Woo Tries to Reconcile Pressures of 2 Cultures : Campaign: Councilman born into affluence speaks of downtrodden. Critics say he tries to please everyone.

It was 1969 and he was calling himself “Citizen Woo” in the column he wrote for his college newspaper at UC Santa Cruz. The grandson of prosperous Chinese immigrants, he was wearing his hair to his shoulders, playing folk guitar and identifying with the new American proletariat--the young men from the ghettos and barrios who were being drafted to fight a war Woo opposed.

But even then there was nothing shrill or confrontational about Mike Woo. He cut his hair when he went home on vacations and carefully avoided arguments with his conservative father, a man once invited to visit the Richard Nixon White House. When Woo asked his draft board to classify him as a conscientious objector, it was a thoughtful compromise--he would serve in Vietnam as long as he did not have to carry a gun.

Now, Mike Woo is 41 and running for mayor of Los Angeles. His sympathies are still clearly with the city’s downtrodden, but not without some reservation. He gives pocket change to homeless people in the streets, then worries how they will spend it. He champions the cause of poor immigrants, then frets about his public image.

“I find myself a prisoner of two different kinds of perceptions--one that my leadership might result in the instant transformation of Los Angeles into a Third World city . . . and the other that I’m too much of a yuppie who encourages sidewalk cafes and jazz music to be played over city radio stations,” he says, relaxing over a glass of sparkling cider in his Silver Lake home.

His challenge is to win in a city where many of the people he would champion do not vote, and many of those who do vote share his father’s political views. Beyond that, this bookish-looking candidate, this two-term city councilman whose career has been confined to government work, must prove that he is leader enough to do a job many more experienced politicians will not touch.

Guided by his mother’s quiet admonition “don’t do anything that would embarrass your family,” Woo continually seeks to reconcile the pressures exerted by two powerful cultures. You can see him working out the tension in his newly renovated house, hiring a fashionable architect to give it a geometrical verve, then acquiescing to a Chinese tradition that straight hallways invite evil spirits. And you can see it in his campaign for mayor.

He courts the Asian-American entrepreneurs, African-American ministers and politicians, Latino street vendors, AIDS activists, environmentalists, youthful celebrities and assorted Westside liberals who stand for the new Los Angeles. Yet he tries not to alienate the old Los Angeles. He pledges to put down any recurrence of last year’s rioting and has an ambitious plan to make the city more “business friendly” by reforming City Hall bureaucracy.

A city planner by training, Woo delights in talking about the Los Angeles he would like to see unfold under his stewardship. To people such as historian Kevin Starr, Woo’s ideas clank of schoolboy utopianism. Others delight in a politician who can articulate a vision.

Woo’s Los Angeles would be a place where people of all cultures and classes rub shoulders, where the ethnic isolation imposed by car travel and gated neighborhoods gradually becomes a thing of the past.

“We have not had wide sidewalks where people of different walks of life share experiences,” he said. “We haven’t had a subway where the executive with the attache case shares a space with the kid with a ghetto blaster. It has been much easier in Los Angeles than in other cities for people of one economic strata to stay with people like themselves all day and never experience the diversity of the city.”

Building a Consensus

He is aware that his dream could scare away people who value Los Angeles for its elbow room and for the tranquillity of its suburban neighborhoods.

“It’s a perception I have to deal with . . . that my candidacy symbolizes a turn away from Los Angeles as a transplanted Midwestern city on the Pacific Coast,” he said.

Yet that is precisely what Woo’s candidacy symbolizes--a break from the city’s homogeneous past. It is clearest in his frustration with local laws against the fruit and flower vendors who smack of Third World squalor to some, but represent the hope of the future to Woo.

“This is more than whether people can sell guavas on the sidewalk. It’s really an issue about what kind of city this is and how tolerant we will be of different kinds of people, especially those who are trying to work for a living,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we have to have a crime-ridden environment, or that longtime residents of the city have to feel uncomfortable or unsafe.”

Woo portrays himself as a consensus builder. His campaign boasts that he, more than any other candidate for mayor, can make this city work as one again.

“I want to be the mayor who unites the city,” he declares in campaign forums across Los Angeles. He talks about “closing the gap between haves and have-nots,” tearing down “the invisible walls” that divide the Eastside from the Westside, the San Fernando Valley from South-Central Los Angeles.

But there is a fine line between consensus-building and currying favor, and Woo has been accused of crossing it more than once. His opponents say he tries to be all things to all people and, worse, that he is not true to his word. Through much of his eight years on the City Council, he has been dogged by criticism that he is a career politician with his finger shamelessly in the wind. Moreover, the critics say, Woo has not always found it convenient to live by the values enshrined in the environmental and ethics laws that are the hallmarks of his legislative record.

They also point to a mixed record of accomplishment in his district. Despite improvements in social services, Woo’s grand plans for revitalizing Hollywood have yet to materialize, and the area remains run-down.

Woo was elected to his Hollywood-area City Council seat in 1985 as a champion of the environment and a proponent of the slow-growth movement. But his aggressive efforts on behalf of major developers in Hollywood and his on-again, off-again support for environmental protection of the Mulholland scenic corridor left some people confused about where he stood. It made others bitter.

“This is to advise you that Councilman Mike Woo has gone back on his word to the Los Angeles Armenian community,” Archbishop Vatche Hovsepian wrote in a 1991 letter to members of his flock, the Western Diocese of the Armenian Church of North America.

After exempting diocesan land in the Mulholland corridor from limits on development, Woo reversed himself under heavy pressure from environmentalists who pointed out that he had been one of the sponsors of the building restrictions.

Woo maintains that he never misled Hovsepian, that he agreed to the initial exemption as a “signal” that he was willing to give the archdiocese time to come up with a plan for a church site that would leave hillsides and ridgelines intact. When the plan failed to meet those requirements, Woo says, the exemption was revoked.

“I think I telegraphed my misgivings very publicly for several weeks before I pulled the plug on the project,” he said.

A House Divided

Campaigning hard for the support of environmentalists, Woo has prepared a lengthy position paper spelling out plans for expanding parklands, opposing new landfill sites, diverting polluted runoff from the Santa Monica Bay and curbing industrial air pollution in poor neighborhoods.

He takes credit for an ordinance that curtails hillside construction. But his position paper makes no mention of the controversy that erupted when Woo took out plans to enlarge his hillside house just four months before the ordinance took effect.

More than doubling the size of Woo’s home, the expansion was estimated at well over $100,000 and designed by Los Angeles architect Frank Israel, a rising star in his field. Dubbing it “the Woo Pavilion,” Israel featured the house in a recently released book of his best work.

Critics howled that Woo had thumbed his nose at the spirit of his own ordinance, a glaring example of a “limousine liberal” advocating lofty reforms while exempting himself from their application.

A similar criticism was leveled against him after revelations that he had accepted apparently illegal contributions in cash and from foreign corporations. His million-dollar-plus campaign had taken only about $8,700 in questionable donations, and the matter would have made less of a stir had Woo not been the author of the ethics law that governs campaign funding practices. Moreover, Woo’s opponents accused him of playing fast and loose with ethics rules by using a special fund to get an early start on his mayoral campaign before it was legally permissible.

Woo, who regularly touts his leadership in passage of the ethics law, downplays both matters. He denied any misuse of funds and said the questionable donations were the result of inadvertent “technical errors” by members of his staff. He returned the money.

As for the attacks on his house, Woo dismissed them as the result of “a ravenous public appetite for cynicism about public officials.”

“It is unreasonable to expect individuals, whether they are elected officials or not, to comply with laws that are not in effect,” he said. “I didn’t do anything to evade the law, to slow down the ordinance in order to avoid coverage by the law.” Woo seems sensitive to questions about his house. He refuses to say how he paid for such a high-profile remodeling project, or whether his parents gave him financial help. His refusal to answer those questions came the same week his campaign staff urged reporters to press another mayoral candidate, Councilman Joel Wachs, to tell where he obtained the money for his collection of paintings by celebrated contemporary American artists.

Woo’s financial relationship with his parents has been fodder for his critics since the 1985 City Council election when Wilbur Woo, a wealthy produce merchant and Chinatown banker, contributed almost 25% of the $800,000 raised during his son’s campaign.

“He is a liberal, a voice for the downtrodden, a child of the ‘60s at odds with his father’s politics,” said a Los Feliz civic activist and onetime supporter who had a falling out with Woo over neighborhood politics. At the same time, the activist said, “he is dependent on dad for the very money that has propelled his political career.”

Woo carries the rich man’s burden lightly. He laughs at the memory of his grandfather, then nearly 90, drumming up campaign contributions at the produce market. When a longtime business associate handed him a check, the grandfather said: “Oh, didn’t you leave a zero off?”

Clearly, Woo’s life got off to an easy start.

He is the only son of an only son of a Chinese immigrant, a man whose very gender was cause for celebration in a marriage that yielded four girls and a culture that prized baby boys. His grandmother did his laundry. The best piece of chicken was reserved for him, and in accordance with Chinese tradition, his sisters served it.

“He was definitely the No. 1 son,” recalled his sister Elaine, who oversees education and religion coverage as an assistant metropolitan editor at the Los Angeles Times. One might expect his pampered beginnings to have produced a self-indulgent, middle-aged brat, incapable of making his own way in the world. But Woo said the good life came with the expectation that he must amount to something.

“I think it helped me build my self-confidence, and my self-confidence is one of my assets. . . . I grew up with the expectation that I would have major responsibilities.”

The foundation for many of his political views was laid during the eight years he spent as a legislative aide for state Sen. David A. Roberti (D-Van Nuys). He was fresh out of UC Berkeley with a master’s degree in city planning when he went to work in Sacramento and his eyes were opened to some nasty urban realities.

At 31, exposed to the closure of county hospitals, the plight of the mentally retarded in jail and other social nightmares, Woo decided it was time to run for public office.

A Cultivated Public Image

His political career got off to a shaky start.

“His voice was like somebody who has a nose problem,” Los Angeles political consultant Charles Kim says, recalling candidate Woo delivering an early speech in his failed 1981 attempt to unseat Councilwoman Peggy Stevenson.

Woo set about cultivating a commanding public personality, some say so successfully that he bears little resemblance to the owlish, bow-tied neophyte of his political debut.

His close friends look at the public Mike Woo--as polished and prepared as a “Jeopardy” contestant--and hope that the voters will get acquainted with the Mike Woo they know--the one they call Michael, the urban scholar who loves jazz, books, movies and staying up late, and who did not own a television set until 1986, when his wife brought one to the marriage.

Woo admits to an internal tug of war. One side of him would like to be ensconced in a university library with Louis Mumford, an eminent authority on cities. The other wants to get out and change the world.

But there is more to the private Woo than books. He loves good food and hates leftovers. (“I don’t have a favorite restaurant, but I can tell you the best place for pasta, the best place for dessert.”) He’s a clotheshorse who shops at Saks Fifth Avenue, but only during their semiannual sales. He would rather walk two blocks than pay a valet $2 to park his car. (“I have certain cheap tendencies,” he admitted.)

He is not the least bit athletic. When one early campaign strategist decided to take his picture jogging around Silver Lake, it was soon discovered that Woo owned neither sweats nor a pair of sneakers. A physical revealed that his cholesterol level was a dangerous 340, so he cut out omelets and started taking walks.

A blind date introduced him to his wife, Susan Fong, a Berkeley graduate whose interest in the labor movement led her to spend six years at a Los Angeles steel factory operating a lathe. She rose to the rank of shop steward.

Fong, who now reviews grants and endowments for a charitable foundation, is fluent in Cantonese. Woo spoke the language until he was 5; now he remembers “barely enough to order in a Chinese restaurant.” But running for office in a city fraught with ethnic sensitivities seems to be taking Mike Woo back to his roots.

“There was an adolescent effort to get away from traditional trappings, then a rediscovering of my ethnicity, almost involuntarily, as a result of politics and facing racial tension in this city,” Woo says of his metamorphosis.

When asked to talk about his family, Woo is less likely to dwell on the philosophical differences between generations than he is to speak proudly about the work his father and grandfather did for Chinese immigrants, helping them find homes and jobs.

Woo’s council record reflects similar concerns for struggling immigrants. He sought unsuccessfully to have Los Angeles designated “a city of sanctuary” for Latin American refugees fleeing political persecution. He was an outspoken supporter of an ordinance that prevented city police from aiding in the detention of illegal immigrants. He fought for a law, still awaiting final approval, that would allow immigrant street vendors to ply their trade.

At the same time, Woo has taken pains not to identify too closely with Asian-Americans or their political interests. At a recent candidates forum sponsored by several Korean-American groups, Woo defended his decision to support a post-riot ordinance that limits the number of liquor stores in South-Central Los Angeles, even though a high proportion of the businesses affected are owned by Korean-Americans.

“We need to understand why the liquor store issue is such a flash point between African-Americans and Korean-Americans. . . . It is incumbent on the mayor of this city to come up with some kind of economic common ground between African-Americans and Asian-Americans,” he told an audience of about 200. Experts predict that this position will cost him some Korean-American votes.

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The clock is approaching 11 p.m. and Woo still looks fresh as the morning. He is wearing a pair of jeans, Japanese-style zoris and a purple shirt. Art Tatum and Ben Webster are playing piano and sax on the stereo. He is eating from a plate of cappuccino-flavored Viennese wafers.

The relaxed scene belies the tension in the air. Woo is being asked to talk about other people’s perceptions that he is too eager to please, that he might not be tough enough to be mayor.

Woo points to his much-publicized stand against former Police Chief Daryl F. Gates. He stood alone among council peers in demanding Gates’ ouster in the days immediately after the police beating of Rodney G. King.

He wonders what more he has to do to prove his mettle.

“The public demands a certain amount of phoniness that ultimately undermines the credibility of politicians. . . . It’s better to try to be the best version of what you are rather than live up to some expectation of what a politician should be like.”

But if there is one unflattering perception that has dogged Woo from the outset of his campaign, it is the notion that he is an equivocator, a politician who does not know how to say no.

“He doesn’t like to be the bearer of bad news,” Craig Lawson, a land-use consultant and close friend since 1977, says when pressed to describe one of Woo’s shortcomings. “It’s hard for him to get up before an audience and say: ‘This may be bad news to some of you. . . .’ He doesn’t like to make unpopular decisions.”

“He’s been a little wishy-washy on some issues. He either wouldn’t take a strong stand or would seem to backtrack,” said Kathy Imahara, an attorney for the Asian Pacific Legal Center.

The Man Who Can’t Say No?

Woo’s campaign has drawn fire for the bouquets of promises it has tossed to various groups. He has pledged to appoint a gay or lesbian to the city Police Commission. He has told Latino activists he will set up an office of immigrant affairs. He has promised South-Central Los Angeles a multimillion-dollar package of economic incentives at a time when the city is facing a possible $550-million deficit.

“Does Mike Woo understand that building a governing coalition has as much to do with saying no to people as it does saying yes?” asked one local economist who would not be named. “You do it by making people respect you, and you don’t get respect by passing out posies everywhere you go, especially these days when the city hasn’t got much left to give away.”

Woo bridles at the charge that he is trying to be everything to everybody and points to a number of recent statements wherein he warned audiences that the city could be facing a time of great sacrifice.

“It could be that some very bitter medicine will be necessary,” he said during a recent interview, warning that the next mayor may have to be prepared to cut services, lay off municipal workers and perhaps raise taxes.

Yet, it is Woo’s optimism as much as anything that distinguishes him from the other candidates.

“Mike can be like a kid in a candy store when he’s talking about Los Angeles, and maybe that strikes some people as naive. Not me,” said Harry Usher, a sports marketing executive who played a key role in organizing the 1984 Olympics.

“I’m not sure we need some sort of table pounding, vituperative, Old Testament type to make the city work. We need somebody who believes in the future of the place, and that’s Mike. Besides, I’ve been in the room with him when he’s tried to work something out, and he’s no patsy.”

Woo is probably at his best when he is making a case for the city. A denizen of old bookstores, habitue of jazz clubs, boulevardier , Woo loves city life and it shows.

“He really is very fascinating and concerned with city planning. He absolutely cares about the traffic flow, the aesthetics of the neighborhoods. He is Mr. Anti-Mini-Malls. He would talk about it for hours,” said David Gray Carlson, a New York law professor and Woo’s friend since high school.

Although several opponents make a point of saying they dislike what Los Angeles has become--Richard Riordan calls it an ethnic “war zone,” Joel Wachs deems Hollywood “a sewer”--Woo can sound like an urban evangelist.

“I think cities exist for people to be something they cannot be in places where they’ve come from. People come to cities to get a job, to get an education, to fulfill some kind of dream. That is why a city is a dynamic place.

“Because I have this vision of what a city is all about, because I welcome diversity, because I welcome competition, because I value the creativity that can only take place in a city like Los Angeles, that’s why I think I’m the right person to be the mayor.”

Special correspondent Scott Chernoff contributed to this story.

Profile: Michael Woo

Born: Oct. 8, 1951

Residence: Silver Lake

Education: UC Santa Cruz, BA. UC Berkeley, MA

Career Highlights: Member of the Los Angeles City Council since 1985

Interests: Jazz, architecture, reading

Family: Married

Quote: “My goal is to enable Los Angeles to live up to the best purposes of urban life, to take advantage of our diversity, take advantage of our size, of the kinds of resources that are only available in a city and not in a suburb or a farming community.”

BALLOTS IN SEVEN LANGUAGES: Los Angeles is offering sample ballots in five Asian languages, in addition to Spanish and English. B3