Most Constituents Sticking With Richard : Politics: Council colleagues have censured him twice. But black supporters say he gives them a voice, however boisterous.

Isaac Richard’s rip-roaring style on the City Council in recent weeks has generally played well with the city’s black community and with his constituency.

The volatile councilman, who brought city business to a halt by staging a spontaneous filibuster during Tuesday’s regularly scheduled council meeting, gets some raised eyebrows for his foul language and bad manners. But most of his constituents in northwest Pasadena give him high marks--enthusiastically, or grudgingly--for standing up for the community.

“He’s a little erratic--let’s say that,” said Joseph Patin, owner of the Cajun restaurant Aunt Gussye’s Place. “But I don’t think anybody else ever did anything for this community before Isaac.”

“There’s that old cliche, the squeaky wheel gets the oil,” added Charles Stokes, who runs a local exterminating business.

The squeaky wheel in the past two weeks has escalated to a roar, as Richard has cursed and berated city staff, stormed out of meetings, aimed diatribes at council colleagues and, on Tuesday, caused the abrupt adjournment of the council meeting when he threatened to read aloud lengthy passages from “War and Peace.”

Richard’s council colleagues have, in turn, censured him--for the second time in less than a year--and deprived him of privileges such as travel expenses and free tickets to Rose Bowl events.

By Tuesday, relations between Richard and his fellow council members had taken on the tone of a playground brawl, with Richard belligerently challenging his colleagues to censure him again for disrupting the day’s business.

“Come on, censure me,” Richard said during Tuesday’s session. “Now that you’ve shot your last wad, what do you have left? Censure me.”

Looking across the room at Councilman Chris Holden, the council’s other black member, Richard demanded: “What are you grinning about, Holden?”

And he turned to Mayor Rick Cole, challenging his remarks about the evils of not speaking out against wrongs.

“You’re not even a man, Cole, let alone an arbiter of good and evil,” Richard said.

Touching off the latest council brouhaha was a City Hall incident two weeks ago in which Richard cursed a room full of city officials, including Cole, City Manager Philip Hawkey and City Clerk Maria Stewart.

Stewart took offense at what she called the obscenely sexual nature of Richard’s language and filed a sexual harassment complaint with the city’s Affirmative Action Department. Then she filed another complaint after Richard allegedly telephoned her and used threatening language.

Richard concedes that he cursed during the meeting of officials, but he says the language was aimed solely at Hawkey. The city manager, Richard said, had sought to prevent him from conferring with former state Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso, who is investigating allegations by black groups that the Tournament of Roses is discriminatory.

Richard has been the council’s most vocal critic of the tournament, a mainstay of the Pasadena Establishment for more than a century, and which stages the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl football game New Year’s Day.

Richard’s six council colleagues, responding favorably to Stewart’s complaint, voted unanimously last week on the censure motion. Then on Tuesday, they voted 5 to 2 to impose sanctions on Richard, with Richard himself and newly elected Councilman Bill Crowfoot opposing.

It was the second censure vote against Richard in 10 months. Last August, a majority of the council voted to censure him for allegedly cursing and threatening city Housing Administrator Phyllis Mueller.

Richard has contended at various times this week that he is the target of a vendetta by Cole and that he is being punished for challenging the practices of the Tournament of Roses.

“The Tournament of Roses is driving this whole thing,” said Richard in an interview Wednesday. “That’s what it’s all about. I exposed Phil Hawkey and Rick Cole for trying to keep blacks out of the review process. We forced our way in, and this is my punishment.”

Hawkey concedes that he mistakenly told Richard that only three council members could talk to Reynoso, believing that Richard’s participation might represent a violation of the Brown Act, which prohibits a council quorum from meeting without public notice. But he denies that he was trying to prevent blacks from participating in the process.

“That’s absolutely ridiculous,” said Hawkey, who added that he had approved hiring a black attorney and a black accounting firm to work with Reynoso.

Spokesmen for the tournament could not be reached Wednesday.

Cole and Vice Mayor Kathryn Nack--both of whom last week called upon Richard to resign from the council--followed last week’s censure with a written appeal to more than 200 community leaders.

Richard’s “pattern of abusive behavior is not a matter of personality,” the letter said, “it is the product of serious medical and drug problems that he has privately admitted.”

Richard recently spent six weeks at an undisclosed desert treatment center, but he has denied publicly that he was a drug user. He was being treated for a “chemical imbalance,” friends said.

The letter aroused some black leaders against the council majority.

“Even people who think Isaac is a jerk think he has the right to be treated fairly,” said black community leader Alan La Sha.

Members of the influential Black Males Forum, whose membership includes most of the city’s black leadership, met with Cole and Richard last week, and many criticized Cole for distributing the letter.

“I was furious,” La Sha said. “It wasn’t so much about Isaac as about sending an inflammatory letter on city stationery.”

The council actions aimed at Richard have polarized the black community, driving many fence-sitters into a pro-Richard stance, said Prentice Deadrick, the city’s director of Northwest Programs and past president of the Pasadena Black Municipal Employees Assn.

“A lot of people who wouldn’t like being forced to choose between Isaac or the council are now choosing Isaac’s side because of the principles he stands for,” Deadrick said.

Holden says Richard’s support is based largely on a misunderstanding of Richard’s role on the council.

“He’s created this whole aura that he’s somehow the victim,” the councilman said. “Unfortunately, that’s what people are focusing on.”

Holden, whom Richard berated last week as an “Uncle Tom” for supporting the censure vote, contends that Richard is all verbiage and no action.

He cited the Tournament of Roses investigation, which Reynoso was chosen to head over Richard’s objections. Other council members had suggested the names of individuals to lead the investigation and participated in planning for it, Holden said, but Richard did not.

“The tournament issue was supposed to be Isaac’s entree back from the desert, or wherever he was,” Holden said. “He was empowered to make suggestions to the city manager, which he never did.”

But many in the black community say Richard’s presence on the council in the past two years has been good for the impoverished Northwest community, sensitizing city government to the needs of his black and Latino constituents.

Deadrick cites recent budget discussions in which the council considered cutting $50,000 from the city’s Northwest programs. Revitalizing that neighborhood has been one of the council’s declared priorities for three years.

“When it first came up, Isaac wasn’t around, and there was no discussion,” Deadrick said. “As soon as Isaac came back, he raised the issue, saying, ‘How can we sit up here and say we’re trying to revitalize the Northwest and at the same time authorize any reductions?’ ”

The council subsequently elected to reconsider the cut.

“The discussion would never have taken place if not for him (Richard),” Deadrick said.