Woo Takes Stock, Says He Is Unsure of His Next Move

With a smile on his face but much of the vigor that he showed in the campaign’s final days gone, Michael Woo faced the reality Wednesday that all at once he had lost his job and lost his dream of leading Los Angeles.

With Tuesday’s stinging election defeat still fresh, the Hollywood councilman prepared to enter private life after a decade in government and a campaign that stretched back two years.

“It’s like a death in the family,” said Woo’s wife, Susan Fong, who said she was looking forward to returning to a normal life. “You go through denial, depression, acceptance and anger. I think we’re still in shock.”

In his post-Election Day analysis, Woo played up the positive aspects of his bruising mayoral bid: the more than 259,000 voters who thought he ought to succeed Mayor Tom Bradley, the enthusiastic volunteers who helped him mount the campaign and the strong support he received in the city’s many ethnic communities.

Gone were his intense attacks on Mayor-elect Richard Riordan that painted the multimillionaire businessman as a right-wing zealot who would divide the city and return it to the intolerant days of old.

“I don’t have any interest in continuing any of the antagonism of the campaign,” Woo said. “I think we have to put the campaign behind us.”

When Woo’s loss became apparent Tuesday night, he telephoned Riordan to pledge his support. Riordan, during a triumphant tour of City Hall on Wednesday morning, said his former rival can help the city recover from what turned into a intensely divisive campaign.

“Today is the first day of the rest of his life,” Riordan said of Woo. “He has a lot to look forward to. He can be very helpful to me . . . in uniting this city.”

After sleeping in Wednesday morning for the first time in months, the 41-year-old Woo said at his Chinatown campaign headquarters that he was disappointed by the defeat and unsure of what he would do next. Woo leaves his council position at the end of the month.

His campaign was so intense, he said, that he never focused on the possibility that his mayoral bid would be stymied or on the inevitability that he would have to clean out his 13th District council office for someone else.

Woo said he will stay active in Los Angeles but has no specific career plans. Aides speculated that he might put his graduate degree in urban planning to use in academia or in the nonprofit sector. There was also talk that there might be a spot in the Clinton Administration, something Woo said was a rumor and nothing more.

“It’s been a long, hard campaign,” he said. “Last night was not the result that we hoped for. But I think we can take some satisfaction from the fact that there were 259,000 people in the city who wanted to support the kind of leadership that I wanted to bring to Los Angeles.”

As he spoke, campaign staffers began disassembling the campaign nerve center, carting off computers, boxing campaign files and preparing to vacate by the end of the week.

“We’re licking our wounds and trying to figure out what we could have done,” said Benji Reyes, an aide who was sitting at the campaign switchboard but ignoring the calls.

Woo has faced defeat at the polls before, in his first bid to unseat former 13th District Councilwoman Peggy Stevenson in 1981. But those who have gone from public officials to private citizens after one long night said Woo faces some difficult adjustments.

“I think Mike Woo is probably going to be in a state of depression for a while,” said Councilman Nate Holden, who lost a mayoral bid four years ago and lost his state Senate seat before that. “He’s fallen from the top of the mountain to the valley. I’ve been there. You have power and then 24 hours later you have nothing.”