LOCAL ELECTIONS / L.A. MAYOR : Woo, Riordan Back to Familiar Themes : Politics: Candidates receive more attention. Riordan emphasizes increasing size of police force during Koreatown visit. Woo calls for local gun control.

Los Angeles mayoral candidates Richard Riordan and Michael Woo on Monday returned to familiar themes--public safety and gun control--as they began their first full week of campaigning for the June election.

Riordan visited a Koreatown mini-mall as the second in a series of campaign stops he bills as “L.A. Stories.” He held the first last weekend in Woo’s Hollywood district. According to a campaign spokeswoman, Riordan will be at the “street level and talk to the constituents of Los Angeles to get to their real concerns . . . not artificial, bombastic stuff.”

Woo returned to the site of an earlier news conference, the county coroner’s office, to tout his endorsement from a gun control group.

The race, now down to two candidates--and out of the shadow of the Rodney G. King civil rights trial--attracted intensified interest Monday. That was evident in the large flock of television cameras and the presence of a new observer: author Joan Didion, who is writing a “Letter From Los Angeles” for the New Yorker magazine.

But the candidates’ themes remained the same.

A week after finishing at the front of the 24-candidate field in the primary, Riordan was still pumping up his message that crime is the top issue as he held a short meeting with Korean-American business people.

The whirlwind, 30-minute Koreatown visit was confined to meetings with merchants who had been identified as Riordan supporters. The lawyer-businessman stepped into small shops and repeated his pledge to hire 3,000 police officers, to be paid for by leasing Los Angeles International Airport to a private firm--although questions have been raised about the plan’s feasibility.

Bed and bath shop owner Young Kim and a neighboring restaurateur, Seung Choi, said they had supported Woo until they were visited by Riordan campaign workers last week. Feeling they were abandoned by police in last year’s riots, they said they appreciated Riordan’s pledge to beef up the Los Angeles Police Department.

“You are the strong figure to turn it around,” Kim told Riordan. “I have high hopes for you.”

Choi said that she had also been persuaded by Riordan workers to drop Woo after “they explained to me how Michael Woo didn’t do anything for the city.”

The fast-moving Riordan entourage, with about seven television cameras and Didion in tow, stopped at five businesses at the shopping center. But they skipped several others, whose owners said they support Woo. They pointed in part to the Asian-American heritage they share with Woo.

A Times exit poll last week found that 60% of Asian-Americans voted for Woo, compared to 21% for Riordan.

“Mr. Woo has a more outgoing policy,” said drugstore owner John Kim. “He is concerned with so many different groups. That is what impressed me about him.”

Riordan’s camp made no apologies for placing their candidate before supportive audiences. “That’s inherently part of any campaign from the presidency on down,” said Riordan spokeswoman Kari Moran.

Meanwhile, Woo spent the morning back at the coroner’s office, where the head of the Washington-based Coalition to Stop Gun Violence announced the organization’s support for Woo, because of the councilman’s call for a ban on the sale of “Saturday night specials,” or cheap, short-barreled handguns.

Woo had initially called for the ban, using the same backdrop, during the primary campaign that led to his second-place finish. At that time, he had a pile of guns spread out on a table in front of him.

Whether such a ban can be enacted remains unclear.

The city attorney’s office has said it believes that the city cannot ban Saturday night specials without the approval of the Legislature, although the office is reviewing the issue.

Woo has cited legal advice from another gun control advocacy group, Handgun Control, in arguing that the city has the power to impose gun control.

A recent study of handguns by the Los Angeles Police Department found that seven out of 10 guns confiscated were Saturday night specials, Woo said.

“Dick Riordan is trying to make this election a contest about who is tough enough,” Woo said. “One of the important measures of toughness is who is willing to step up to the plate and address the proliferation of guns on the streets of Los Angeles.”

Asked why he waited until the mayoral race rather than attempting to ban Saturday night specials earlier in his eight-year City Council tenure, Woo said: “I do think the rising level of public concern about this violence now makes it appropriate for us to take this action.”

Riordan responded to the gun control endorsement by calling Woo a “latecomer” to the public safety issue.

Riordan called himself a “proponent of the 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms,” adding: “Controlling guns really means enforcing current laws, not adding new ones.”

“We have to distinguish between the rights of law-abiding individuals and those of criminals,” Riordan said.

In a related matter, Woo, who had backed a property tax increase to pay for additional police officers that was rejected by voters in last Tuesday’s election, said he will offer an alternative plan Wednesday for putting more police on the streets.