Mayor Leaves Richard Off the A-List : Politics: Councilman, whom colleagues censured twice, is not told they would meet President Clinton.

Little of consequence was discussed by President Clinton and five members of the City Council, jammed last Sunday into a hallway of the Pasadena Hilton, but it was one of those brief, shining encounters that elected officials treasure.

“It was a cheese-and-squeeze,” Councilman Isaac Richard said. “Grin (at a photographer) and shake his (the President’s) hand.”

Richard, however, got neither cheese nor squeeze, as Mayor Rick Cole, citing what he called his colleague’s “erratic behavior,” left him off the guest list.

The council’s other member, William E. Thomson, was out of town on business.

Richard, who has been censured twice by colleagues, says he learned about the meeting early Sunday, when his wife, Sharon, awoke him with a newspaper article that mentioned the event.

“She said the council was meeting with the President, and they hadn’t told me,” Richard said. “It made my wife cry.”

Richard rushed over to the Hilton, where Clinton had spent the night during a 24-hour visit in the Southland, but he was too late. Without clearance from the Secret Service, which Richard’s colleagues had obtained the previous week, the councilman was not allowed to join the group of well-wishers clustered in an upstairs hallway.

“My people have been insulted,” said Richard, who represents a largely black and Latino constituency in northwest Pasadena. “They’ve been insulted through me. It’s not me that’s important, though I’m really hurt.”

Richard accused Cole, a former ally with whom he has feuded in the past year, of conspiring for a week to keep him in the dark about the meeting with Clinton.

“He must have spent hours just to keep this whole thing in secrecy,” Richard said.

In a statement, Cole said:

“I was given the opportunity to welcome the President to our city and the opportunity to invite others to help me do that. And I did not extend that opportunity to Mr. Richard, because of the erratic behavior that he has repeatedly demonstrated.”

Richard’s two censures came as a result of alleged curses and threats to city staff. In the past year, many council meetings have been dominated by Richard’s attacks on his colleagues.

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In a three-minute tete-a-tete, council members invited Clinton to the upcoming Rose Bowl football game and to next summer’s World Cup soccer matches, which will be held in the Rose Bowl. The President quickly posed for photographs with individual council members and with Councilman Chris Holden’s infant son, Nicholas.

“It was mostly, ‘Hello, how are you?’,” Cole said. “We were literally standing in a hallway.”

The mayor denied that he had taken any special steps to keep Richard uninformed about the session with Clinton, and other council members said they had not been asked to keep the plans from Richard. But some council members conceded that they felt no urgency to let Richard know about the meeting.

“It was kind of like don’t ask, don’t tell,” Councilman Bill Crowfoot said.

“He’s made a point of saying, ‘I’m not your friend,’ ” Crowfoot said. “Fine. I can take that. He also says he’s not a politician, he’s an activist. Fine. But don’t expect people to behave like friends, or politicians (with him). He’s certainly not at the top of anybody’s popularity charts.”

But Richard said that, on occasions when he has helped bring national figures to the city, he has been generous in sharing the spotlight with his colleagues. He cited visits this year by Jesse Jackson and Arthur Fletcher, chairman of U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, both of whom have ties to Richard.

“I’ve gone out of my way to include everybody,” Richard said.