Issues Eclipsed as Woo, Riordan Trade Insults : Mayoral debate: Councilman raises rival’s ’88 remark about poor people. Businessman describes him as a liar.

In the most heated face-to-face confrontation of the Los Angeles mayoral race, issues took a back seat to character assaults Saturday as City Councilman Michael Woo challenged businessman Richard Riordan to explain a flippant remark about poor people, justify his membership in an exclusive club, and explain why his law firm has only one black lawyer.

Held before a rowdy standing-room-only audience at First African Methodist Episcopal Church in the West Adams district, the debate was a verbal brawl in which Woo sought to portray Riordan as a wealthy opportunist who stands for nothing and Riordan repeatedly described Woo as a liar and a do-nothing politician.

Woo accused Riordan of boasting about bringing jobs to the inner city while closing local plants and shipping jobs to Mexico, of claiming to be for abortion rights after giving $10,000 to an anti-abortion group, and of being against discrimination after belonging to a country club that barred women, Jews and African-Americans.

“It’s hard to tell where he stands and what he believes in,” Woo said.

Riordan in turn accused Woo of being part of an ineffectual city government that stood by while crime soared, illegal guns proliferated, businesses fled and people lost hope.

“They want to know not what you say but what you’ve done,” Riordan said to Woo. “They want to know where you’ve been the last eight years.”

But Woo, a frequent visitor to the church, seemed more at ease as he took the offensive.

In the oldest black church in the city, with its weekly free food distribution taking place outside, Woo seized the opportunity to resurrect a remark in a 1988 magazine article in which Riordan said: “I’m taking lessons in learning how to wave to the poor people.”

“You said that quote was taken out of context,” Woo said. “Can you share with me and with the people in this audience what would be the right context for that statement?”

As gleeful members of the audience waved their hands in the air, a gruffly apologetic Riordan, clutching a glass of water and coughing, tried to put the best face he could on the matter.

“Anybody who reads that article knows that it was meant as a joke,” he said. “It was a very bad joke, I must admit. But it was a joke. All you have to do is look at my record to know that I care very deeply about poor people.”

The debate comes as a new poll shows an extraordinarily close race. The poll, conducted last week by President Clinton’s pollster, Stanley Greenberg, shows Woo and Riordan essentially tied among likely voters--a slight improvement for Woo from the figures in a Times poll earlier this month.

At First AME, both candidates packed the room with their supporters. They asked their cheering sections to restrain themselves. But Woo partisans heckled Riordan mercilessly, and opposing forces hit a low point when a woman shouted profanities at Woo and had to be reminded she was in church.

Most of Woo’s charges were recycled from previous debates, but he did bring one new piece of ammunition. Reading from what he said was an official report on minority contracting by local law firms, Woo said Riordan’s firm was ranked at the bottom in terms of hiring minorities and women and subcontracting to businesses owned by minorities and women.

“He has a disgraceful record of hiring women and minorities, and it begs the question what would Dick Riordan do as mayor?”

Riordan said the City Council report was based on mistaken information provided by his firm that it was not allowed to revise.

Moments before, Riordan had acknowledged that of 55 lawyers in his firm, only one is African-American. But he said a number of black people were employed by his firm in other capacities.

He insisted that his firm aggressively recruited African-American law school graduates and that its record of hiring women and minorities is as good as that of any other local law firm.

Riordan charged that Woo was trying to define him on the basis of “lies and distortions” and make him look bad because he is wealthy.

“Mr. Woo weaves so many lies into his answers I’m not sure I can remember them all,” Riordan said.

In his own defense, Riordan often cited his record of philanthropy: “You should not judge a person by their wealth but by what they do with their wealth. I have given tens of millions of dollars to charities. I would like Mr. Woo to say how much he has given to charities.”

“You talk to any teacher or principal in the inner city . . . and let them define me. Don’t let Mr. Woo.”

Riordan said his rival “has done nothing for the African-American community during the eight years that he has been on the City Council. . . . He has not created one job in the inner city of Los Angeles.”

Riordan also accused Woo of voting more than 10 times to exempt companies from the city’s ban on contracts with firms that do business in South Africa.

But Woo kept returning to the subject of Riordan’s wealth, arguing that Riordan should be judged by how he made his money, arguing that Riordan got rich through deals that cost thousands of jobs.

Riordan maintained that during his career he has created more than 77,000 jobs, while Woo cited a Times examination of eight Riordan deals of the 1980s in which there was a net gain of only 14 jobs.

Riordan accused Woo of hiring “the sleaziest type of person” to run his campaign. And Woo fired back that Riordan owed an apology for the remark he made last week after the Clinton endorsement.

Riordan said at the time: “Doesn’t it seem strange that someone who lives in a big white guarded house in Washington, D.C., and sends their child to a private school would come to Los Angeles and try to tell us how to run our city?”

After he read the quote aloud, Woo said: “Dick, I think you should be ashamed about what you said to the President of the United States.”

In one of the few conciliatory moments in the debate, Riordan revealed that he had called the White House chief of staff Saturday morning and apologized for his remarks. “He said he realized they were done in the heat of the battle and he recognized me as an upfront kind of guy.”

When the debate was over, Riordan made a quick retreat. Woo stepped off stage and into the crowd, shaking hands and receiving pats on the back as he made his way to the door.