Mayor’s Race Is Contrast in Style--and Substance : Election: Patricia A. Moore approaches the city’s problems with the view of a social activist. Omar Bradley thinks business is key to turning things around.

Omar Bradley and Patricia A. Moore will grudgingly admit they may have a few things in common.

They’re both liberals. They’re both persuasive public speakers. They’re both fiercely proud African-Americans whom many consider role models. And they’re both Compton City Council members who want to be mayor.

But that, they say, is where the similarities end. Bradley is too conservative for Moore. Moore is too liberal for Bradley. Moore says Bradley doesn’t speak out enough. Bradley says Moore doesn’t know when to keep quiet.

Bradley and Moore defeated five other candidates in the April 20 election for mayor. But because neither won more than 50% of the vote, they will face each other in a runoff election June 1.

With less than three weeks to the runoff, neither has wasted time on campaign etiquette. Both are calling each other “liar.” Moore has described Bradley as nothing but a “political thug who would sell the city for the right price.” Bradley, in response, says Moore is simply a “shyster manipulator” who exploits tragedy to further her career.

This race isn’t like the Los Angeles mayoral runoff, where the contrasts between candidates Michael Woo and Richard Riordan couldn’t be more obvious. The differences between the two Compton contenders are more subtle.

Bradley is the local-boy-made-good candidate, the high school football team captain who married the head cheerleader, graduated from college and now teaches literature at Lynwood High School.

Moore is a Central California farm-girl-turned-activist, an anti-Establishment member of the Establishment whose statements, particularly about injustices suffered by African-Americans, have made her a visible and controversial politician.

They both envision a time when the city will thrive, when the 20% unemployment rate, rampant graffiti and dilapidated buildings will be bad memories, and residents can say they live in Compton without being asked if they are crazy.

Bradley says business holds the key to that future. As such, his top priority as mayor would be to recruit businesses to the city. More businesses mean more jobs and more sales tax revenues to hire police officers, clean up graffiti and create youth and senior citizens programs, he says.

Moore approaches the city’s problems from the perspective of a social activist. She would reorder spending to clean up the city and hire more police officers, challenge banks to make low-interest loans to encourage home and business ownership and offer job training and instruction to fledgling business within the community.

Moore, who said she works as a consultant to her mother’s group of convalescent homes, was elected to the council in 1989; Bradley won his seat two years later. He would keep his post if he loses the mayoral runoff. Moore, on the other hand, would return to private life if she loses.

The mayor has no more voting power than the other four members of the council, but is considered the symbolic leader of the community.

Bradley was the favorite going into the runoff campaign. He beat Moore by more than 700 votes in the primary, capturing all but one precinct in his council district and in Moore’s as well. He raised $47,000, about five times more than Moore, and has won the backing of many of the city’s business leaders as well as county Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, Assemblyman Willard H. Murray Jr. (D-Paramount), Assemblywoman Juanita M. McDonald (D-Carson), and fellow council members Jane D. Robbins and Bernice Woods.

Moore ran a low-key primary campaign and barely finished second. She beat Kenneth Tucker, son of late Mayor Walter Tucker II and brother of Democratic Rep. Walter Tucker III (who also served as the city’s mayor), by 76 votes.

Since making the runoff, Moore has stepped up her efforts considerably. She is running the campaign from a storefront on Compton Boulevard, rather than her home. She has a phone bank, an afternoon precinct-walking team and a full slate of neighborhood meetings--she’s hoping to do 20 a week, she said.

Her goal? To woo as many of the roughly 2,000 people who voted for Kenneth Tucker in April as possible. Her campaign staffers note that Bradley only won 35% of the vote which, they say, means that 65% of the voters didn’t want him for mayor. Moore said she thinks she fared poorly in her district because she and Tucker split the vote.

Taking a page from Tucker’s campaign, Moore is hammering away at Bradley’s vote in support of a controversial card casino project. Bradley and Councilwomen Robbins and Woods drew fire for approving the multimillion-dollar project without submitting it to a vote of the people.

Moore did not vote on the issue. She abstained from the first vote because she received a $10,000 campaign contribution from one of the original partners in the casino development during her unsuccessful run for the Assembly last year. Moore said she accepted the contribution before she knew of the casino project.

She was absent during the final vote in December because one of her parents was sick, she said.

Since then, Moore has said she is anti-gambling and has launched an attempt to allow the voters to overrule the council through a referendum. The city attorney has approved the initiative and Moore said she plans to begin collecting signatures soon to put it on the ballot.

Several of her primary rivals have thrown their support to her. And even Kenneth Tucker, who accused her of ducking the casino issue during the primary, said he is now “leaning toward” endorsing the councilwoman. Moore also has the endorsements of state Sens. Diane E. Watson (D-Los Angeles) and Teresa P. Hughes (D-Inglewood) and Assemblywoman Gwen Moore (D-Los Angeles).

“People in this community don’t ask for a lot,” said Moore, a 28-year resident of the city. “They just want to feel safe, they want a clean environment, they want to be treated with respect and dignity, and they want jobs. They don’t see how they can handle the immediate problems of crime without worrying about the burden of a card casino. And even those who do support the casino still had a right to express themselves (by voting).”

Moore is also targeting women. Last week, she mailed 10,000 Mother’s Day cards to women who are registered to vote in the city, and she is portraying herself as a “strong and courageous woman,” a single mother and grandmother who is sensitive to the needs of the whole community. (Bradley, too, mailed Mother’s Day cards to 6,400 homes.)

Moore is critical of Bradley’s plan for rejuvenating the city, scornfully charging that many of the projects he is promoting would provide only minimum-wage jobs.

Bradley has promised voters that in four years the city will have a new senior citizen center, a family entertainment complex, a Vons store, a 12-screen movie theater and 1,200 middle-income homes. The councilman said that these projects will provide 15,000 new jobs in Compton. (Of the five projects, only the Vons store is off the drawing board. It is scheduled to open in October.)

Said Moore: “We want people to do more than just make hamburgers or tacos or work in a warehouse. I care more about the quality-of-life issues. Omar is about big business and jobs. I am concerned about life-and-death issues, things I believe will make people stay in our community or will make them leave. And that’s more than just jobs. It’s about crime. It’s about the hard and fast realities of life. . . . Omar needs to stop being a voice for big business and money and start being a voice for the concerns of the people.”

Moore, 44, also contends that 35-year-old Bradley is too young, immature and inexperienced to be mayor. She accuses him of routinely using intimidation to get what he wants, and claims that a day after a well-publicized scuffle between Bradley’s family and Tucker’s family during a political forum, a still-furious Bradley told her that “someone may die in this campaign.”

Bradley vehemently denies making such a statement.

“Is she crazy? Is she out of her mind?” Bradley shouted. “I am a schoolteacher. I teach young children. This stark-raving, maniac-gangster image that Moore . . . (has) tried to perpetuate in the community is the biggest joke. My mother has a master’s degree, my father was the first black man to ever own a gas station in Compton. Out of seven children, five of us have college degrees.

“These people have told every kind of lie about me, and my record is clean and clear on all counts. The problem is they can’t put their hands on anything I have ever done wrong and so they are trying to create this image of me.”

Bradley makes no apologies for his vote for the card club. He says the city needs the money. Nor, he argued, is it a surprise that he has the support of the business community. Moore’s anti-Establishment rhetoric scares people away, he said.

Moore, he added, is attacking him simply because she has no plan of her own.

“ ‘Where is the plan?’ That is the question I ask Pat Moore,” Bradley said. “Because if she if going to run for mayor on my track record, then she doesn’t need to run. . . . I beat her in her own district. What does that say about her leadership? The people in her district are tired of her promises and speeches.

“It is not enough to point out that there are problems--you gotta have solutions. And she has none. . . . If I bring one job flipping hamburgers to this city it will be more than she has ever done.”

Bradley would not discuss his campaign strategy in detail, but noted that his namesake was a famous World War II general considered one of the best strategists of his day.

“My name is Omar Bradley,” the councilman said matter-of-factly. “I intend to do everything that is necessary to run a strategically correct campaign. Pat Moore needs to pack up and leave town peacefully.”

However, Bradley is clearly zeroing in on a common criticism of Moore: that she uses tragedy to make a name for herself. In a recent interview, he brought up the 1989 drive-by killing of 2-year-old Phillip Fisher, the killing of black teen-ager Latasha Harlins by a Korean grocer, and, more recently, the funeral of slain Compton police officer Kevin Burrell. Moore has been accused, in some cases by the victims’ families, of exploiting these deaths to further her political career.

At the funeral, Moore praised the Compton Police Department, adding that it is “not like the L.A. four (police) officers who would beat somebody senselessly.”

In her speech, which was met with hisses and shouts of approval, she told Gov. Pete Wilson and Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti that police officers needed greater protection because they “are not like you, men who have protection 24 hours a day.”

“What you saw at the funeral was that her speech went from one level of emotionalism to another, “ Bradley said. “Then she saw people buying into it, so she gave them more of it and then the euphoria spread and everyone forgot: We are at a funeral. That mother over there is crying, she is in tears and she is shocked because she can’t forget where she is. She is looking at her son’s dead body. (As a leader) you don’t take those kind of risks, you say what is going to be comforting and you walk away. Period. At all costs.

“I’m not talking about what sounds right. I’m not talking about what is best for my career. I am talking about what is humanly right. . . . Sometimes being a leader means being silent when you want to speak.”

Bradley also criticized Moore’s fiery speeches during last year’s riots about anger in the black community, and her well-publicized warnings that such uprisings could happen again if the needs and rights of people of color are ignored. Her statements were inflammatory and irresponsible, Bradley said.

Moore defends herself, arguing that she has an obligation to speak out because there are “too few minorities who are in our position who will say a word against the injustices that occur.”

“Mr. Bradley, by and large, will tell people, ‘Don’t you come to the council meeting and talk about that because someone could get hurt,’ ” Moore said. “(I) will say talk about it and let’s deal with the consequences later. People say, ‘Oh, no Pat . . . you create too much trouble.’ Well, I would rather create trouble now than have problems later.”

Over the next couple of weeks, both Bradley and Moore say they plan to walk precincts, go to Sunday church services, make phone calls and do whatever they can to make sure the voters hear their messages.

After all, Bradley said, “Nothing comes to a sleeper but a dream.”

OMAR BRADLEY Age: 35

Occupation: High school teacher, city councilman

First elected: 1991

April election votes: 2,851

Quote: “My focus is on Compton. Period. Pat Moore has a more national profile. If you take away the rhetoric and the television appearances, Pat Moore has done nothing for Compton.”

PATRICIA MOORE Age: 44

Occupation: consultant to family business, city councilwoman

First elected: 1989

April election votes: 2,114

Quote: “Omar is a babe on the council, and he makes his decisions based on the dollar rather than what is good for the people. He’s about big business. I’m about the people.”