Decision ’93 / Los Angeles County Elections : Interviews With the Mayoral Candidates : RICHARD RIORDAN

Richard Riordan, a highly successful businessman and senior partner in the Riordan & McKinzie law firm in downtown Los Angeles, is running for mayor on a platform stressing public safety and job creation. Riordan, 63, a Brentwood resident, is also portraying himself as a government outsider. But he has served as president of the city Recreation and Parks Commission and the Coliseum Commission and is one the largest political contributors in California. He discussed his philosophy, background and vision for the city with Times staff writer Frank Clifford and Lennie La Guire, assistant metropolitan editor. The following is a condensed version of the interview.

Question: Assume it’s July and you’re the new mayor. How would you put to rest any lingering perceptions that you are the rich white people’s choice and not mayor for all the people?

Answer: I would hope that perception would have been dissipated well before that. I’m an Irishman, the son of immigrants. I saw some prejudice growing up, not what other minorities saw, but I saw some. And I think right now I’ve been in the inner cities for over 20 years working very hard. I’ve earned the respect of a lot of people, and they’ve earned my respect. I train over 300,000 kids a year to read and write on computers. I would hope by the time the election takes place and certainly before I take office, people will know what I am, that I’m not what some people and Mr. Woo have tried to define me as: a rich Anglo-Saxon. I’m not an Anglo-Saxon. My father and grandparents would turn in their graves if I was described as such.

Q: Is there anything that you would seek to do to establish yourself as someone who cares about these people who have not participated in the voting?

A: I think my whole life has been dedicated essentially to helping people who have not been involved in voting. I’ve been giving this speech for 10 years that every child that’s born has an equal right to the skills to compete in society. And by that I mean prenatal, postnatal nutrition, which has a big effect on IQ. Health care and particularly education. So I’m going to be out there. Now, if you’re talking about political symbolism and things, my administration will reflect the ethnic diversity of the city. And if I’m as brilliant as I think I am and care as much as I think I do and I know I do, I’m going to have in my administration the next mayor of L.A. after me. And that person is likely to be a minority--not certainly, but likely.

Q: Do you think that someone of your background has any particular cultural or any intellectual disadvantage as a mayor of this town?

A: I’ve been down in every part of the city and I’ve worked with people. I have a rapport not only with the political powers but with the people in the trenches. I know some of my people say I’m more comfortable with the average person than I am with the elite of this city. I guess what we’re going to talk a lot about is helping them win the skills to compete. Giving them economic opportunities, jobs. You’re not going to bring people together by holding hands around a campfire, that doesn’t work anymore. They’re too smart.

Q: The issue of leadership is one you bring up frequently. You say “you’re going to hear a lot of the same thing about certain issues from the candidates, but what it’s going to boil down to is courage, tenacity and will.” But you still have to get eight votes in the City Council. How would you go about getting the mandate that you need in order to get things done under the system that we have?

A: I think this is one area that’s going to clearly distinguish me from Michael Woo as somebody who’s very comfortable in sharing power, sharing credit with others. That’s how I can control as many businesses as I do, as many situations. And this is going to be the key with working with the City Council.

Q: Is there any particular part of the job that you especially look forward to?

A: I’ve been a problem solver, and you know any time a problem comes you know I’m like a moth to the flame. I love it.

Q: You once said that the one aspect of the job that gave you pause was the ceremonial side. And you kind of joked that if you could find an alter ego to do that work, you’d almost prefer it. How do you feel now?

A: I haven’t found a good solution. I mean everybody expects the mayor to be there. And you know people who supported me are going to want me to be there when they have events and groups. It’s going to be very rough because this city is dysfunctional. It’s in big trouble. It’s going to be an incredibly tough managerial problem to turn the city around and then also to take care of the ceremonial parts. But I’ve been good at finding solutions in my life, and I think I’ll find one to that. But there’s no way that I can do what Mayor Bradley’s done and run this city effectively.

Q: All right, what then is it that you’re so itching to get your hands on first?

A: First of all, what I’m going to do is get key people from all over the city in my representative group, to have direct access to me, lay people who hopefully will put 20% of their time together for six months or a year. And work with the commission members and examine things like the port district, the airport, rubbish collection, safety and, you know, a whole variety of other things.

They would report to commissions and to the mayor. Now let’s take an example, which is I think the primary one: safety. I’d try to bring in top people, about five or six people who are representative of the city, and then have a person like, say, James Q. Wilson (an urban policy expert now at UCLA) sit down with the police, (the Police) Protective League, the reservists, even bring the sheriff in and the National Guard and others and sit down and try to find short-term and long-term solutions to our safety problems.

Q: You were talking at the American Jewish Committee the other day about (the education reform proposal) LEARN. And the question came up about your stand on the breakup (of the Los Angeles Unified School District). And your answer to that was: “Look, I knew that for LEARN to work, that I had to have the cooperation of the teachers union. So I didn’t advertise my feelings about a school breakup at the time because if I had they wouldn’t have joined in.” Does that suggest something about your style of leadership, in other words, you’re willing to subordinate your own beliefs for a while?

A: Or forever. You’ve heard me say this again and again: I’m not an ideologue.

Q: Do you think that is an important statement to make about yourself as a candidate?

A: It’s extremely important because I’m a problem solver. I don’t think privatization was invented on Mount Sinai. I think it’s just a means to an end. And there can be other means to an end. That’s what problem solving is. There can be other means to the end.

Q: What do you believe in?

A: I believe in solving problems. My ultimate belief is that every human being in this world is important, and that it’s very wrong, evil, when children are raised without skills to compete. Put in another context, I believe in the greatest good for the greatest number. I’m not an ideologue on the means. I’m an ideologue on the end.

Q: People will ask: “OK, you gave money to Democrats. You gave money to Republicans. You contributed to a right-to-life organization. You contributed to population control.” How do you explain to people where you stand?

A: I think I just did. Problem solving. I look at the ultimate goals and the means are not that important. Most of my giving can be explained, I think, by who my friends are. Who I’ve worked with. I’ve given tens of millions of dollars to charities and things, and it’s who asks.

Q: Did you get a personal request to give to Americans United for Life? Did that come from a friend?

A: Oh, yeah.

Q: Did it square with your beliefs at the time or was this something you did just because you were asked to do it?

A: I’m not going to get caught in that trap.

Q: How do you stimulate entrepreneurship in the inner city?

A: Human capital.

Q: What does that mean?

A: That means you have to give people the skills to compete, the skills to be workers, the skills to be managers, the skills to be entrepreneurs, and that’s going to be the long-term solution. But before that, you have to make it safe and you have to make it friendly.

Q: You said you’re not wedded to the notion of privatization, but if you do put the trash collection out for bid in order to save revenue that then could be used to hire more police, won’t you be jeopardizing jobs in a city department that employs mostly minority workers?

A: First of all, if you’re going make the city safe, you’ve got to find the money to make it safe. It’s going to take some tough, strong decisions. And the programs I have on rubbish collection, street maintenance, would be what I call not privatization but competition between the public and private sector. And I’ve used the example of Phoenix, where, after eight years the public sector has won back all the rubbish collection contracts. But they’ve been able to reduce their costs. What it will do probably is reduce the number of entry-level jobs for some short period of time. I guarantee that nobody that’s there will lose their job. It will be done through attrition, retirements or transfers.

Q: Should you let the Los Angeles Police Department cooperate with the INS in helping to deport people who are charged with serious crimes?

A: I think you have to put a lot of pressure on the federal government to close the borders. You have to put tremendous pressure on them to reimburse us for a disproportionate number of illegal aliens. And by the way, L.A. has a reputation of very poor lobbying in Washington, not aggressive at all. Next, the police should cooperate with the INS, if somebody’s arrested for a serious crime or a series of misdemeanors.

Q: You know a lot of people. If you had to pick five, who would you listen to as mayor?

A: I’m not going to get into that! I’d lose everybody.

Q: If you could reach back through the ages and put together an ideal cabinet based on the people’s ideas, who would be in that?

A: Whose style of government do I like the best? I mean three people I like are Truman, Eisenhower and Teddy Roosevelt. And I think Eisenhower because he was a great delegator and tough, much tougher than the newspapers made him look. Truman because he’s a man of principle. And I think Teddy Roosevelt for the same reason.

Q: One of the things that people know about you is that you’ve been successful and made a lot of money. How do you share the experience of an average person in Los Angeles? Have you ever changed a tire?

A: I’ve changed many tires in my life. I’ve put chains on the car when I go skiing. I’ve ridden my bike through Europe and slept on the ground at night in the last couple of years. I had a couple that worked in my house about five years ago and quit in a huff saying I didn’t know how to live like a rich man.

Q: What did they want you to do that you weren’t doing?

A: I was doing too many things myself. I’d take off in the morning and ride a bike to a restaurant. No, I haven’t taken too many buses. I’ve taken buses in recent years, but I can count ‘em on one hand, I think.

Q: Actually, there’s a famous story that you once left your Mercedes running to jump onto an airplane.

A: It wasn’t a Mercedes at the time. . . . Yeah, that’s a true story.

Q: What about the remark quoted in a magazine article about learning to wave at poor people? I’d like to hear what you have to say about the impression that’s created, what you meant?

A: Well, it was a joke, a bad joke and it was put out of context by the L.A. Times. If you read the (magazine) article, it’s clear to the writer it was a joke, a very bad one, I might add.

Q: Gun control. Where do you stand on that?

A: I believe in the constitutional right of people to carry guns. I believe in gun control laws. But I think that we have right now fairly adequate gun control laws, which require you to register handguns, (the) 15-day waiting period. The problem is that about 90% of guns are not registered.

Q: When you talk about law enforcement, one of the things that you repeat after you finish talking about the plan for hiring more police is “empowering our citizens, creating a will within citizens to make their own communities safe.”

A: People in the city have to get a will to make their city better, prettier, cleaner, safer. And we’ve lost the will, particularly the inner cities have lost the will to make their city, this city, habitable. And what I will do is--with the help of churches, foundations, whoever I can find--go in and create leadership in every little block. Take an example, say five-block areas. Have like neighborhood watches there. Put them in 24-hour contact with patrol cars and watch commanders with cellular phones. Have a Peace and Safety Corps, which is an informal group of people, fairly informal. People in the neighborhood would have access to sandblasting equipment from the city, paintbrushes to video cameras to use against graffiti, people would have access to a person in the Police Department, who also has contact with Building and Safety, Health Departments and others that will help them close rock houses.

Q: We’re going to ask Mr. Woo this as well about you. But what do you like about him? We’ve heard a lot about what you don’t like through the campaign.

A: I have to think hard. I think Mr. Woo may have as much trouble with me as I have with him. I just don’t respect him at all. He has shown no leadership in anything in this city. I’m sorry.

Q: Clearly your opposition has tried to paint you as somebody who we don’t know that much about, an unknown quantity, and I think there have also been questions of accessibility in the sense that a lot of your communication with us is through written statements.

A: As mayor, I’ll be as accessible as you can be. But as you know it’s going to be very hard. I mean everybody has a plan to change the city. One thing I would like to do is maybe consider returning to what was done a number of years ago and have some day where the public can come in on a regular basis. Whether I commit to do it every week or so I’d rather wait. I will commit that I’ll do it.

Q: It’s four years now let’s say, and you’re looking back. Can you take us through the high points, the film footage of what was best and brightest on the Dick Riordan term?

A: There have been major cosmetic changes. Where people feel safe to have their children walk to schools. They don’t have to tell their children to duck behind parked cars when they hear shooting. Where you have an economy which is built around high-tech, small-to-medium-sized businesses. Higher hourly rate jobs available. We have an education system (where) teachers and principals are held accountable and children can read and write in the second (or) third grade. Where there’s affordable housing. And basically where people feel very proud of their city, and like it was when I came out here, where you kept telling the rest of the world that you want to live in L.A.