Riordan Discloses 3rd Alcohol-Related Arrest : Mayoral race: Candidate says he confused 1971 and ’75 cases as one. Campaign staff downplays significance.

Los Angeles mayoral candidate Richard Riordan on Friday disclosed that he had a third alcohol-related arrest--for drunk driving in 1975.

Riordan said in an interview that he had been confused when he told a questioner during a radio debate Wednesday that he had been arrested just twice--about 25 years ago--for drunk driving and interfering with a police officer attempting to arrest a friend.

The arrest for interference was in 1964 and the drunk driving case, which was later reduced to reckless driving, was in 1971, he said Friday.

He said “a review” after the debate had turned up his third arrest.

Asked if that arrest had slipped his mind, the 63-year-old Riordan explained:

“No. The two incidents had melded together in my mind and the information unfortunately--(I) did not have the information prior to the debate. After the debate, I started to worry about it and started to check.”

Riordan said he told Bill Violante, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, of the third arrest in a telephone conversation Thursday.

Leaders of the police union have endorsed Riordan’s candidacy, but, after the debate, said they wanted to question him about his record.

Violante issued a statement after the conversation saying the league will continue to back Riordan over his opponent in the June 8 runoff, City Councilman Michael Woo.

Woo, meanwhile, asked Riordan to authorize law enforcement agencies to release his full criminal record, saying Riordan owed it to the people of Los Angeles to be completely open. But the Woo campaign said it has no knowledge of other arrests, and Riordan denied in an interview that he had any other brushes with the law other than traffic tickets.

Woo said at the debate that he had never been arrested.

At a news conference, Woo said Friday that Riordan’s arrests were “an extremely important issue. It is more than a youthful indiscretion. At the times that these cases occurred, Dick Riordan was about the same age that I am today.”

Woo’s campaign manager, Vicky Rideout, said the belated disclosure of a third arrest “raises serious questions about Riordan’s truthfulness.”

But the Riordan campaign downplayed the significance of the disclosure. Riordan has characterized the arrests as mistakes and said he learned from them.

Asked what effect he expected the disclosure to have, Riordan’s campaign director, William Wardlaw, said: “None.”

Political analysts were also inclined to minimize the effect.

“I don’t know how significant it is yet,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe of the Claremont Graduate School’s Center for Politics and Policy. “I don’t know how it’s going to play out.”

But Jeffe said its one clear effect is as a distraction for Riordan and his campaign managers at a key juncture. “It is basically not allowing him to get out the single, clear message he wants to get out,” she said.

Jeffe added that although some undecided voters and weak Riordan supporters might be so turned off they will stay home, the disclosures were not damaging enough to move many Riordan voters to Woo.

In the Friday interview, Riordan was asked to provide additional details of his arrests, including the name of the friend on whose behalf he intervened. But he declined, saying that naming the friend--with whom he had been drinking in a restaurant--would be inappropriate.

“I’m obviously not going to reveal the name of my friend,” he said. “I think that would be very unfair. And I think the rest of the details just aren’t important. It was 29 years ago I made a mistake. I think that says it.”

Riordan also declined to provide additional information about the 1971 arrest from drunk driving, such as where it occurred.

He gave his most detailed descriptions of the first two arrests when reporters followed up after the debate. He said that police had come to arrest his friend for “supposedly stealing drinks at the restaurant. I didn’t see him stealing drinks and when they came, I got angry and stupidly stood between the police and my friend. And that is when they arrested me for interfering with a police officer.”

He also said that at about the same time, he had been arrested for driving under the influence and had pleaded guilty to reckless driving.

In the 1975 drunk driving arrest, Riordan only said Friday that he had been arrested in Los Angeles and attended a “special driving school” as a result.

His campaign was unable to provide details on the charge he was convicted of or on what sentence was imposed.

No accidents were involved in either driving arrest, Riordan said.

In a response to questions, the campaign said Friday that Riordan still drinks “on occasion.”

Riordan said he does not have an alcohol problem and has never been treated for one.

He confirmed reports that in the early 1980s he was driven by a chauffeur, but said that was a matter of choice so he could get more work done.

Department of Motor Vehicles spokesman Bill Madison said Friday that a record check had turned up a reference to a 1981 DMV letter that notified Riordan he was on probation for accumulating too many “points” for traffic violations. Madison said records do not disclose what the violations were.

But Riordan said his license never has been suspended, and DMV said it has no record of any suspension.

Asked whether he had his criminal records expunged, Riordan said he believed so but was unsure how it was done.

“I think you have a right after 10 years or so to do it,” he said, “and I think we did. . . . But I don’t know of any of the details.”

A Los Angeles Municipal Court spokeswoman said such a move would have been governed by a state law that allows a criminal defendant who has finished probation to ask a judge for permission to withdraw a guilty plea and receive a pardon.

In other developments Friday:

* Woo was endorsed by the National Organization for Women’s local political action committee, which had supported Linda Griego, the only major woman candidate in the primary.

NOW local President Tammy Bruce made the endorsement at the Women’s Medical Group of Tarzana, where Riordan last week said he favors abortion rights.

Bruce said the organization was concerned about Riordan’s previously disclosed donations to anti-abortion groups and dismayed by a 1991 taped interview in which Riordan likened abortion to murder.

Bruce said she was outraged by the remark in light of Riordan’s claims to be an abortion rights supporter. “How dare he?” she said.

However, Riordan says there is no contradiction between his views that he does “not favor abortion,” but supports “the right of a woman to make a choice with respect to her own body.” He has promised as mayor to protect women’s access to abortion clinics.

* A former aide from Woo’s Hollywood field office held a news conference on the City Hall steps claiming that she was fired from her position as a field deputy partly because she is black. LarJuanette Williams, 28, who worked for Woo from June, 1990, to March, 1992, complained of a general feeling of racial tension and intolerance in Woo’s Hollywood office. She since has been transferred to the city’s Personnel Department.

Although she did not cite specifics and did not attribute the atmosphere to Woo himself, Williams said she believed that she was not given important assignments in the office because of her race. She criticized Woo for not intervening in the situation.

Williams said she never considered filing a complaint because she liked Woo personally and did not consider him responsible. She decided to make the incident public after being urged to do so by friends and after meeting with Woo this week and being unsatisfied with his responses.

The Woo campaign dismissed the complaints and said that Woo’s 17-member council staff is 50% minority and includes two African-Americans. “This is a clear-cut case of a disgruntled former employee who is being used as a pawn in the campaign,” said Woo spokesman Garry South.

Riordan, who had been criticized by Woo supporters earlier in the week for having few black lawyers in his law firm, disavowed knowledge of the news conference. It was arranged by Linda Lockwood, a neighborhood activist who is backing Riordan.

* The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Sacramento supporting the state Democratic Party’s bid to campaign for Woo, arguing that the state constitutional ban on political parties endorsing in nonpartisan races violates 1st Amendment guarantees to free speech.

A Sacramento judge last week issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Democratic Party from aiding Woo. Responding to a lawsuit brought by the state Republican Party, Superior Court Judge Joe Gray set a hearing for Tuesday to determine if the order should be extended through the June 8 election.

Although the mayoral race is nonpartisan, Woo, a Democrat, has sought to take advantage of the city’s heavy Democratic registration by portraying the Republican Riordan as a throwback to Reaganomics.

The Democrats were planning to wage a $200,000 campaign on Woo’s behalf and had sent out one of at least three planned mailers before the court ruling halted the effort. A second mailer has been printed and is awaiting Tuesday’s ruling on whether it can be sent out. The party also was forced to shut down a phone bank.

“We have no position on which candidate should win the Los Angeles mayoral election,” said ACLU lawyer Raleigh Levine. “However, we do have a strong position that people--and political parties acting for their members--have an absolute right to express themselves on political matters.”

Times staff writers Rich Connell, Faye Fiore, Greg Krikorian and Marc Lacey contributed to this story.