Tom Houston

Born: Nov. 1, 1945.

Residence: Lake Hollywood area.

Education: Degrees from Princeton University and Stanford Law School.

Career highlights: Senior partner with the law firm of Carlsmith Ball Wichman Murray Case Mukai & Ichiki; former deputy mayor and president of the Los Angeles Environmental Quality Board.

Interests: Scuba-diving, jogging, touch football and international travel.

Family: Married, two children.

Quote: “When I set out, I said that win or lose for mayor, I was going to get some important issues moved to the center of the debate--and that includes the whole debate over who should pay for illegal immigrants. And now that issue has moved into mainstream political debate.”