LOCAL ELECTIONS / L.A. MAYOR : Riordan Gives Another $3 Million to Campaign : Politics: Candidate says move shows he will be ‘nobody’s mayor but the people’s.’ Woo charges him with trying to buy the race.

Richard Riordan gave $3 million to his campaign for mayor of Los Angeles on Friday, bringing to $6 million the lawyer-businessman’s investment in seeking the city’s top office.

Riordan cast his latest donation in the same light as his earlier ones--as “a matter of principle” designed to ensure that he is free from obligations to special interests. If elected, he pledged, he will be “nobody’s mayor but the people’s.”

Representatives of his opponent in the June 8 runoff, City Councilman Michael Woo, immediately blasted that rationale as “self-serving gobbledygook” and charged that Riordan was trying to buy the election.

By waiting until Friday to make his contribution to himself, Riordan used a technical provision of the city’s ethics law to hamper Woo’s fund-raising ability in the crucial first weeks of the runoff campaign.

The ethics law bars candidates such as Woo, who accept public matching funds, from raising more than $1,000 from each contributor under ordinary circumstances.

The law has an exception, however. When a wealthy candidate contributes $30,000 or more of his own money, other candidates benefit from relaxed contribution limits that allow them to accept up to $3,000 per contributor.

For two weeks after the April 20 primary, the only infusion of his own money that Riordan transferred into his account was $25,000--a rollover of leftover funds from the primary campaign.

Riordan delayed putting in any more of his own money until Friday--one day before a legal notification deadline--thereby forcing Woo to stay within the $1,000 limit for two important weeks.

Riordan said $2 million of his donation Friday was a loan. His campaign could return some or all of the money to him if he can raise enough from other donors.

So far, Riordan campaign director William Wardlaw said Riordan has raised about $300,000 for the runoff from contributors other than himself. Wardlaw said Riordan has had an easier time raising money since he finished first in a field of 24 candidates in the primary.

Woo’s campaign manager, Vicky Rideout, said her candidate has raised “several hundred thousand dollars. We have close to $500,000 if you count the matching funds.”

Charges of trying to buy the election are not new to Riordan, who gave $3 million to himself during the primary campaign. That action eliminated contribution and spending caps that were the key provisions of the city ethics law that Riordan had once backed. The law, intended to limit the influence of special interests, made public matching funds available to candidates who agreed to the spending and contribution caps.

In the mayor’s race, Riordan has blasted Woo for accepting the funds, saying it is “fundamentally wrong” to do so when the city is financially strapped.

Woo has countered with charges of hypocrisy, noting that Riordan was the biggest individual contributor to the effort that established the matching funds.

Rideout also challenged Riordan to “tell us a little about where his money’s coming from. It comes from junk bonds, takeovers, putting people out of work,” she claimed.

Woo began airing a new television ad Friday attacking Riordan for laying off workers at Mattel Inc. when he was a member of the toy company’s Board of Directors.

John W. Amerman, Mattel chairman and chief executive officer, promptly fired off a letter to Woo, criticizing the ad.

“Your allegations that Mattel fired 1,300 people are misleading and a complete fabrication,” Amerman wrote Woo. “The truth is that our company was experiencing financial difficulty in 1987, and the decisive action we took at that time was critical to the company’s survival.”

Mattel officials have previously acknowledged dismissing about 800 Southern California workers in cutbacks while Riordan was on the board.

Also on Friday, Riordan went to Watts with a group of business executives in tow to meet with several gang members and community activists and talk about creating jobs.

Riordan was upbeat in discussing the possibilities for employment in South-Central Los Angeles. Not once did he mention crime, or repeat what he said so often during his primary campaign: that the only way the economy could be improved in the inner city was to make the place safer.

Flanked by representatives of IBM, Food For Less, Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Co., Times Mirror Co. and other firms, Riordan listened quietly to the pleas and admonitions of Malik Spellman and other youths who came to the meeting at a community center on 111th Place and Avalon Boulevard.

“This is a very serious issue we are dealing with. It may not affect you yet. But its coming to a theater near you if we don’t stop it now,” said Spellman, who said he had never been a gang member but had lived in a gang environment.

“We have young men with families who want to go to work, who want to learn . . . who want to put down the AK-47s and pick up the hammers.”

At various points, Riordan was challenged by young men to say what he was prepared to do to help them.

“You’ve been doing a lot of talking. What are you going to do to help our community? What are you going to do for us?” asked a man who identified himself only as Patrick.

“I am going to expand the business outreach offices of the mayor dramatically,” replied Riordan. “I’m going to work hard to get venture capital down here. I am particularly going to work hard to get the federal government to ease its restrictions on banks making loans into small and medium-sized inner-city businesses.”

Later, Derek, who identified himself as a gang member, asked a bit more bluntly, “What kind of jobs are you going to offer us today?”

Riordan turned to a business partner, former Los Angeles Rams quarterback Pat Haden, and asked him to answer the question.

Haden identified two firms in which Riordan has an interest that are hiring people. “A food merchandising company has hired 12, 15 people recently and continues to interview and hire. Adohr Farms has a number of interviews and opportunities, I think, available as well.”

Meanwhile, the city Ethics Commission on Friday agreed to follow a legal opinion that says the city can regulate independent fund-raising committees, such as the state Democratic Party, which has pledged to run a $200,000 independent campaign on Woo’s behalf.

Commissioners agreed with an analysis by attorney Bob Stern that such outside groups would have to comply with a city-imposed $500 limit on individual contributions.

For those donations that exceeded the limit, only $500 of the contributions could go to the local race. Money raised by such groups before they got involved in a city race could be used locally even if it exceeded the donation limits.

Times staff writers Frank Clifford, Marc Lacey and Richard Simon contributed to this story.