Scrappy Holden Known as Underdog, Outsider : Politics: Councilman has proven adept at political theater. He is unbowed by sexual harassment allegations.

The collective leaders of Los Angeles--politicians, business people and the clergy--sent a clear message last summer to a recalcitrant and headstrong police chief: It’s time for you to go.

But City Councilman Nate Holden was privately delivering a message of his own to then-Chief Daryl F. Gates: May I have your autograph?

Actually, Holden wanted 100 of them--one for each of his copies of Gates’ autobiography.

Holden explained later that he spent more than $1,100 on “Chief: My Life in the LAPD,” to provide historical mementos for his supporters, not to endorse the controversial chief. All but 13 books remain piled in his office.

But some former members of his staff said the book giveaway is a measure of Holden’s admiration for Gates, as well as a bald attempt to appeal to conservative voters.

Either way, the previously unpublicized episode placed Holden where he is accustomed to being--outside traditional political wisdom, taking a flyer with another long shot. This has been the metier of Nathan Nathanial Holden in 25 years of public life--first as a perennial underdog candidate, then as a state senator and, now, as a city councilman. He runs for offices he is not supposed to win, raises issues that make others shrink and sometimes he wins.

“I always have been different,” said Holden, 63, with a wide smile. “You should know that by now.”

This onetime boxer has the record of a club fighter--going 3-7 in elections over the last quarter-century--but his aspirations are those of a real contender. Now he wants to be mayor of Los Angeles.

It it a goal that friends say he has never wavered from since 1989, when he surprised the pundits, took 28% of the vote and nearly forced Mayor Tom Bradley into a runoff. He has remained unbowed even over the last five months, as three women who worked for him have come forward with accusations of sexual harassment--allegations that Holden vehemently denies.

Even in the stuffy conference room of a downtown hotel, where candidates assembled recently for yet another debate, Holden is ready for a scrap. Jabbing at the air with both fists, the gray-haired grandfather chimes: “Where’s Woo? I want Woo!”

Fellow Councilman Michael Woo is the campaign’s early front-runner and has taken a substantial chunk of support in the African-American community, polls show. But on this night he is a no-show and Holden takes a seat, momentarily glum.

A few days later, at an African-American church’s forum, hope is restored. Woo is in the room and Holden is pummeling him for voting to allow the city to do business with companies linked to South Africa. Woo was “for apartheid and against Nelson Mandela!” Holden roars. “You have been deceived, denied and lied to!”

What he did not say is that he had joined Woo on four votes to exempt companies and organizations from the anti-apartheid law.

“He has so much talent as a performer that he doesn’t seem to have much care for reality,” a fellow council member said. “For Nate, it’s as if he is just having a good time and one event is completely disconnected from the last.”

Media Attention

Holden has long been a purveyor of political theater--distinctive and visceral messages that win television time and headlines.

On a good day, Holden can pack the City Hall press room with television cameras. A 1989 Stockton schoolyard massacre led to an off-the-cuff promise that he would buy assault rifles to prevent more violence. When the media bit, Holden later conceded, he had to improvise for a few days on a program that eventually led to the purchase of 133 guns, network television exposure and a splash in People magazine.

On a bad day, the press meeting room is empty. Or filled for the wrong reasons. Like the time in 1991 that Holden proposed that waiters, waitresses, busboys and cooks be tested every six months for the AIDS virus.

He ignored warnings from his staff and experts in the disease that there was no scientific basis for such tests. Councilman Joel Wachs lambasted the idea, which he said was rooted in hatred, bigotry and fear. It went down to an 11-1 defeat, with only Holden voting yes.

Is this populism or pandering?

Intent is in the eye of the beholder.

Critics see a legislative record that lacks any overarching philosophy. A colleague said: “There doesn’t seem to be any introspection or sense of responsibility for Nate.”

But Holden said he does not have time for “dreaming. You have to deal with problems now.”

Fellow council members have often seen Holden rally a crowd, even if his logic escapes them. “Nate works harder with his constituents and other residents of Los Angeles than he does at pleasing his colleagues,” Councilwoman Joy Picus said. “He has street smarts and is very populist.’

Political aficionados trace that style to Holden’s mentor and boss of 12 years, former Los Angeles County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn. The venerable supervisor rode the headlines and a constituent-inspired, fill-every-pothole program to the region’s longest-running political winning streak.

“When it comes to delivering fundamental constituent services, he has no peer,” political consultant Kerman Maddox said of Holden. “They say Nate always delivers.”

But there are those in his 10th Council District, which runs from Koreatown to Palms and south to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, who are demanding more.

Thriving Amid Adversity

Homeowners in the West Adams area say Holden has allowed historic homes to be demolished despite their calls for help. Mid-City residents want faster progress in rebuilding the Midtown Mall, especially a market that burned in the riots. And constituents from many parts of the district say their chances of influencing the councilman withered with seven advisory panels that they say Holden let die for lack of attention.

Holden dismisses these as the rantings of a handful of gripers, adding that no amount of support for historic preservation ever seems sufficient and that plans for a new mid-town market are nearly a done deal. As for his defunct advisory panels, Holden said: “We tried to call people to come out. They won’t come out.”

Holden has managed to survive, even thrive, against adversity before.

He caught the political bug, working for Democratic Party groups in his spare time, while he was an engineer for a Southern California aerospace firm. He joined the California Democratic Council, a liberal reform group, that advocated an end to the Vietnam War and freedom for jailed leftist Angela Davis.

By 1970, he had worked his way up to his first marquee post--president of the Democratic Council. The group became his launching pad in several attempts at political office--two campaigns for Congress as an anti-war candidate and one for the state Assembly.

Holden was not winning, but his name was gaining wider circulation as a feisty outsider. When he ran again, for state Senate in 1974, it was against a darling of the African-American Establishment. Holden ran more against what he called the clique of black elected officials than against his opponent, Assemblyman Frank Holoman.

Holden won.

After his long struggle, he had finally made it. Political observers expected Holden to take up a long residency in Sacramento representing the safe Democratic district. But he again confounded conventional thinkers by giving up the seat after one term--to take on a tough field of competitors for an empty seat in Congress.

He lost.

Returning to work as a Hahn deputy, Holden kept on running. He lost campaigns for seats on the Los Angeles City Council and State Board of Equalization. When he was elected to the City Council in 1987, it was again as the underdog. This time, Bradley supported the favorite, his longtime friend Homer Broome.

“My life has always been one of taking chances and trying to do better,” Holden said.

He said his ambition is largely rooted in his past--the birthright of a black son of the South.

“I have always hated the word no ,” he said. “People said: ‘No, you can’t shop in here. . . . No, you can’t ride in the front of the bus.’ . . . I hated no . “

Holden tells an up-from-nowhere life story filled with larger-than-life anecdotes and, always, a sense of destiny.

Growing up in Macon, Ga., in the 1930s--the son of a railroad worker and his wife--Holden said friends and relatives knew him as “the chosen one.” He said when he was 6 or 7, adults would stop by his front porch and seek his counsel on business or life.

Older people recognized in the schoolboy “the same common sense I have today,” Holden said.

He says that as a teen-age boxer in New Jersey, he won all of his handful of bouts, even over one palooka who outweighed him by 30 pounds. “I was good,” he said. “I was good.”

After a brief hitch in the Army, he translated a love of drafting into an ever-escalating series of jobs in engineering and aerospace. He came to California in 1955, earned a bachelor’s degree in physics and a master’s degree in engineering at night school and eventually worked his way to a position on the technical staff at Hughes Aircraft.

“I had a vision,” he said of his engineering work. “I could see the final product when the others couldn’t.”

Racial discrimination was not absent in those years, and Holden often found himself the lone African-American in a roomful of Anglos.

He filed a complaint against Hughes when he was laid off in 1970, charging that his furlough was racially motivated. A few years later, state Sen. Holden angrily protested to the Los Angeles Police Commission when he was held at gunpoint by two police officers who mistook him for a burglar.

But Holden never broaches the old confrontations during his mayoral campaign, saying that he does not want to appear bitter or less receptive to people of other races. “I have risen above adversity in that regard,” he said.

Even without making those formative experiences public, friends and foes alike see them infusing Holden with a relentless drive to succeed.

“Nate Holden has to show the bastards. He has just got to show them,” said former City Councilman Dave Cunningham, who fought off Holden’s campaign for his seat.

Others tell stories of the Nate Holden who glows with self-satisfaction when he is addressed as “councilman” or “senator” and who is intoxicated by meetings with presidents and foreign dignitaries.

“He likes power,” said one former aide. “Besides, what else could he do?”

To expand his power and become mayor, Holden must perform a delicate balancing act--appealing to a citywide audience without alienating his base in the African-American community.

Some of his 10th District constituents say Holden’s attention has wavered as he focuses on Korean-Americans, who have supplied nearly one-third of his campaign funds. Others criticize his support of the breakup of the Los Angeles Unified School District--which they see as pandering to San Fernando Valley voters.

Estrangement Over Gates

It is his position on the now-departed Gates, though, that has thrown him into particular disrepute among most African-American leaders.

Holden refused to condemn the chief after police officers beat Rodney G. King in 1991, and then voted, along with nine other council members, to reinstate Gates after the chief had been placed on administrative leave by the Police Commission.

Holden said those votes--and his mass purchase of Gates’ autobiography--should not be interpreted as support for the former police chief. The reinstatement voted merely recognized that the Police Commission had illegally denied the chief due process, Holden said.

But that justification does not play well in much of South-Central Los Angeles. A crowd jeered Holden at one community meeting and his office received several telephone death threats after the Gates vote.

It got so unsafe, Holden said, that he was forced to temporarily relocate from his Baldwin Hills-area home to a high-rise condominium overlooking Marina del Rey.

But that just inspired jokes and more bad feelings. Council colleagues chided “the councilman from the marina.” And some constituents complained that they could not escape crime-plagued neighborhoods for such a plush haven.

“There was quite a strong sense of betrayal throughout the African-American community,” Los Angeles Urban League President John W. Mack said. “Quite a bit of anger lingers.”

The sexual harassment allegations have placed Holden in confrontation with another disgruntled group--women.

He has been criticized as a liar on radio talk shows, confronted by feminists in his office and, last month, sued for $2.5 million by the first of the three women to make the accusations.

This morning, the Women’s Action Coalition is planning to come before the City Council to demand an investigation. And the two other former aides who have accused Holden said they intend to press their claims--which range from leering and touching to lewd acts.

Holden, true to form, has fought back aggressively. He filed a slander and libel suit in response to the lawsuit by Carla Cavalier and went to her lawyer’s office in a made-for-television confrontation.

At a Valentine’s Day rally, the candidate passed out roses to 100 women and beamed as school board member Barbara Boudreaux and Assemblywoman Grace M. Napolitano (D-Norwalk) described him as the perfect gentleman and the victim of political dirty tricks.

But Holden has experienced communication breakdowns with other women.

Last year, three female Los Angeles police officers went to his office for a private meeting to ask the councilman for more promotions for women and curbs on sexual harassment. But the trio--among the top-ranking women in the department--found Holden disinterested and patronizing, said those familiar with the session.

He cut short the meeting to show pictures of himself.

“I guess he wanted to show us what a good-looking guy he was,” one of the disgusted participants said.

Holden appeared incredulous when confronted with those comments. He said he only ended what had been a cordial meeting because he had promised he would vote to hire more women officers.

Holden complained: “I don’t know what goes through women’s heads.”

Profile: Nate Holden Born: June 19, 1929. Residence: Southwest Los Angeles. Education: Bachelor’s and master’s degrees, West Coast University in Los Angeles. Career highlights: State senator 1974-1978; city councilman, 1987 to present. Finished second, with 28% of vote, to Mayor Tom Bradley in 1989 mayoral race. Interests: Athletics, physical fitness. Family: Divorced, two sons. Quote: “I have served in all levels of government, as a California state senator, deputy to the County Board of Supervisors and the City Council. I have an outstanding record of achievement.”