LOCAL ELECTIONS / L.A. MAYOR : Woo Goes on Attack as Riordan Gains

Fast-forwarding past the April 20 primary to the matchup he’s been spoiling for, Los Angeles mayoral candidate Michael Woo on Tuesday launched his first direct attack on Richard Riordan.

Woo’s attack--an attempt to portray Riordan as a heartless landlord who evicted poor families as part of a lucrative land deal--came as a public opinion poll showed Riordan looming as Woo’s principal challenger. The results of the poll, by television station KCAL (Channel 9) and radio station KFWB, strongly suggest that a steady barrage of television commercials during the past few weeks by the well-financed Riordan campaign is paying off handsomely.

Woo has led in the polls from the start of the campaign and made it clear from the outset that he would welcome a head-to-head contest in the runoff with Riordan, whose pro-business, law-and-order rhetoric stands in sharp contrast to Woo’s liberal-leaning campaign.

Standing in front of Riordan’s Original Pantry restaurant, Woo charged that the millionaire lawyer-investor in 1981 evicted more than 100 families, many of them poor Central American immigrants, from three apartment buildings he had acquired next door to the Pantry.

Woo accused Riordan of using “strong-arm tactics” to evict the tenants, despite protest demonstrations and City Council objections. “Less than one year after he purchased the land, he had razed the buildings and sold the newly vacant lots for a huge profit to a Canadian developer,” Woo said.

Real estate records show that land values on the block were skyrocketing in 1980 and 1981, as speculators moved in. On the sale of one property alone, records show, Riordan made a profit of nearly $1.5 million--although he owned it for less than a month.

Woo failed to note in his version of the events that Riordan and his partners in the venture paid at least $18,000 in relocation funds to tenants of the buildings and that he paid $200,000 in relocation assistance to a foundation providing alcoholic recovery services that was forced to move out of one of the buildings. “He’s just absolutely dead wrong on the facts,” Riordan said. “All tenants received relocation payments even though there was no law requiring such payments at the time.”

According to a 1981 memorandum by the city’s chief legislative analyst, tenants of one of the buildings, which were located on West 9th Street in downtown Los Angeles, were not entitled to relocation assistance because the structure did not meet seismic safety standards. But it said that the building owners nevertheless provided $15,000 to 16 families.

The memorandum states that $3,500 was paid to a handful of tenants of the other two buildings. It is not clear, however, if tenants who had moved out earlier were entitled to relocation payments. The document cited a civil court ruling that favored the building owners and ordered tenants out of the building immediately.

Riordan maintained that Riordan Pantry Ltd. placed a total of $30,000 in a trust fund for families who were evicted.

Campaigning door-to-door in a West Los Angeles neighborhood Tuesday, Riordan also criticized Woo for viewing the 24-candidate mayoral contest as essentially a race between the two of them. “For him to assume that it’s going to be a two-man race is demeaning to the voters,” Riordan said.

However, the KCAL/KFWB poll, based on interviews with 600 voters, painted a picture of a two-man race with Riordan well positioned to move into the June 8 runoff with Woo.

The poll has Woo leading with 24% of the vote and Riordan second with 15%, up 10 points from the previous KCAL/KFWB poll in January. Thirty percent of the voters said they hadn’t decided.

When the poll was limited to likely voters in the April primary, the gap between Woo and Riordan narrowed, with Woo scoring 25% and Riordan 18%. The undecided portion dropped to 26%. Asked who they would vote for in a contest between Woo and Riordan, 42% picked Woo, 33% chose Riordan and 25% said they hadn’t made up their minds. Among likely voters in a Woo-Riordan matchup, Riordan did better but still trailed Woo, 37% to 43%, with 20% undecided.

The latest poll did not bring encouraging news to the campaigns of City Councilmen Nate Holden and Joel Wachs or Assemblyman Richard Katz, all considered strong contenders at the outset of the race.

Holden and Wachs tied for third in the poll with 6%, representing a 4-point drop since January for Holden and 2 points for Wachs. Katz also fell 2 points from 6% to 4%. Further back, according to the poll, are City Councilman Ernani Bernardi, businessman Nick Patsaouras and lawyer Stan Sanders, each with 3%. Trailing them with 2% are former Deputy Mayors Linda Griego and Tom Houston and Julian Nava, former ambassador to Mexico.

The poll results underscore the importance of money in the campaign. Riordan, with $3 million raised, most of it his own money, and Woo, with nearly $2 million, have the biggest war chests.

Katz is next, but unlike Woo and Riordan he has not launched a major TV ad campaign. When he takes to the airwaves--and he is expected to do so next week--he will aim for the undecided 30%.

Times staff writer Jeffrey L. Rabin contributed to this story.