COLUMN RIGHT/ VIRGINIA I. POSTREL : If Angelenos Are Apolitical, That’s a Plus : Big government hasn’t quashed civic enterprise--yet. Tuesday’s election was a crossroads.

Less than one-third of the city’s registered voters cast ballots Tuesday. And that was pretty high for Los Angeles.

To the bafflement of Eastern journalists here to report the mayor’s race, Angelenos just don’t think much about City Hall. To the consternation of political intellectuals, the local TV news prefers crime and celebrities. L.A. is an apolitical city.

For people like me who follow politics like sports, this makes the local evening news boring. But it is a sign of health. In Boston and New York, TV news is full of politics--and the politics is full of hate. City government has a monopoly on power, and competition to grab that power has turned ethnic divisions into nasty, relentless strife. Huge, daunting bureaucracies have sapped the private individual of power and responsibility.

Confronting fiscal crisis, economic slowdown and ethnic fragmentation, Los Angeles is re-evaluating how it governs itself. And in that discussion, some of the loudest voices are calling for more politics, more government, more ethnic spoils.

Hence the constant attacks on Rebuild L.A. not because it is ineffective but because it is private. Economic development, we are told, is a job for city government, not private industry.

This is dangerous nonsense.

In Los Angeles, private individuals still take responsibility for public problems. Rebuild L.A. may have its shortcomings, but it has attracted the uncompensated time and energy of some of the city’s most expensive talent.

Nor is it alone. From the multiethnic entrepreneurs of the New Vision Business Council to the academics and policy analysts of the Study Group for the First 100 Days, Angelenos with new ideas are creating alliances to meet the city’s challenges. People still care about Los Angeles without getting paid to do so. This civic energy is a precious commodity. Not every city has it.

The relation between private life and city government lies behind the central issues of the mayoral campaign: crime and economic growth. How can city government create the conditions in which private life can flourish?

Securing a safe environment throughout Los Angeles, not merely on the Westside, is city government’s first responsibility. This means both more police officers and better community relations. It also means allowing Angelenos to create what architect and urban planner Oscar Newman has called “defensible space,” buildings and neighborhoods that let residents to watch out for themselves and one another. Closing streets, for instance, is not simply an antisocial act. It allows such middle-class enclaves as Lafayette Square to exist safely in the urban core. As mayor, Richard Riordan must push not only his plans to put more cops on the street but also his less-discussed ideas to empower citizens to make their neighborhoods safe.

Similarly, the best thing city government can do for the private economy is let it work. Riordan pledged to streamline the city’s many overlapping permitting processes. But that is not enough.

In “Democracy in America,” Alexis de Tocqueville warned of “democratic despotism.” It sounds familiar: “It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate. . . . Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies the people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.” Los Angeles needs to roll back democratic despotism, not streamline it.

And the campaign skirted the nastiest challenge facing the new mayor. The city is almost sure to lose $350 million in state funds, money the new city budget pretends will come. If it doesn’t, says Mayor Bradley, “the city will be plunged into the worst financial crisis in its history.”

If Riordan and the new council decide that the private sector exists to protect and serve the government, they will sharply raise taxes, despite his anti-tax stand. This could mean the wage tax that Julian Nava proposed during the primary. In that direction lie Detroit and New York.

The alternative is privatization--leasing Los Angeles International Airport, aggressively contracting out city services. And that means asking what city government is for: to pick up the trash or to serve the public? To run the airport or to use it for the benefit of city residents?

Private, apolitical life is the great strength of Los Angeles. And it is the only hope for any city seeking peaceful pluralism and economic growth. The challenge facing us is to protect and enhance it, not to destroy it in the name of saving the city.